Friday, March 11, 2011

Making Money Program

On Monday evening, I watched my 1st, The Previous Phrase host Lawrence O’Donnell.
Even when O’Donnell laudably tried to emphasis the audience’s focus onand hopefully very last, Charlie Sheen trainwreck interview, courtesy of the tragic undertow that threatens to pull Sheen underneath for high-quality, I used to be overtaken, not through the pulling around the thread, as well as voracious audience he serves. It did not make me unfortunate, it made me angry.

Concerning celebrities, we could be a heartless nation, basking within their misfortunes like nude sunbathers at Schadenfreude Seaside. The impulse is understandable, to some degree. It may possibly be grating to pay attention to complaints from persons who like privileges that most of us can not even consider. If you ever can not muster up some compassion for Charlie Sheen, who helps make a great deal more revenue for any day’s operate than the majority of us will make inside a decade’s time, I guess I can’t blame you.



With the fast pace of events on the web and also the information revolution sparked by the World wide web, it is rather simple and easy for that solutions trade to believe that it’s one of a kind: continually breaking new ground and performing facts that no person has actually carried out ahead of.

But you'll find other kinds of company that have currently undergone a number of the exact same radical shifts, and also have just as good a stake within the potential.

Consider healthcare, as an illustration.

We normally imagine of it as being a immense, lumbering beast, but in reality, medicine has undergone a series of revolutions while in the previous 200 many years which have been not less than equal to these we see in know-how and details.

Less understandable, but nevertheless inside of the norms of human nature, could be the impulse to rubberneck, to slow down and look into the carnage of Charlie spectacle of Sheen’s unraveling, but on the blithe interviewer Sheen’s existence as we pass it with the right lane of our everyday lives. To be sincere, it may be tough for people to discern the variation in between a run-of-the-mill awareness whore, and an honest-to-goodness, circling the drain tragedy-to-be. On its personal merits, a quote like “I Am On the Drug. It’s Named Charlie Sheen” is sheer genius, and we cannot all be expected to take the complete measure of someone’s daily life each time we hear a thing amusing.

Fast forward to 2011 and I am attempting to look into indicates of being a bit more business-like about my hobbies (generally music). By the stop of January I had manned up and began to advertise my blogs. I had put together various unique blogs, which had been contributed to by close friends and colleagues. I promoted these activities by Facebook and Twitter.


2nd: the minor abomination the Gang of Five on the Supream Court gave us a yr or so in the past (Citizens Inebriated) truly features a bit bouncing betty of its personal that could very perfectly go off within the faces of Govs Wanker, Sacitch, Krysty, and J.O. Daniels. Considering this ruling prolonged the principle of “personhood” to the two companies and unions, to test to deny them any most suitable to run within the legal framework that they had been organized beneath deprives these “persons” for the freedoms of speech, association and movement. Which suggests (as soon as again, quoting law college skilled household) that either the courts need to uphold these rights for that unions (as person “persons” as assured through the Federal (and most state) constitutions, or they've to declare that these attempts at stripping or limiting union rights really need to utilize to key businesses, also.

Looking to fix the state budget
mess? Medicaid is a good place to start. Enrollment in the joint
federal-state program, which is designed to serve low-income
individuals, is way up, and as a result, so are
expenses. Even Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius has noted that states across the country are
facing
“extraordinary budget challenges” and has implicitly
acknowledged the big budget crunch that has implications for
Medicaid. But the suggestions offered so far by Sebelius about how
to increase efficiency don’t
amount to much. According to
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, they’re effectively
“meaningless.”


As I wrote
last week, one of the biggest hurdles to reform right now is
that states don’t have the flexibility to make changes they might
want to make—like, for example,
this proposal to shift millions of Texas Medicaid recipients
into private insurance. The Dallas Morning News
reports:



Texas should shift many of its 3.3 million Medicaid recipients
into private health insurance to avert a fiscal meltdown, a
conservative group is urging.


Medicaid recipients who are not disabled should be given
subsidies to buy private plans, and the state should ask to be
freed from federal rules setting minimum coverage levels, the Texas
Public Policy Foundation says in a report scheduled for release
Tuesday.


The arrangement would let people in the state-federal program
“make their own decisions,” and all but the most abject of the poor
should be forced to use some of their own money so they become more
aware of health care’s cost, the foundation urged.


“We would make shoppers out of our Medicaid recipients so they
are making value decisions,” the foundation’s executive director,
former Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth, said in an interview.


...“We’re going to allow the marketplace to work,” Wohlgemuth
said. To avoid “frightening” some 820,000 elderly and disabled
people now on the program, she said, the plan would keep current
benefits and eligibility. But it would slash how much future
applicants seeking long-term care could make in income by nearly 40
percent and clamp down on their ability to keep what can be quite
valuable homes. And that program also would shift eventually to a
market-oriented look, Wohlgemuth said.



But as the article notes, it’s not clear that the Obama
administration would approve an overhaul of this sort. Certainly,
the administration has
failed—despite repeated requests—to approve Gov. Daniels’
request to use his state’s Healthy Indiana Program, a Medicaid
waiver program that expands coverage through high-deductible plans,
as the vehicle for Indiana’s Medicaid expansion as expected under
last year’s health care overhaul.


It’s true that last week the Department of Health and Human
Services told officials in Arizona that the state could drop about
250,000 individuals from its Medicaid rolls. But as
an article in The Hill pointed out this morning, that
was a special circumstance.



The Arizona case is unique, however, and it's not clear if other
states will be able to replicate it. For one thing, it operates its
Medicaid program under a temporary waiver that expires before 2014,
and it's not clear how many other states are in the same boat; in
addition, states must meet federal minimum levels regardless of
waivers.



So HHS didn’t actually issue Arizona a waiver to reduce
enrollment. Instead, HHS simply said that, under the existing
rules, they couldn’t do anything to prevent Arizona from shrinking
its program. For all the states that do need waivers in order to
make their programs work, this is hardly a promising sign—which may
help explain why legislators in Florida are now
threatening to pull the state out of the program entirely. I
wouldn’t necessarily bet that Florida follows through on the
threat. Texas made similar noises about dropping out last year and
has since backed off somewhat. But it’s still notable that it’s
being talked about as a viable option at all.

Not long ago, I saw a news item on ESPN that really drives home the perils of alumni development in college sports.


The top donor for the University of Connecticut’s football program is apparently displeased with the hiring of their new football coach and wants their $3M donation back.


The rich individual previously decided to “donate” a large sum of money to this program, and because of that, he feels he has the right to influence what decisions the program makes. Look at these quotes from the donor:



  • Burton called the situation “a slap in the face and embarrassment to my family,” and said he planned “to let the correct people know that you did not listen to your number one football donor.”



  • “We want our money and respect back.”



  • Although he was not seeking veto power in the hiring, he “earned my voice on this subject” as the program’s top donor.



  • “You are not qualified to be a Division I AD and I would have fired you a long time ago. You do not have the skills to manage and cultivate new donors.”


This person does not work for the university or the athletic program in any capacity, yet because he wrote the biggest check, he feels that he has the power to impact school decisions. In this case, he’s angry that his opinion was ignored, but I’m sure that other schools in similar situations would actually let the donor’s opinion impact their decision. The scary thing is that I don’t know which is worse.


My first experience working in sports was with a college athletics department, working under the Assistant Athletic Director for Marketing and Revenue Generation. I was very fortunate that this school had a progressive marketing department where I was able to manage a CRM system, oversee digital and email marketing efforts, and dive in to some very interesting analytical projects and decision making. To this day, I am very thankful for that experience.


However, once I had finished up my year-long fellowship, I decided that college athletics wasn’t for me, and that was for one primary reason – development (the arm of the athletic department that handles alumni donations). I had the feeling that to really succeed within a major Division I athletic program, you needed to be involved in getting those rich alumni to donate more and more money. Budgets were always tight, and getting that donor money directly into the hands of the athletics program was crucial. This aspect of the job did not appeal to me, so I focused my efforts on professional sports opportunities.


This situation doesn’t exist with professional sports teams, If a company is paying that type of money, it’s for something very specific (suites, sponsorships, media, etc.) and that purchase does not include the ability to influence team operational decisions. In this particular case, the donor ended up ultimately retracting his statements, but the threat for the school was very real.


This will always be a unique aspect of college athletics, and I know that a lot of people in alumni development enjoy the challenge. It is a complicated blend of marketing, customer service, public relations and fundraising. But when I see a story like this, it reminds me about why I decided college athletics wasn’t the right spot for me.




Source: http://removeripoffreports.net/ online reputation management

The ultimate in repairing a bruised reputation for business

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