Fundraising Event - Soda Springs Library on Oct 12 at 7 p.m.

I'm giving a 30-minute presentation at the local library in Soda Springs, Idaho, on Tuesday October 12 at 7 p.m.  I'll talk briefly about Lesotho geography, history, and culture, then talk about the Laptops to Lesotho project. The presentation is open to the public and is free of charge, though donations will be accepted.

A writer for the Caribou County Sun newspaper, Ellen Carney, has offered to write a story for the paper about Laptops to Lesotho and include a notice about the presentation.  The library has copies of our brochure to hand out, and I'll be making flyers to post at the library and businesses around town.

- Janissa

Contest: Write a Google Ad for Laptops to Lesotho

Here's the challenge: Write the best ever Goggle ad for Laptops to Lesotho, something that will make people want to click on the ad and see what we're all about.

Here's the catch: Google has very tight space restrictions, with a limited number of characters per line, including spaces and punctuation.
Title: 25 characters
Text Line 1: 35 characters
Text Line 2: 35 characters

Here's my feeble attempt:
Help African Children
Give hope to Lesotho children thru
better educational opportunities
This ad has gotten people to click on it 28 times out of 15,269 views. Can you do better?

Are you up for a challenge? Sharpen your pencils and give it your best shot. Submit entries as Comments to this message, and if they are approved, we'll post them on Google. The winner will be the one who gets the best percentage of clicks per view.

Google gave us $100 of free advertising!

Google has given us $100 worth of free advertising. What this means is that anytime someone does a search on Google using keywords that relate to our project, a link to our homepage will appear on the side under "Sponsored Links." The only time money is deducted from our $100 account balance is if someone actually clicks on the link.

The first ad I wrote read:
Help African Children
Bring hope to Lesotho children thru
better educational opportunities
evansville.edu/sb155

Now it reads:
Help Lesotho's Children
Donate to improve their education &
open their world with kid's laptops
evansville.edu/sb155

I'm still not happy with the wording. Unfortunately, there's a very tight word limit for each of the four lines, and the URL that is displayed has to be the same as the actual URL, i.e. I couldn't use "Laptops to Lesotho" for the last line.

In the first hour after I posted the first ad, over 4000 people saw it and 20 actually clicked on our homepage link. Once enough people click on the ad to reach our daily budget limit, the ad stops displaying until the next day. I put a limit of $2.00/day on the ad, about 20 clicks, so we don't blow through the $100 before I figure out how to best attract actual donations with the right keywords and ad text.

Go to Google.com and type in "Lesotho charity" or "laptops to lesotho" and you might see our link. (Don't click on it though ... it just takes you to our homepage.)

- Janissa

Tagline: Opening doors to hope with keys to the world

We've now got a tagline to use in all our communications:

"Opening doors to hope with keys to the world."

This brief slogan defines our mission with a catchy, and hopefully memorable, play on words ... "keys" referring to computer keys, "keys to the world" referring to the internet, keys "opening doors" refers to providing opportunities that lead to "hope."

-- Janissa

Getting the word out - Facebook, Twitter

I've now got a Facebook page for Laptops to Lesotho. It's also been added to the Facebook Causes, though I still need to register it as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with the IRS before we can start accepting donations on Facebook. And, I've got a Twitter account for Laptops to Lesotho, aka Laptops2Lesotho. So, the advertising infrastructure is set up, but we'll hold off generating some buzz 'til we're officially a nonprofit.

Join our cause at:   Facebook Cause -- Laptops to Lesotho
Follow our Tweets, go to:  Twitter -- Laptops2Lesotho and click Follow.