Hi everyone!  This time of year, there is a lot of thanks and giving circulating and I wanted to share with you about my experience in giving back to my community, specifically the high school senior community.  A few years ago, it was put on my heart to give back to my community in a tangible way yet I found it challenging since I specifically wanted to give back to high school seniors.  I knew I wanted to offer up my talent but continuously hit a “wall” when it came to how I would give back and what it would look like.  After a lot of brainstorming (and news reports that seemed to only highlight the “bad” going on), I came up with the “Giving Senior Give-Away”.

The “Giving Senior Give-Away” honors a high school senior that is spreading good deeds within her community.  Because I didn’t want a bunch of names just “dropped in the hat” to select a winner, I decided that this give-away needed to be an essay-based nomination system.  People (or seniors themselves) can nominate a senior that they feel is doing amazing things by submitting a short essay that is 1-2 paragraphs long.  This essay highlights how amazing a senior is through their accomplishments of generosity.  It’s truly heart-warming to learn more about what our young people are doing throughout our community.

My first winner, Kristen, was not only working hard within her school and local community, but she had even traveled abroad for a mission trip to work with impoverished children.  I was thrilled to select Kristen as the winner and one of my favorite parts of the whole give-away process is calling up the winner to tell them that they won a free senior session with digital images!  The give-away was a success in my book for everyone involved and I knew that this was something I wanted to continue doing in the future.

Tips for a successful give-away:

–Plan ahead!  Make sure you have given yourself ample time to think about the details of the give-away from how you want people to enter to when you want to start marketing it.

–Have a deadline!  Let people know when the give-away will end so there is no confusion.

–Rules for entering!  People need to know who can qualify for nominations, what the winner will get, how the winner will be selected, etc.

–Make it easy!  While an essay-based nomination system may not be right for you, just make that it’s easy to enter your give-away.  This year, I have opted for an embedded Jotform on my site so people don’t have to send a separate email with their essay.

–Share, share, share!  Spread the word everywhere about your give-away!  I even have my senior models, current/past clients, and friends spread the word.

–Make it a big deal!  I make this give-away a HUGE deal (because it is to me!) and I post the essay that was entered about the winning senior, I share the senior’s pictures and what she had to say about winning and I absolutely LOVE making the winner a poster child for the next year’s give-away!

To read more about what Kristen had to say about winning the session (and to read the essay that was sent in to nominate her), click HERE.

Amii Wroblewski is a senior photographer in Dallas, Texas.  In addition to offering mentor sessions for photographers, she is also a speaker at The Seniologie Tour.  Amii loves to help other photographers with their business!  Check out Amii’s site here.