We’ve got a major opportunity within the next few days to raise money to help you reach more people through your event this year. Help-Portrait has a Groupon Grassroots Campaign running Thurs., Sept. 20 to Wed., Sept. 26. The offer is to donate $10 to help a person or family in need have a portrait made and receive three copies of the picture and a frame.

Every dollar raised goes to fund a local event where it was donated. This means money raised in San Francisco stays in San Francisco, money raised in Houston stays in Houston, etc. (This a U.S. only campaign – all are welcome to donate but funds stay in the U.S.) The “tipping point” for this campaign is $0, so you’ll get any and all money raised for your area. To help increase the impact of this powerful campaign, Help-Portrait has also partnered with Wacom, the world’s leading manufacturer of interactive pen displays, pen tablets and digital interface solutions, as a corporate matching sponsor.

Want to know who’s leading the efforts? We’ll be posting the leading cities each day so you can see who’s raising the most money for their event.

To maximize this campaign, we’re asking you to:

1. Mobilize your team.  People are more likely to support a cause when referred by someone they know. Share this post with your group and ask them to blow this thing up on social media. We want everyone to know about it. Also, ask your local event sponsor organizations to reach out to their mailing lists to further the reach of this campaign.

2. Be the first to donate. We’ve seen that we can raise money fast if we all donate first to the cause. We are encouraging all our photographers and volunteers to buy one offer to help push along the social spread of this campaign. We don’t want to just make it to the Groupon trending lists – we want make this one of the most successful Groupons ever. We want Groupon to feel the need to spread the Help-Portrait cause to all its national media sponsors and make Help-Portrait a household name.

3. Subscribe to the Groupon email (http://www.groupon.com/subscriptions/new) before the campaign launches this Thursday. When the campaign goes live you’ll see it and be able to share it directly with friends. (All Grassroots campaigns can be found at www.groupon.com/promos/grassroots as well.)

We are SO excited about this fundraising opportunity and the potential it holds for our events. But it’s going to take work.

Don’t forget – personally email your friends, contacts and influencers a quick note asking them to help spread the word. Here’s an example:

subject: need help will take 2 secs

Hey, can you help me give deserving people free portraits this December? pls tweet

tweet copy:  #helphelpportrait give pix & love to ppl in need http://hp.cta.gs/groupon pls rt

you’re the best,

margo

Let’s do this!

Jeremy Cowart & The Help-Portrait Team