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Everybody needs business development help at one time or another and certainly charities are no different. I used to think that business development was really an “enterprise” thing because that’s where my roots are from. But, driving business and creating awareness really is an “everything” thing.

I was extremely touched yesterday when I visited a very special house in San Leandro, CA. The house is really not a house, but a haven, a sanctuary where angels go to heaven. The George Mark Children’s House is the only place of its kind in the United States. Its mission is to provide comprehensive and compassionate medical care and services to families of and children with life-threatening illnesses. The house provides respite and “end-of-life” care for children who essentially are preparing to die.

George Mark Children’s House serves more than 200 families per year from around the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California. However, they’ve also accepted children outside of California, as well. There are no eligibility standards, as they welcome families of all race, religion, and national origin … truly a “one of a kind” facility.

How does business development work in this particular circumstance? The recession has hit everyone hard. George Mark depended on charitable donations from several large donors. These donors have significantly cut back over the last year or two, significantly impacting the facility’s budget. That said, all of the employees from the cooking staff to the nurses to the administration have voluntarily cut back their wages AND worked more hours so that the quality of service would not be impacted.

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Then, the community outreach team went into motion. An all-out awareness campaign was launched to garner support and donations. Local press, radio stations and TV channels have started to run campaigns for their cause. A local sports team has donated equipment and money to the house. And, a number of celebrities have agreed to run their own campaigns to drive even more awareness and support. The resident computer support / chef / “do it all” person created a Facebook account to encourage individual donors.

But, more is needed if the facility is going to stay open. It’s a grass roots business development effort to drive awareness broadly across the nation. And, how best to make that happen than through the velocity of the Internet? The small local team within George Mark can only do so much with local coverage. More charitable donations, cause-awareness campaigns and support from a broad-reaching group will need to rise to the occasion.

There is nothing more precious in life than the life of a child. If we can all make a child’s life a little better while he or she is on this planet, we will all have made a difference that transcends any “business” business development.

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Business development in this new era of Internet and mobile marketing has changed dramatically since the 90s and even early 2000s. In those really “old” days, companies looking to expand built Alliance divisions and signed distribution agreements with 3rd party partners. These 3rd party partners provided much needed support to the host companies in a variety of ways: geographic reach, consulting services, technical support, and distribution logistics.

The 3rd party services provided a lot of value to the host companies. They allowed the host companies to reduce their costs, while increasing their sales, marketing and business development capacity.

However, back in “the day”, in order to have a successful partner program, the host company needed to spend a lot of time on “set up”. Business development involved a lot of “heavy lifting” in the form of recruitment, training, sales tools, technical support and oftentimes co-selling!

My experience in early day business development came from high tech software and hardware companies. The products that we sold were physical products of software applications, servers, peripherals and other related products.

Fast forward to the digital economy … the value chain of manufacturing, distribution, sales, marketing, support and training has been significantly compressed or dis-intermediated. The Internet, broadband speeds and global sourcing, among other things, have created huge opportunities for business development in practically every industry imaginable.

For example, let’s examine the high tech software industry. In the 90s software was an “on premise” solution. This means that people paid LOTs of money to install a company’s software on their premise, i.e. at their office. The whole company was involved from the sales organization to the consulting group to the support team, etc. Sometimes, a partner was involved to augment the services of the host company.

Today, that same software application is not an on premise solution but now managed at some other facility. The host company’s sales person may have sold you the solution or perhaps a partner telemarketer out of India or the Philippines. And, the support could be coming from yet another third party organization.

Business development then logically evolves into a different kind of animal. Instead of building a huge organization to drive new products and services, companies can source and diversify their team across geography, industry and even niches.

New terms have also evolved to describe the actions and responsibilities of the new online business development frontier. For example, what was once known as a reseller in the offline market is now called an “affiliate”. When an affiliate advertises your product online, it’s often called PPC or Pay per Click campaign. In the old days, it was simply called advertising.

Whatever terms you want to use, the online business development model is the digital wave of TODAY and it is accelerating across all industries. If you’re stuck in web 1.0 and static web pages, be prepared to be “leap-frogged” by the new nimble, fleet-footed Online Marketers.

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