November 26, 2005
CONTACT
Karma Martell
KarmaCom Inc
718-488-7810
karma@karmacom.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Brooklyn, New York, November 28, 2005 — How does a grassroots charity that is big on agenda and small on budget stand out amongst the nonprofit giants clamoring for donations in the holiday giving season? That was the challenge given to KarmaCom Inc., www.karmacom.com, an interactive cross-media marketing public relations and communications agency.
Headquartered in Seattle, Community Voice Mail www.cvm.org, operates in 37 cities and 19 states, providing 24/7 voicemail and personal phone numbers to the homeless and people in crisis. CVM was a finalist in Amazon.com’s nonprofit Innovators Award and just won the 2005 “Outstanding Philanthropic Organization of the Year” Award from the Washington Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
Days after hurricane Katrina struck, CVM took on an expanded role: the Cisco Foundation donated technology for CVM to supply over 100,000 hurricane victims with Community Voice Mail service.
Community Voice Mail is web-savvy and had just experienced an effective PR drive-to-web campaign – we increased site visitors by over 800% during the Amazon and Katrina drives,” says Karma Martell, president of KarmaCom Inc. “Snail mail has both a long lead time and high creative cost factor, so I thought why not make a beautiful Flash E-card? Since $7 is the cost to supply one homeless person with Community Voice Mail Service for one month, it’s the perfect price point and supplies that feel-good factor for both the card recipient and sender.”
The next problem was how to produce the creative and provide the technology for ordering, serving and sending the Ecards at a price Community Voice Mail could afford.
“We turned to our big-hearted strategic partners to help,” says Martell. Jennifer Schwartz of Imagelink Productions, who serves as Interactive Creative Director for KarmaCom, designed the Flash card at cost and lightening speed, and Jaron Rubenstein of Rubenstein Technology donated his crew’s expertise for the backend technology and programming. All are members of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. Garius Hill of Musecycle in Manhattan edited and synched the music file gratis.
To read more about Community Voice Mail’s unique, waste-free holiday Ecard program see: http://tinyurl.com/8fpje.
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