the Coup

Reach More People and Cut Printing Costs

Have you published a report recently? Have you re-broadcast it with several low-cost, high-reach tools? Below are 3 tips to reduce your printing budget and reach an ever-widening audience. These tips will also help you reduce waste and become more green.

Publish Online

You might consider distributing your report online using a tool like issuu.com. It’s an attractive place to send your current readers, and a good place for new people to stumble on your excellent work.

Print Announcements Only

Printed reports can be expensive, difficult to distribute, and an environmental waste. You might reevaluate your plan. For the cost of printing 2500 twelve-page reports, you could print and distribute 10 or 15 thousand postcards announcing a report you’ve published online. You could hit conferences, universities, and mailboxes, saving postage and envelopes. Your budget would enable you to reach more people in new places than previously possible.

Make the announcement something with lasting interest, worth sticking on the fridge or above someone’s desk. Design around an attractive top 5 list or how-to guide for example.

You might also ask close friends and donors to repost your announcement on their blog or facebook. You could ask everyone you know, but you might actually get more people to do it if you personally ask key individuals.

Let Donors Print

Share the cost of printing with people who really want or need a printed report. You can use a print-on-demand service like lulu.com. Set things up so that your new donor-readers can purchase and print your documents themselves——or, you can have them submit requests to you, with the option to share as much of the cost as they choose. They’ll be excited by your new, more environmentally-friendly initiative, and better recognize the true cost of your work.

If you do a more traditional print job, ask your print shop if you can gang up on another print job to preserve paper waste and reduce costs.

Take this year’s budget crunch as an opportunity to explore new ways to reduce your printing costs and connect with new audiences.

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