Non-profit lco gets free publicity?

[Steve]

Is this something that is going to work?

Is now the time for a non-profit lawn care company? Will the fact it is nonprofit actually help it get free publicity to grow?

Lawn business, nonprofits ally (http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/01/07/news/business/50-lawn.txt) - Helping your favorite charity or nonprofit group can be as easy as having your lawn fertilized.

Community Lawn Care, a new lawn care service in the Billings area, will donate a portion of its sales to local fundraising organizations in return for marketing help.

Denise Smith, manager of Community Lawn Care, said the service is a new venture of Town and Country Supply, a farmer-owned co-op with a store in Laurel.

In return for customers who hire Community Lawn Care, the service will donate to the customer's nonprofit group 10 percent of its sales proceeds during the first year and 5 percent of sale proceeds in subsequent years for as long at the customer hires the service, Smith said.

The money will be paid monthly to the nonprofits. Any nonprofit organization can participate, Smith said. The work is guaranteed.

[dutchhook]

I like the marketing idea. If you ever get a call from "the firefighters or police associations" for donations, it's actually a private telemarketing firm calling and they actually keep 60-80% of the proceeds of what their telemarketers generate, which stinks. So, providing leads that cost 10% is certainly cheap by comparison. I would want to clarify what constitutes a lead and if the lawn service has to actually sell the service, which it should so the sale is sound and a lawn expert is answering questions.
It sounds good, I'd appreciate a follow up if someone actually does this.
If your other question involves starting a non-profit lawn care company, that is not a good idea. We had a townhome maintenance non profit here awhile ago, and he got a lot of work, and made too much money. He promised to give most of the profits back to the associationts that hired him but I don't think he gave enough. The IRS came in, revoked his non profit status and was put on probation (didn't go to jail), and lost everything, but the marketing idea still sounds good.

[Steve]

I think the idea is good if it is actually funding a non-profit group. For instance like a boys home or something like that.

Otherwise as a marketing angle I agree it's not going to get you to where you want to be. Once you start making money, you will want to keep it as we see from Steve's post above and then you run into trouble.