Let’s start the year strong with some events:

Hellooo! Andres here,

Welcome to another year of the networking desk newsletter.

I hope you are ready for what’s to come, because I can already smell a few good events cooking in the background…

Here’s what we got this week:

• Collecting more $$ on donations

• A few interesting events from the community next week

• Nice coffee shop spotlight

Alright, let’s do this.

“Lean forward moment” of the week - Collecting more money for donations

This is actually an excellent strategy I’ve seen applied at a few free events that work wonders for non-profits, but hey it might have other applications for businesses as well.

Normally, events will have optional raffles that people can put money towards and donate to win prices. This is nice and all but, what if there was a bit more intention put into it…

I actually saw a few people run free events and ask for a donation of any product that they were looking for (displayed at a table) or a monetary donation to purchase.

The visual was a great way to encourage the donation because normally people are only thinking:

“donation = money leaves my pocket → money gone”

Having a visual of where it goes helps a ton, add that the fact that if you say you will also participate in a raffle by donating, and you got a winning formula.

As you may know by now, I am a very curious person and I did pay attention (and asked a few times) about the success rate of that practice — also, take into account that this was also in December where people might be more likely to donate. I digress. Some organizations running this practice mentioned they received donations from over 80% of all attendants. That’s just awesome!

🖥️ Convert more website users into clients

🗓️ Now, the events…

Local shop of the week - Phoenix Roasters

Not an ad – just a cool spot you can visit

Alright, this was actually way better than I expected. I normally don’t expect much from cafes, but a good friend of mine (and obviously a reader of this newsletter) invited me here and WOW. The chai I had was incredible. I assume the coffee is equally good, haha.

I will try the coffee next time and check 👀

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Thank you for reading! Quick thing before I go:

1. If you are new or would like to read older posts, check out this page. There is a backlog of previous weeks of “The Networking Desk”

2. Know someone who would benefit from this newsletter? Be sure to share it with them! 📩 (just copy the link or forward this email) I will keep putting out great newsletters for them and for you. That’s a promise.

See you next week.

- Andres Inciarte