praktikantenblog

Mit „Hello Etsy – A Summit on Small Business and Sustainability“ möchte Etsy jeden – ob Student, Designer oder Kleinstunternehmer – unterstützen und motivieren, sein eigenes Business zu gründen, Gleichgesinnte zu treffen oder sich einfach inspirieren zu lassen. Insgesamt werden rund 500 Teilnehmer im Berliner E-Werk erwartet. Das internationale Programm setzt sich aus Vorträgen und Workshops erfolgreicher Entrepreneure, Marketing und Social Media Profis sowie Rechts- und Finanzexperten zusammen.

http://helloetsy.com/

It is a huge problem for both sides: The companies trying to send information to customers and the recipients, trying to figure out wanted email from junk ordners.

It is  not the easiest thing to setup a mail server so that it avoids being in error marked positive as spam.

The popular german mailservice GMX has published a long list of tips, that administrators of foreign mailservers should follow.

The problem is: It's better to  be hard. There are two main principles:

a) blacklisting

b) intelligence

In a, there is a list of mailservers, that should not be trusted. Some companies provide these blacklists and they are used in most of our tools, embedded in Thunderbird or guarding in front of our freemail services.

In b, everything  is about  pattern recognition   such as hidden markov chains 

In  both cases, and usually they are combined, by error, be it a machine that decides wrongly or more often a user that clicks on 'junk' can influence decisions and create false positives.
And Mailservers could run by bad configuration into the trap. And you could use email adresses or domain names, containing words in spam keyword lists.

In the case you run a young business, this can really suck. You sent invites to people or even your visitors invite their friends - and the mail is going to junk.

There is one principle, that could help here, called whitelisting.  

A good whitelist is the opposite of a blacklist. If you are good, your name is on the list and you can send as much spam as you want.

I know two  projects, that aim to provide a commonly used email  whitelist:

Spamhaus Whitelist  and the larger DNSWL

For a while now, i am seeing this fundraising tag here - pretty alone amongst the others.

Ok, well, i am working for a while with that crew now and i know why:

Because fundraising sucks. There is no real concept behind it. It means: Get money into your pot.

Business people, such as VCs, Startups also speak of Fundraising, when they have an equity round to gain equity (money that is owned, not loaned).

Social Change - People often confuse Fundraising with a less comercial, friendly and sustainable feeling lifestyle to become - a bit less - rich - and of course not for profit, but for good, only working with very nice people, having dreams and ideas.

In general, those people will find out, that this is not true. If it was a dream, it is not more than that.
Fundraising for non profits is the hardest thing ever.
Compared with gaining money for a product with clear market value and (that's the problem) clear values for share holders (the people who put the money into the equity) it's like selling your ass on the street - alone.

So what will people bring, to give a non-profit (something without monetary outcome, they can take advantage from) a lots of money?

Some things:

a) political agenda, which is e.g. when Europe decides to be Europe and that it should tell everybody
b) Market Agenda
c) Total goodwill or crazyness

The first point is the main common money pot, where the most public investions are financed from. From golf courts to schools, everything can be funded by the European Union. Untill 2011. Or so. Or whenever the programm is being quit.
There is absolutely no guarantee, that your non profit will have money in a few years. And even if your funding is guaranteed by law: The law will change, just as easy as fashion.

The second point is more sustainable. As long as there are working companies, those have a strong interest to interact with the needs of the people, they sell stuff to. These interests are not as controlled and flat, as some believe. Merely people really love freedom, art, education, sports, culture and so on.
So companies (their function in society is less advertising than producing, what people need - so they have to focus on production, need to loan money for the next some years and invest in the future) are more or less dependent on the existence of some social campaigns, that they can connect to. As Social Marketing investments in non profits are totally practical and common.

The drawback is: People will say, you are being bought by the economy. The economy is bad, it;s the stock market who kills people and now you are part of it - they will say.

The latter (total goodwill) is something really cool. If you have a millionaire(ss) who finances you, maybe even after his or her death, then it might turn out, that your non profit has enough money to be a foundation on it's own.

 

Buuut the foundations ---- you will shout.

Yes, there are many foundations. And yes, they are becoming more. And yes, they are becoming more modern. But why the heck should they invest into you? To answer that question will bring your cute little non profit far in the direction of an selfadvertising whore. Try it and share wih others, if you are lucky.

And keep in mind: Foundations are kind of ..  companies that get there money ... from the stock market or similar constructs.
To make this possible, they need to have a strong hierarchy and firm structure of supporters and partners. And to make them happy, they want to fund projects, who fit in the political agenda of those supporters. And so on. Good look.

 

And is there a solution?

Yes. We at brueckenschlaeger build up self supporting companies, who can evolve independently of foundations and good will. 
Later more on that.