Benefit for the Homecare Foundation to manage a competition structure

 

The Homecare management think about the project strategically. The Foundation will not raise funds to help the patients if it cannot help our business partners! It will not be wise to earn R6 million for patients and the earnings are for a short period. The only way to ensure that the Foundation will remain for years to come is to implement strategies where we market the Homecare Foundation effectively to the public.

 

The Foundation cannot only communicate to the public about our needs… This is in general communication that NPO organizations send to the public… please help, we have these needs. Our strategy is to rely on positive communication. We need to inform the public that they can help, without the necessity for them to pay funds out of their own pockets.

 

The Foundation also wants to thank the public when they support our business partners… Positive communication will result in long-term benefits for everybody involved. It is possible with the small amounts companies donate, to make a significant difference in patients’ lives, and simultaneously help our business partners.

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The following points were taken into consideration when the competition structure was planned:

1. Approximately 95% of our intended client base will not be able to run large competitions on their own.

2. It is costly to run competitions. It is not only the funds needed to provide the prizes; companies also need lots of marketing budget to market their competitions.

3. It is important to thank clients for their spending… It will be tremendous if you can reward your clients by offering them a chance to win exceptional prizes.

4. The best thanking method of all, is when a third party thank your clients for supporting your business… especially if the third party can explain to your clients that your business play an important role in the community!

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With all these things in mind, we started to plan and develop the software.

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There were a few things we thought about while we planned how to position restaurants and coffee shops within our business/support plan.

 

First, we need to invite a small percentage of restaurants & coffee shops into the project. We cannot provide value to a partner if all the restaurants in the immediate vicinity is on the network.

 

Second, we cannot run the project with too few partners. You will later read about our radio campaigns and we need to have a fair representation to ensure that the public support the group.

 

Third, we do not think it is always a good idea to advertise “specials” to draw clients. We have done a lot of research during the four years we worked to prepare the project. We have noticed that restaurants with huge banners outside advertising exceptional specials have often less clients than restaurants next to them who do not advertise specials.

 

We think it is that people will rather walk into a full restaurant. It may be that they think the fuller restaurant is preferred by the public, might be the restaurant offer better food etc. They will rather pay more and enjoy the evening than to take a risk on specials and they think they might receive poor value.

 

We do not recommend that restaurants offer “specials”. We also looked at business models such as “Groupon”, Wikideals and others who negotiate huge restaurant specials which they mail to their followers. They ask restaurants a fortune and they only target “bargain hunters”.

 

Our intention is to provide our restaurant partners with High LSM Income clients, who can spend larger amounts on food items and who will support the partners because they know by doing so, they help the caretakers and bedridden patients.

 

Research

A restaurateur told us once during a research meeting the following. He asked “How do you get a restaurant full?” We obviously first wanted to explain a scientific way and thinks like marketing etc.. He said: “get it half, and it will become full”.

 

That is a straight but simple answer. He told us that it is actually an art to manage your seating’s, especially when you have a restaurant inside a mall where you rely on the walk in clients. There are restaurants that are in buildings where people need to drive to dine at the restaurants… But, when you compete for walk in customers, you need to plan your seating arrangements.

 

He told us that he attempts to seat as much people as possible close to the entrance of the restaurant… They need to make a noise and enjoy themselves so that “walk in” customers can be drawn.

 

He laughed and said; “Be careful not to seat a couple next to the entrance if you notice that they are quiet or if something does not look ok. You do not want the girl to start crying when they are at the table! Other people may think it is your food! You take them to the back of the restaurant close to the kitchen where there is other noise. You still want their money, but not their tears.”

 

We realised that it is an art to plan a restaurant… Our objective is to become our restaurateur’s best support structure. We need restaurants and coffee shops as business partners.

 

You need to understand that our plans are not to talk about the negative aspects or sadness of patients. We have a positive outlook on the project, the way the Foundation will raise funds, the way we will engage with the public etc.

 

Our action plan is to tell people to enjoy life… laugh, eat, play, because it is something that you can lose!

 

We help other companies to earn more income; they donate funds to the Foundation. To help them make more money, we need to treat their top clients… This is where our restaurant partners are needed. People should feel “valued”. We will explain how we can achieve this and the partnership will therefore be a huge benefit to our restaurant and coffee shop partners.

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We publish more detail about the following:
 

1. Software Structure
   
   We give details how companies can use software to thank and reward their own clients.
   
   You can read with examples how invoices, statements and receipts will be used by different companies to market the business directory towards the High LSM Income public.  Accommodation partners will use this function to help them increase profits. The Foundation asks the public to book directly into accommodation companies without using a booking agency.
   
   Our task is to increase profits for accommodation partners and to accomplish that; we need to reduce the amounts paid on booking fee commissions.
   
   The software will also help our restaurant partners.
   
   High LSM Income people will be reached and this will benefit your company directly… (Read more...Recommended to all companies.)
    

2. Obtaining prizes
   
   Read how the Foundation will pay for prizes. We explain how the services provided to other business partners helps the Foundation to obtain a large number of carwash vouchers, cappuccino vouchers and other prizes. The variety of prizes will help all our business partners. (Read more… if time available)
    

3. Marketing strategies to inform the public about business directory and competitions
   
   Our media strategies (including coffee media campaigns) to ensure that the public visit the business directory is explained. (Read more...Recommended to all companies.)

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Conclusion of competition fund and software

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The Foundation will manage approximately 35 000 prizes per month. A large number of prizes will be cappuccino vouchers, carwash vouchers etc. The Foundation needs specialized software to manage such a process. It will be a mammoth task to communicate with the public about their competition statuses, and to manage the distribution of vouchers without software specifically programmed for such a project.

 

The National competition will in future play a vast role in the Homecare Foundation’s ability to fund caretakers. There is one thing that we cannot ignore… The need to support bedridden patients will never disappear, in fact, it grows rapidly.       

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