A social enterprise strategy for nonprofit organizations in the SF Bay Area. Raise money by leveraging an existing, very successful and effective social enterprise. No cost, no employees, very simple.
2. SOCIAL ENTERPRISE
This is a strategy to leverage a very successful social enterprise
• Definition: Social enterprises are businesses whose primary purpose is the
common good. They use the methods and disciplines of business and the power of
the marketplace to advance their social, environmental and human justice agendas.
(definitions and characteristics from the Social Enterprise Alliance website)
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3. THE PROBLEM WITH
SOCIAL ENTERPRISE
You have to build and run a business
profitably.
• all 3 - building, running and being profitable - are
very hard to do, which is why so many new
businesses fail
Tuesday, May 7, 13
4. SEEDS OF JUSTICE
FUNDRAISING STRATEGY
With my strategy, instead of creating a new business,
we leverage a social enterprise that has a
nationwide scope and is effectively addressing a
very basic social justice issue - the inaccessibility of
our legal system
Tuesday, May 7, 13
5. LEGALSHIELD AS
SOCIAL ENTERPRISE
The mission of LegalShield, the company I work with, is:
To make equal justice under law (the words on the outside of the
Supreme Court building) a reality in the United States.
• It has created an ingenious business model that makes high quality
law firms in each state affordable and accessible to working people
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6. THE LEGALSHIELD BUSINESS MODEL
LegalShield created a business model which makes high quality law firms
affordable. And it does this very well:
• It has 1.4 million members and 34,000 small businesses that use their legal, small
business & identity theft services
• It pools the monthly membership fees in each state to pay one provider law firm to
provide a wide range of services to its members in that state.
✦ In California, for example, we have over 600,000 members and we are able to pay our provider
law firm, Parker Stanbury, over $1.5 million each month;
✦ The relationship our members have with their law firm is NOT based on billable hours but on the
attorneys doing their best to take care of our member’s legal issues, so they can keep the privilege
of being their provider law firm
• Its sales force is its members:
✦ people who use this service can become self-employed business owners and get paid for
marketing legal and identity theft plans in different arenas (personal, small business, employee
benefits and commercial drivers).
✦ LegalShield has paid out over $1 billion over the past 10 years to its sales force
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7. LEVERAGINGTHE
LEGALSHIELD SYSTEM
Here’s what we will be leveraging:
• the network of provider law firms LegalShield has in each state (except Alaska) that LegalShield picks, trains
and monitors for its members
• the training system
• the corporate infrastructure: the home office in Ada, Oklahoma, with 700 employees, including 300
customer service personnel and leaders who are very good at analyzing the market and how to provide the
appropriate resources to the field (as you will see when you visit my LegalShield website)
• the excellent design team which produces the print, video & online sales and marketing collateral I get to
use
• the payroll depart that pays me (as soon as the memberships are processed) so that I can make my donations
to you
The only thing I need to focus on is making good presentations, signing up
new members and helping them understand how, why and when to use
their new law firm!
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8. CONCEPT
• I sell LegalShield legal & identity theft plans as employee benefits to
for-profit and nonprofit companies and organizations
• If people who support your organization introduce me to decision-
makers at their workplaces...
• Every time these decision-makers say “Yes” and allow me to do a
presentation...
• I will donate $25 to your organization for every employee that signs
up
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9. HOW WE RAISE MONEY
• Let’s say, we want to raise $25,000 for your organization
• That means I need to sell 1,000 legal & identity theft plans
• That would be either:
• 50 presentations with 20 sales made in each
• 20 presentations with 50 sales in each
• 10 presentations with 100 sales in each
• 1 presentation with 1,000 sales
• So, either a bunch of smaller companies or a few larger ones
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10. WHATYOU DO SO
I CAN RAISETHIS $
We create an outreach strategy to ask everyone that supports your
organization to introduce me to employee benefit decision-makers at
their workplaces
• We start with those most actively involved
• We build success stories
• We promote these success stories to your broader community of
supporters and ask them to start introducing me to employee
benefits decision makers
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11. ADDITIONAL BENEFITSThere are a few interesting additional benefits to my fundraising strategy:
✓ We can start immediately.
✓ There is no limit to how much we can raise. The better we can get at engaging your
community, the more we can raise.
✓ In essence, you will be raising this money indirectly from hundreds and eventually
thousands of people who may have never heard of your organization or the work you do,
(and may even disagree with the work you do).
✓They will never know about it - the fact that I am going to donate this money to your
organization has nothing to do with my interaction with the decision makers or their
employees.
✓ I go back throughout the year to answer questions and sign up new people. Every new
employee I sign up will mean $25 more for you!
✓ You will be helping LegalShield fulfill its mission: making equal justice under law a reality
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12. MYTRIPLE BOTTOM LINE
I have 3 measures of success for the Seeds of Justice project
✓ The number of individuals and families that I help to have access to our law firm, so they
both know what their rights are and can protect these rights
✓ May belief is that giving people access to real legal power in their personal lives will help them feel more
empowered to take on other broader injustices in their communities.
✓ The amount of money I raise for important projects like yours
These first two are inextricably linked: the more families I help, the more money I raise
Each new family moves our society a little closer to making equal justice under law a reality
✓ My personal measure: I can pay for my daughter’s college education at a small college
(where she will thrive) and she graduates with a transformative educational experience
and no debt!
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13. WHY 34,000 BUSINESSES
OFFER OUR BENEFITS
There are 3 primary reasons
1.Their employees have legal issues happening in their home lives (home
foreclosures, child custody struggles, dealing with identity theft issues, credit
problems, etc.) and employers want to help them
2.These legal issues impact an employee’s ability to focus on their jobs, they may
have to take time off from work and may even have to deal with these issues
while at work. (A study on the financial impact of legal issues on the workplace
found the average cost per employee was $1,625 per year)
3.Most companies offer these benefits as employee-pay benefits, so there is no
direct cost to the company for providing them.
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14. WHY EMPLOYEES LIKE
OUR BENEFITS
Our legal plan allows employees to use attorneys the way only wealthy people have
been able to until now:
✓ Our members can now use attorneys as counselors
✓ So they always know what their rights are
✓ So they can protect their rights and interests
✓ So they can make the law work for them and their families
Our law provider law firms have already been pre-paid (over $1.5 million here in
California) to take care of our members.
So the attorney’s relationship with our members is not based on billable hours but on
taking care our member’s legal issues as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Learn more about the legal plan at legalshieldassociate.com/info/patricko
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15. WHY I WILL SUCCEED
✓ I have a 50% sign up rate now and I am continuously working to
improve my presentation
✓ I have the support and guidance of some of the top employee benefits
leaders in LegalShield
✓ I meet with a weekly mastermind group that provides ongoing
training, strategizing and support for my success
✓ I love LegalShield and the mission we have to transform our legal
system
✓ The better I get, the more money I will raise - and I want to use my
business to raise a whole lot of money!
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16. NEXT STEPS
✓ If you are interested in learning more about how we can use this
fundraising strategy for your organization, give me a call and we can
set up a time for me to meet with you and any other decision makers
who need to be involved in fundraising strategy decisions.
✓ Pat O’Connell (408) 561-0540 or pat@seedsofjustice.net
✓ Thanks for listening and I look forward to hearing from you!
Tuesday, May 7, 13