BE AN ELF

Our goals are:

- Increase overall public awareness of the USPS Operation Santa program.

- Recruit volunteers new and old to adopt letters and send children gifts, and provide them with tips for effective volunteering.

- Raise funds so our volunteers can adopt additional letters and send more gifts to needy kids.

- Increase awareness among parents who are struggling financially, and may want help for the holidays. We make families in need aware of the USPS program, and offer them tips for writing letters to Santa.

- Increase our website's SEO rankings for organic searches (unpaid clicks, separate from our paid Google Ads campaign (which we get as a grant from Google).

To increase overall public awareness of the USPS Operation Santa program, our primary strategies include raising funds to make the following possible. Our strategy is to outsource a professional fundraiser as many charities do.

To achieve our goals we need to maintain and improve our large, free account at Google ads. That has become and increasingly complex task, and we now need to hire a digital ad agency specializing in non-profits. Google Ads has referred several to us. Their job will be to continually groom and maintain our $10,000 per month in-kind grant from Google for advertising, and to also provide a Social Media expert to increase our altitude every December on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

They may also have an in-house SEO expert to do a much needed Search Engine Optimization campaign. Even though we advertise the following search phrases on Google for free, our goal will be to have them come up higher in the organic, unpaid search results on all the major search engines, not just Google. Phrases for our SEO campaign will include, “volunteer at Christmas,” “children’s charities,” “Christmas charities”, "help with Christmas, "and help for the holidays."

We also wish to hire a top public relations firm, given the funding needed. Their job will be to get news coverage of the USPS program, and to mention our site as a good guide to it. Ideally they will enlist one or two of their most famous film star clients to publicly adopt a letter to Santa online. With that, we could get coverage in People, Access Hollywood, and other shows.

With or without a top publicist, however, every year Be An Elf will still send news releases to media. Past releases are on view in our Press Room at www.BeAnElf.org.

Our first press release in 2021 will be sent just after Thanksgiving and be aimed at increasing awareness not only among the public, but also among families with kids who need assistance for the holidays. We will ask media to run a story about how parents who are struggling financially might be able to get extra gifts for their children through the USPS Operation Santa program. We want them to know that Christmas volunteers may adopt their kids' letters to Santa before they (of course) continue along their way to the jolly man at the North Pole. We'll mention that if they visit BeAnElf.org's Seeking Gifts? page, they will get some great tips for writing to Santa.

Another message will go to HR Directors at companies, proposing a holiday program for employees. The Plan for Companies page at our website suggests organizing volunteer employees into teams to adopt families.

A critical strategy is raising funds to make all this happen. If we are successful, our volunteers will be able to adopt additional letters to Santa, and we'll make more kids smile on Christmas.

In December, 2020, Be An Elf raised $67,000, so we now have the capacity to hire a fundraising consultant and digital ad agency for SEO, and grooming of our Google Ads account. If funds remain, we may be able to hire a publicist this Christmas. As Executive Director of Be An Elf and an unpaid volunteer, I am capable of making good choices and will hire the best team our limited funds will permit. We have the capacity to reach all of the goals outlined here, to be sure, and we know that the more funds we raise, the more goals we will be able to attain. Above all we want to continue making low-income children smile on Christmas morning.

Be An Elf, under the leadership of its Executive Director Patrick Reynolds, has secured a $10,000 per month grant from Google for free advertising.

We have built a strong website that has improved over the years, and inspired thousands of new volunteers to adopt letters to Santa from children in need.

Our news releases have secured excellent coverage by The Today Show, Fox News, CNBC and numerous other print and broadcast outlets.

We have built a strong and vibrant organization which has resulted in thousands of smiles on little faces on Christmas morning, since our founding in 2004.