This week, I’m spotlighting a worthy project that may also help you with your holiday shopping. One Reason Recordings (ORR) is dedicated to spotlighting one cause each year and raising funds for it. ORR takes submissions from artists, creates a unique album, and the profits from the album benefit a specific cause.
I was able to ask the Associate Director of Public Relations for ORR, Samantha Chong, a few questions about what they do and how they do it.
1) How does ORR go about choosing a cause each year? Does ORR just send a check or is there more involvement with the chosen cause?
I know that when we choose our causes, we also try to push the mission of the chosen cause as much as possible over the course of our campaign. For example, when we were promoting our Miracles campaign, we also stressed why we chose the Children’s Medical Center, and how what they did tied back to our theme of ‘Miracles’.
2) How does ORR go about choosing what will be featured in each year’s project? When does that process begin?
This year (for 2015), I believe our cause will be focusing on hunger and trying to solve it. We had our choices of causes and the staff voted on what we’d like to focus on this year. The process will likely begin next year, in January, when we release our new campaign video, begin
looking for campus representatives, and begin accepting submissions for the new campaign.
3) How many people are involved in the operations of ORR?
As for how many people are involved, I can’t give you a specific number off the top of my head, but it’s a lot. We not only have a board of directors like Cathy, Johnathan, me, and a host of other people, but we also have associate directors, staff like Serena, and campus representatives all over the country. ORR isn’t just based in New York. We’re in Texas, California, Pennsylvania… the list will grow longer, hopefully! Students are interested in what we do, so naturally, we’re mostly made up of students, although that’ll probably be changing once most of us graduate!
4) Congratulations on your Google Grant!! How will this help your mission?
As far as I understand it, it allocates our organization $10,000 in advertise funding a month, through Google for Nonprofits and Google AdWords. Thus far, all the work we’ve done has been volunteer-based and run by students, dedicated graduates and professionals, so to get this grant is a blessing in that we can expand our reach even further and spread the good word about music changing the world.
One Reason Recordings is currently selling the 2014 CD, t-shirts and other merchandise, all benefiting the Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.