Good morning!

It's Sat., 7:00am - heading to Taipei Airport ... Bound for HK ...

Recap on Producing Proposals That Work presentation in Taiwan ... Very honored that NTHU Secretary Wang and President Chang and other leaders, professors and students attended this session, especially on a Friday afternoon at 3:00pm. About 100 business cards with the traditional translation were clipped to invitations urging attendees to visit Campaign Consultation in Baltimore and seemed to be appreciated.

The presentation generated good follow-up discussion about a NTHU alumni mailing producing less than stellar response to gymnasium campaign. We did some idea sharing about ...

Segmenting donor/alumni base into giving levels

Establishing giving level volunteer teams
to Identify and solicit likely prospects

Tailoring and implementing appropriate approach methodologies

We continued a more specific discussion at dinner that night where I learned about NTHU's muti-million corporate partnering. This company funded a building for students' knowledge-expansion and also shares the space for some teaching/research purposes. NTHU is wonderfully positioned in the heart of a "Silicon Valley" location to attract the imagination of many such successful entrepreneurs.

Conversation turned to their next campaign for a state-of-the-art Gymnasium. Here's a smattering of what we discussed:

Get started -- some fundraising techniques may not produce desired results, but one has to begin somewhere!

Seek advice and thereby "buy-in" from past major gift supporters to provide their ideas and assistance for design and development undertakings in program, capital and philanthropic initiatives

Link respected celebrities to a major campaign who have a vested interest

Develop a Campaign brand for use on stationery, signage, note pads, etc.

Develop a gift range chart to compartmentalize a fundraising campaign into discreet categories which makes any undertaking more digestible

Speaking of digestion, every bite from this delectable dinner of at least 2 dozen dishes was delectable. I only wished I was Orson Welles so I could keep eating. Ha!

Next - Hong Kong!

Linda Brown Rivelis, CFRE
President
CAMPAIGN CONSULTATION, Inc.

National Tsing Hua University presentation

National Tsing Hua University presentation, originally uploaded by LBRivelis.

Fuzzy but true photo of Linda with NTHU Leadership talking fundraising over dinner.

Linda Brown Rivelis, CFRE
President
CAMPAIGN CONSULTATION, Inc.

Taiwan Bound ...

Taiwan Bound ..., originally uploaded by LBRivelis.

Linda sneak peak ...

What a wild strange trip it's been ...

It feels a long time ago since our staff holiday gathering of good cheer, gratitude and the sharing of blessings through our annual Give 5 initiative. We did a good job in four hours making the case for giving away 5% of pre-tax earnings from Campaign Consultation and Eye Byte Solutions to charitable social causes.

For the first time, one of our favorite vendors added his support to Give 5 by adding in-kind product support. Way cool.

Back to China bound, it's been a long strange trip since finding out my flight reservations were incorrectly tagged. . But by the chin of my chinny, chin-chin, I was squeezed on the same flight a day later.

I'll be landing in Hong Kong and Tapei 24 hours later than expected which means I have 2 hours after landing to give my presentation on Producing Proposals That Work at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan.

Then, in another strange twist, we will really be cutting it close due also to volcano activity in Russia which has interrupted fuel production -- which demands a refuel stop before proceeding to Hong Kong.

At some point, you take a peek around and if there's nothing to be done ... Get some shut-eye. Catch ya later on this wild, wonderful experiment in cultural communication. LBR

Linda Brown Rivelis, CFRE
President
CAMPAIGN CONSULTATION, Inc.