Marketing Sustainability
Marketing sustainability at Taliesin West celebrates Frank Lloyd Wright’s legacy for sustainable architectural design. In addition, the campaign raises funding to support preservation of Taliesin West, Mr. Wrights early 20th Century school of architecture and laboratory.
The Challenge
Marketing sustainability at Taliesin West faced two daunting challenges:
- First, there was a need to create a fundraising program that would generate a minimum of $100,000 in year-after-year annual revenue.
- Second, this nonprofit marketing program had to celebrate and advance Mr. Wright’s legacy of sustainable architecture.
Frank Lloyd Wright and his Apprentices
Research
As a first step to increasing fundraising capacity, I researched the potential to expand the existing donor base. Unfortunately, research findings indicated that doing that was not a viable option.
Next, I researched grant opportunities and, once again, found that seeking new grants to support the envisioned program was not a viable option.
Finally, it became evident that achieving our goals would require creating a variety of nonprofit marketing marriages. Only by initiating cause marketing relationships with sustainable industry leaders would we be able to 1) increase awareness of Mr. Wight’s unrelenting quest to create ever more sustainable building designs, and 2) secure donations of state-of-art sustainable energy products that would reduce the Taliesin West grid energy bill substantially.
Strategy
Working as a team with Foundation staff and board members, I created nonprofit marketing marriages with First Solar, Osram-Sylvania and Studio Lux.
The program concept provided these state-of-art sustainable energy product manufacturers with an opportunity to install, demonstrate and promote their products at Frank Lloyd Wright’s historic laboratory.
We set goals for marketing sustainability at Taliesin West that included 1) Seeking donations of sustainable energy products valued at $2.0 million, and 2) Utilizing the installed energy products to reduce Taliesin West’s then almost $200,000 annual energy bill by at least 50% (thus producing $100,000 in gained annual revenue).
Additional goals included generating a continuum of stories that advanced Mr. Wright’s legacy for energy efficient architectural design, and promoting tours of Taliesin West’s sustainability endeavors and our marketing partner’s sustainable energy products.
The First Solar Contribution
We partnered with First Solar, Osram Sylvania and lighting designers at Studio Lux to create the Energizing Taliesin West℠ cause marketing program.
First Solar’s contribution included the donation and extremely challenging installation of 4,000 solar panels.
This First Solar donation did, in fact, produce $100,000 in gained annual revenue during its first year of operation.
Results
Revenue generated by the Energizing Taliesin West nonprofit marketing marriages may approximate $4.2 million. The initial contributions included donations of $1.4 million in solar energy products and installation services, $400,000 in LED lighting products, $200,000 in lighting design services and more than $200,000 in program development and program management consulting services donated by yours truly.
Additional revenue will result from annual energy cost savings approaching $100,000 over the approximate 25 year life of the solar energy and LED lighting system.
The Rest of The Story
I created this PowerPoint presentation to share the program opportunity with potential marketing marriage prospects. Click on the image (at right) to view the full presentation.
And, this is an article that I wrote for the Journal of the Taliesin Fellows, published by the alumni of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.
This article shares the story about how the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation is marketing sustainability at Mr. Wright’s living laboratory.
And last, but certainly not least, marketing marriages with First Solar and Osram-Syvania made marketing sustainability at Taliesin West a powerful celebration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s legacy.
Read more about nonprofit + for-profit marketing marriages.
