My Best Promotion

Rhonda Blum, sales representative for distributor Motivators Inc. and board member at SAAGNY (The Specialty Advertising Association of Greater New York) and the SAAGNY foundation, shared a promo-based fundraiser specific to our industry.

As both a fundraiser and an awareness piece for the SAAGNY foundation, Blum created and sold custom-decorated tumblers from Gordon Sinclair for $10 a piece. The mugs carried 12 co-sponsor decorations on them, each sold for between $75 and $100, and were sold at various SAAGNY and SAAGNY foundation events. Below, she details what made the promotion so successful.

Promo Marketing: Could you briefly describe how this promotion worked?

Rhonda Blum: It was for the SAAGNY foundation*, which is SAAGNY's nonprofit arm. We use this mug [pictured right] as a fundraiser. I got the idea from Ray Rodriguez (vice president of sales and marketing) from Gordon Sinclair when we were having lunch. He was talking to me about a client, and I said, "Let's see if we can do this to raise some money for the SAAGNY foundation."

The mug is a beautiful piece, and what we did was we sold each of the little circles to twelve vendors in the promotional products industry, including ASI and PPAI. We've been selling these at every event we go to since I think December. It's raised about $4,000 dollars I want to say, which isn't bad. It's a great product and it's been working really well.

*The SAAGNY foundation is a nonprofit organization that provides aid to a number of charities. It collects unwanted promotional products, such as misprinted apparel for homeless clothing drives or misprinted pens for schools in need. Other aid it gives is more traditional, such as cash donations to charities and gifts and entertainment for disabled or ill children. The foundation also sponsors a scholarship grant for college-aged children with parents in the promotional industry.