How to Partner With a Charity to Market Your Children’s Book

One of the best things you can do as a children’s book author is to give a small portion of your profits to a charity of your choice. Not only are you raising money for a good cause, but any marketing you do will help both your book and the charity. More people will want to buy your book knowing that some of the proceeds go to a good cause, and, with every book sold, you are also helping the charity by giving it free marketing.

What Charity Should I Choose?

Ideally, choose a charity you are passionate about- perhaps a cause that you don’t think most people are aware of. The charity could support anything from researching a serious medical problem like cancer or diabetes to fighting a social problem like child hunger or helping military families in need.

However, make sure to do your research first. In recent years, many major charitable organizations have been found to be rife with corruption-some have raised 10s of millions of dollars with only a few hundred thousand of that actually going to charity. See if you can find statistics about how much a charity has actually given to its intended cause before you donate. Keep in mind that running a charity is expensive and people still need salaries-but in almost no case should a charity be spending more than half its revenue on salaries, marketing, and administrative costs.

Usually, the best charities for self-publishing children’s book authors:

Are local- so you can visit them in person
Have an established track record and reputation
Involve kids!

Partnering with A Charity

If all you do is donate to the charity and mention it in some of your social media promotions and on your website, you’ll still be helping a great cause and potentially increasing your book sales. However, if you really want to help the charity as well as effectively promote your book, you may want to contact the charity and see if you can collaborate on some type of marketing plan together. Of course, the charity may or may not be interested, but if you choose a smaller, local charity and you are already selling a decent amount of books, the chance of gaining a personal partnership is more likely.

Charity and Your Overall Strategy

After finding a charity to donate to or partner with, you can use that relationship to expand yourself as an author and further help the charity. Perhaps you can write a short children’s book specifically about the cause that the charity is promoting and have an higher percentage-or even all the profits go to the charity. You may want to go in person to support the charity -and, especially if the charity involves children, do book readings for the children.
You may want to ask the charity about filming the book readings and making a series of videos to promote both your book and the charity. Video content is essential to an integrated marketing campaign, and can be posted on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and a variety of other social media platforms.

The charity you support can also be the subject of articles, stories, or poems that you can write and post on social media. You may want to discuss the importance of donating or volunteering for the charity, how you got involved with the charity, how the charity has inspired you, and how you plan to help the charity in the future.

Another way to promote the charity is to organize events or collection efforts such as book drives, food drives, or clothing drives, depending on what’s appropriate for the charity. You can also promote yourself by giving away copies of your book to kids in need and kids of the people who donated things to help the cause.

In Conclusion…

When partnering or donating to a charity, it’s important to be tasteful and sensitive; your main effort should be to help the charity- promoting your book should come second. It may be a good idea to volunteer with a charity for a while before asking to partner with them. If you do this, leaders of the charity will already know and trust you, and will understand that you have the charity’s best interests at heart. If you do it correctly, partnering with a charity can be a great way to support an important cause, and simultaneously gain exposure for your book and the charity of your choice.

If you want more advice about children’s book publishing, or you think you may need an illustrator for your children’s book, don’t hesitate to contact me!