Keeping an eye out for opportunity

[Michael Pollock]

You never know where the opportunity will come from. I had been
turned down for some funding by a prominent corporation whose current
focus is teen homelessness. A worthy cause.
This week I randomly met a young filmmaker who is making a documentary
film - it turns out that a big piece of it revolves around the young
protagonist pulling her life together after years on the street. He
still needs a whole bunch of money to finish this film. I passed the
link on to the aforementioned corp, and within an hour the Chief
Marketing Officer asked me to connect him with the filmmaker and said
it looked "very promising".
So there it is. If you pay attention and keep talking to people and
tell your story clearly and understand what other people are looking
for - there are valuable connections to be made.
I was pleased with this - so I am sharing!

[Jose...@gmail.com]

Nice story.
In the same spirit, I would like to share one of my own.
When we started the Good News Project, we needed some seed money.
About $10,000. I had been having a conversation with the Bus Dev
person at You Send it for a while.
I sent an email. Asked for 10K, told him why I wanted it, sketched
out the benefits.
Within 30 minutes I got the committment.

An entrepreneur friend gave me some very valuable advice about
presentations.
Your main job is to find the person in the room who "gets it." You
never know who it's going to be.
But don't focus on the job title, look for the twinkle in the eye.
After the meeting, start a conversation with that person.
Don't pitch, just listen very carefully to figure out what he or she
wants to do.
Go back and think about how your project will help get it done.
Then wait for the right moment, and respond as fast as you can.

In my experience it's pretty much how it works.
The problem is you can't control it, or plan for it, so you have to go
on faith.

On Apr 17, 5:20 pm, Michael Pollock <eloque...@cyranoproject.org>
wrote:

[Laurie]

Yes, it's a matter of luck favoring the prepared mind. A fundraiser
friend was working for a youth orchestra. She had been cultivating a
rich person whose interest was in hospitals and had no interest in
music. Suddenly my friend had a brainstorm - have the orchestra play
for patients at the hospital. She got the money.