You're involved as you never would be with a regular business. Committed to help. Dedicated to a cause. Working harder than you've ever worked in your life.

Now you need to tell the world what you're doing and why they should care. Why they should donate, volunteer, care as much as you do.

But as you look around from your mountain top, it's all gray down there in the not-for-profit world. Like bank marketing, little looks exciting and important and, for crying out loud, world-saving (at least a little corner of it).

At the beginning of 1999 we began empowering South Florida's homeless and hard-core unemployed with their own businesses and immediate income as they work toward self-sufficiency.

We're doing it with a magazine called StreetSmarts. A magazine that provides these folks who no one wants to hire with entrepreneurial opportunity, a legitimate and dignified means of income, job training, and an authentic voice.

So we know nonprofits.

• We know how to create an identity package that says who you really are with logo, stationery and signage.
  
  
• We know how to most effectively present you to your public, your donors, your clients, your referral sources.
  
  
• How to get your project exclusive coverage from major media.
  
  
• How to gain cause-marketing partnerships with interested local, regional and national companies. Last year $1 billion was spent by corporate America helping nonprofits on the assumption that association with a good cause builds trust and loyalty with their customers in ways few other promotional activities can match.
  
  
• How to develop a coherent and strategic creative advertising campaign for various markets.
  
  
• How to build an Internet Web site, publish a newsletter, even develop an IRS-friendly 501(c)(3).

Through KCI-developed marketing communications, we can provide referrals, build positive sentiment, inform funding sources, influence public policy, and promote your nonprofit's unique contributions to the world.

We're on to something here.

Challenge: Most Americans don't want to look at the homeless. They are, to most, faceless, disgusting, lazy, why-don't-you-go-away human beings.

Big Idea: Put a face on the homeless. Show they're real people with real dreams. Demonstrate that at least some — StreetSmarts' vendors — want to work, to earn money, to become self-sufficient.

The color of a flag has nothing to do with a country's quality and spirit.

Just as the color of a person's skin has nothing to do with that individual's heart and character.

Challenge: Present antiracism in a new and powerful way.

Big Idea: Connect with the American flag icon, with its "color" changed.

Bottom Line: The ad hasn't yet run. What do you think? Let me know at frank@kaisercom.com.