Top 5-Bottom 5 Cause-Related Marketing Campaigns

It Was a Pretty Good Year

Since my first posting on October 17, I have reviewed about 20 cause-related marketing campaigns or promotions. As it turns out about third have come in for criticism and third for praise and I’ve been neutral on the final third.

For this last post of 2006, I review the five best and the five worst cause-related marketing campaigns. To be fair, I haven’t directly reviewed the Red Campaign, which seems to have sucked from the atmosphere all the cause-related marketing oxygen.

A few more I just haven’t gotten to yet; for instance, Circuit City’s Firedog service, for instance, as well as an interesting campaign from the electrical utility Rocky Mountain Power. Montblanc did a campaign with opera starlet Katherine Jenkins that was so like the one they did with Nicolas Cage that I choose not to address it. And there are some others.

In other words, it’s not an exhaustive list.

Nonetheless here is top-down and bottom-up the best and the worst cause-related marketing campaigns I’ve reviewed in 2006.

BEST
1. Circuit City and Boys and Girls Clubs of America. I must have seen 10 ads promoting Circuit City’s campaign for Boys and Girls Club featuring a duet CD with R&B artist and rapper Mary J. Blige. Some are bigger or more prominent than others, but the electronics retailer hasn’t missed a chance to promote the album or to describe the cause in their advertising. It doesn’t hurt that on Dec. 7, midway through the promotion, Blige was nominated for eight Grammy Awards.

2. Home Depot and USO. My last post featured a review of Home Depot’s canny campaign to induce people to redeem the gift cards received at Christmas before Jan. 28, 2007. When they do, 5 percent (up to $1 million) goes to help build USO centers in the United States and abroad. Most people think of gift cards as found money, and spend more than the value of the card. What a clever promotion to boost retail sales during the typically down first quarter.

3. CO-OP Financial Services and Children’s Miracle Network. CO-OP Financial Services, which is owned by many of the nation’s credit unions, is running a campaign for Children’s Miracle Network. Use their fee-free ATMs and a donation of ½-cent is made to CMN for each completed transaction, up to $180,000. The donation amount is probably too small, but what I found praiseworthy was the degree to which they integrated the campaign’s marketing, which included direct mail and ATM wraps. The ATM wraps are just a test, but here’s hoping that CO-OP rolls out these visually-powerful ‘billboards’ to all their 25,000 ATMs.

4. American Century Investments and LiveSTRONG. When I worked at Children’s Miracle Network we had a board member who was closely connected to Merrill Lynch. I racked my brains trying to figure out a cause-related marketing campaign that would work with high-dollar investments, but never came up with anything. American Century Investments and the anti-cancer charity LiveSTRONG, founded by 7-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, have figured it out. Although their campaign is too short on details, I’m insanely jealous.

5. Proctor & Gamble and UNICEF. Proctor & Gamble’s Halloween-themed FSI for UNICEF earns praise for its consistency and for its note-perfect messaging. Along with its charity partners, Proctor & Gamble conducts packaged goods cause-related marketing better than anyone else I can name.

WORST
5. Montblanc-Nicolas Cage and Heal the Boy. I singled out Montblanc’s campaign with Nicolas Cage for derision for its lack of transparency. Although one of my crack readers found mention of ‘Heal the Boy,’ I could not. That it took even a little effort to find them suggests that ‘Heal the Boy’ isn’t quite ready for its close-up.

4. Austin Mini and Meals on Wheels. I liked this cute ad by San Francisco Bay-area agency Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners that appeared in magazines like Fast Company. What I didn’t like is that it seemed like a clever ad rather than a meaningful campaign. A search of the websites of both Mini’s and Meals on Wheels didn’t turn up anything to suggest otherwise.

3. JC Penney and JC Penney Afterschool Fund. My problem with this plush toy promotion was that because the Afterschool Fund is named for the company, JC Penney gets the benefits while consumers pay for it. But I argue that JC Penney is too clever by half. Consumers see through it, the cause underperforms, and JC Penney’s halo is tarnished.

2. Linen’s ‘n Things and Various Cancer Causes. I needed a scorecard to sort out all the offers, causes and products in this ad that was just too small and vague. I encourage every company to try cause-related marketing, but for crying out loud, be serious about it!

1. Hamilton Collections and Unnamed Breast Cancer Charity. Hamilton Collection makes collectable tchotchkes like the featured shoe called ‘Hope.’ But this promotion is missing who the benefiting charity is and how much donation is generated when the shoe is purchased. Twenty years ago they could have gotten away with these shortcomings, but not today.

Home Depot Gift Card Promotion for the USO

Soldiering Through the First Quarter Blues

It’s the day after Christmas in the States and the malls and stores are full again, this time with people returning gifts, but also people spending the gift cards they got yesterday.

Gift cards, or stored value cards, are a growing Christmas gift trend in North America. Before the holiday, the National Retail Foundation projected gift card sales would balloon to $24.81 billion in 2006, a $6 billion increase over 2005’s $18.48 billion.

Consumers like gift cards because they maximize their choices. Retailers love them because “Unused Gift Cards Give Retailers $8 Billion Boon,” to quote a recent headline from the E-Commerce Times. That is, one-third of the value on those gift cards is never redeemed and falls to the retailers' bottom line. Nice, eh?

So it’s something of a curiosity that Home Depot ran this cause-related marketing ad in a flyer that came with the local newspaper on Saturday, December 24.

Here’s the offer. Use a Home Depot gift card between now and January 28, 2007, “and we’ll donate 5% of the gift card value (up to $1 million) to help build and maintain USO centers. These centers are vital to maintaining the morale of our service men and women stationed so far from home.”

[I assume they mean that they'll donate up to a total of $1 million to USO, not that if someone had a $1 million gift card Home Depot would donate 5%.]

The USO is a private nonprofit organization that builds and operates more than 130 centers in the United States and abroad meant to build the morale of the 2.6 million men and women in the armed forces.

With only a few exceptions, cause-related marketing is a strategy meant to induce people to do something, usually buy something. But in this case, the sale is already taken place. So why is Home Depot trying to induce people to spend their card?

I honestly don’t know the answer. The story in the E-Commerce Times suggests that the gift cards represent great potential for an upsale because they feel like 'found money' to consumers. That is, if someone has a $200 card, but the item(s) they want total(s) $250, the consumer feels like they're only spending $50.

Given that first quarter sales in U.S. retail are typically the worst of the year, a cause-related marketing promotion makes a lot of sense right now.

I expect that the E-Commerce Times has Home Depot's motivations nailed. But if someone has a better answer, please share it with us all.

Your Charity Should Be So Lucky

Recently both the Chicago Tribune and the Chronicle of Philanthropy (registration required for both) have published stories critical of cause-related marketing.

The Tribune article, by Blythe Bernhard (free here), came at the end of October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the States. She mentions products that carry a breast cancer cause-theme: KitchenAid, tweezers, Serta mattresses, Quilted Northern toilet tissue (illustration is from October 2005), and others. And, she makes it clear that these promotions can be effective at moving product off the shelves.

But she also derides a promotion by 3M in 2004. The company spent $500,000 putting up a 7-story pink ribbon, made of Post-It notes, in New York City's Times Square. 3M also made a $300,000 donation to a breast cancer charity. The implication is that all $800,000 should have all gone to a worthy charity rather than frittering away 5/8ths of it on a cheap publicity stunt.

If it was my charity I'd want all $800,000. But I'd be darn happy with $300,000 and a publicity stunt that's worth at least two or three times what 3M paid for it.

Your charity should be so lucky to have a sponsor willing to give money as well as invest so heavily in publicity or advertising.

Bernhard also quotes Samantha King, author of "Pink Ribbons Inc: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy" and an associate professor of women's studies at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, as saying, "As long as people think that by buying something they can help solve the breast cancer problem, they're being misled," she says. "If we could shop into a cure for breast cancer, it would be cured already."

Before I go on, I should declare my bona fides on the topic of cancer. My father died of cancer. My mother narrowly survived breast cancer. An older sister just finished chemo. Another sister survived kidney cancer. My mother's father and one of her sisters both died of leukemia. My mother-in-law is in the seventh year of a fight against cervical cancer.

When my dad was diagnosed, we were all but ashamed to say the word 'cancer' in polite company. There was a stigma attached to it. And, it was all but fatal back then. Now more than 30 years later, my mother-in-law's cancer is, in effect, a chronic disease like diabetes, or high blood pressure. There's no cure for her, just treatments. And while it goes without saying that the treatments are no picnic, she would say her life is nonetheless rewarding.

Some people are cured of cancer. Some die. Some people, like my mother-in-law, are in limbo. But after being attuned to the disease for more than 30 years, it's evident to me that the effort to find a complete and permanent cure is a long-term effort.

It seems that Professor King thinks the only role appropriate for us in the fight against cancer is as taxpayers or donors. That is, we should just turn over our tax money and donations to the clinicians and the researchers searching for cure. But whether as taxpayers or donors we all already do that, don't we?

I just don't see much wrong in also fighting cancer as consumers via cause-related marketing. The professor's probably right, the money generated from my purchase of Quilted Northern toilet tissue probably won't put the researchers over the top in their search for the cure. But I still need toilet paper. And if a few nickels go to help fund the fight, well bully!

As cause-related marketers we cannot abuse the trust of the public. Our cause-related marketing promotions must be transparent. If you're not building your cause-related marketing promotions that way, well then, send me examples so I can mock them in this blog.

But in my view, the real danger isn't that the public is being mislead by cause-related marketing. The real danger is that they won't be engaged in the fight against cancer or the improvement of some other social ill in any role besides as a taxpayer.

How to Find a Charity Partner for a CRM Campaign

The 411 on Locating a Cause Right for Your Company

Suppose you’re a community-minded company and you’re considering launching a cause-related marketing campaign, but in a world of causes, no cause is much more appealing than the next. Who do you partner with?

This question came to me while I was looking at the back of a bottle of 505 Southwestern Organic Green Chile Sauce. 505’s sauces are certified USDA Organic, which means according to 505 Southwestern’s website that it contains at least “95 percent organically produced ingredients.”

While the organic seal caught my eye, so too did the little pink ribbon, emblematic in the States of the breast cancer causes. 505 Southwestern gives a “portion of every sale” to the fight against breast cancer. Regular readers know how critical I am of that language. Last year 505 Southwestern generated $35,000 for breast cancer research.

Given their sensitivity to organic products, why did 505 Southwestern choose breast cancer for its cause-related marketing, instead of a cause that supports family farms, say, or rainforest protection or the Nature Conservancy?

Again, from the website, company founders do it in memory of their mother, Stella Solomon.

For years the conventional wisdom has been that you choose a cause based on ‘strategic philanthropy.’ If you’re an oil company, you pick environmental causes. If you make ladies purses, you pick women’s causes. If you sell toys, you pick children’s causes. If you’re a restaurant, you pick hunger causes. So far so good, right?

But what if you sell automobiles, or tattoos, or make non-organic chile sauces?

Here’s how I’d approach it.

First, decide what you need and want from a relationship with a cause. Is it publicity? Is it a sales bounce? Is it warm fuzzies? If it’s a combination, decide on the proportion of each. The big causes can do a lot of you. They can provide celebrities, they can help produce events, they can help generate publicity. But far fewer small charities will be able to offer the same menu of benefits. Also, bear in mind that the large charities will probably require you to pledge certain minimum donations before serious benefits start to flow. Send one of these big outfits a check for $10,000 and you’ll likely get little more than a nice letter of thanks.

Second, find out what you as a company are passionate about. Survey your employees or conduct focus groups or, better, do both. Find out who employees give their money and time to. Of those, time is the most telling factor. In the States, according to the Independent Sector, people who volunteer are 2.27 times more generous with their money than people who don’t. Meaning that volunteers give both more time and more money than people who donate only money.

Third, survey customers or other key stakeholders. Your employees may be pretty fired up about a cause, but if you expect customers, vendors or partners to generate all or some of the donation, you need to be sure that the cause resonates with them as well.

Fourth, determine if one cause can do all you need it to do. The foundations of most Fortune 500 companies in the United States give to hundreds or even thousands of charities so as to maximize goodwill, especially in local markets. That’s probably prudent. But when it comes to supporting a cause through a cause-related marketing campaign, I would generally argue that less is more. It’s too easy to dilute your message and your branding by having dozens of cause relationships. Proctor & Gamble manages to pull it off, but they have dozens of brands and a billion-dollar marketing budget. If you don’t, consider scaling back to no more than handful of charities that you can get behind and who can get behind you.

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to post a comment either way.

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CO-OP FInancial Services and Children's Miracle Network Roll Out an Old-School CRM Campaign

An Old Campaigner Returns to the Dance Floor

Right now in the United States ballroom dancing... of all things... is hot, hot, hot.

It seems that everything old is new again. For instance, Children's Miracle Network, where I spent seven years, is the beneficiary of an old-school cause-related marketing campaign of the kind I haven't seen from them in years.

To be fair, the staff at Children’s Miracle Network has forgotten more about cause-related marketing than most practitioners will ever know. I mean that literally.

Perhaps 12 or 13 years ago they deliberately started scaling back the amount of garden-variety cause-related marketing they do. Back in the day Children’s Miracle Network was the king of cause-related marketing in the United States.

To cite just one example, Children’s Miracle Network had a whole themed FSI to themselves that came out the exact weekend of their annual telethon, which aired on about 215 TV stations in the United States and Canada. Nowadays the only stateside FSI that comes close to duplicating that feat are the quarterly brandSAVER FSIs from Proctor & Gamble.

All this from a charity headquartered in the beautiful but small state of Utah, which is a long plane ride away from the media and sponsor markets on the coasts.

Why did they scale back? Mick Shannon and Joe Lake, the now-retired co-founders, could probably answer better than I could. So could Jay Vestal, now at the National Forest Foundation.

But I think it comes down to this. Cause marketing is hard to scale up. It reaches a certain level and it plateaus. Even with a committed sponsor, even with a creative campaign, even with a large network to draw on, even with the support of millions of customers cause-related marketing campaigns plateau at around $2 million in the States.

For instance, Yoplait’s lid campaign for Susan G. Komen is iconic. When people look at me quizzically when I talk about cause-related marketing, I just describe the Yoplait campaign and they know what I’m talking about. It’s being going on for nine years. People collect the lids by the tens of millions and send them in to generate $.10 per lid. This year it will raise $1.5 million. Now that’s a very nice effort. But it’s been holding steady at $1.5 million for a few years now.

So to raise more money via cause marketing, you have to add new campaigns. But running cause-related marketing campaigns is like running an ad agency. Each account gets their own account executive whose job it is to travel, take meetings, coordinate, develop campaign materials, build support, and rally the troops.

At Children’s Miracle Network, most of the account executives have 4-5 accounts or more. So adding new campaigns means adding more staff to sell and administer them.

Children’s Miracle Network found another way to raise more money without increasing headcount, and it involved doing less of the traditional cause-related marketing, not more. How they did it is a story for another post.

All that said, I’m glad to see Children’s Miracle Network do a little bit of old-school cause-related marketing. The fact is, while it’s easy to measure the success of a cause-related marketing campaign by the number of dollars it generates, it’s not the full measure of success.

Cause-related marketing brings more than money to causes, it:

* Enhances branding
* Gives them access to new donors
* Provides a new source of income
* It helps them access corporate marketing dollars rather than just foundation dollars
* Gives them access to corporate marketing expertise.

Illustrated above is Children’s Miracle Network's campaign with CO-OP Financial Services, which runs a network of 25,000 ATM’s for the nation’s credit unions including about 5,500 ATMs in the nation’s 7-Eleven convenience stores.

In the campaign, for every transaction completed ½ cent is donated to the local children’s hospital affiliated with Children’s Miracle Network. The campaign runs year-round and the donation is capped at $15,000 a month or $180,000 a year. CO-OP is testing the ATM wrap illustrated above at Mountain America Credit Unions in Salt Lake City, Utah, and may decide to wrap all their 25,000 ATMs.

That would be quite a coup for Joe Dearborn, Children’s Miracle Network's fine account executive for the CO-OP account.

The campaign kicked off with the direct mailer illustrated above that came to me November 29.

You'll they've integrated the graphics from the mailer carry and the wrap. The same with the language.

All in all, a nice cause-related marketing campaign from a veteran campaigner.

Sales Incentives and Cause-Related Marketing

Sprint and Motorola Campaign for Red

Many cause-related marketing campaigns require consumers to buy something. Maybe it’s a rubber bracelet. Or a plush toy. Maybe it’s a dessert special or music CD, or some kind of service.

While some people will just buy the cause-related marketing product or service without being prompted, usually they won’t. Like life insurance, and a tie that goes with the suit, sometimes cause-related marketing isn’t bought, it’s sold. (Packaged goods being a notable exception.)

I was reminded of this the other day when I was in my local Sprint store. Sprint Nextel is third-largest wireless telecommunications provider in the States, with 52 million subscribers. Along with Motorola, they are among the sponsors of the Red campaign. When you sign up for service and purchase a themed MotoRazr or Motoslvr phone, Motorola and Sprint jointly donate $17 to Red’s efforts to eradicate AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in Africa.

I know this because they had a dandy little display behind the register. There was a well-designed ad, the featured phone, and the signature Red branding. It hit all the high points including how the money’s to be used and was specific when describing the amount of the donation. Regular readers know what a stickler I am about that detail.

But did the nice young salesman trying to get into pharmacy school mention any of this to me? Nope.

I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m guessing that Red, Sprint and Motorola didn’t include employee incentives in their campaign. “Employee incentives,” you say, “why that sounds just like a sales contest!” Yup, that’s exactly what it is.

What might those incentives be? It depends on the company, its culture and the product/service in question. It might be a pizza party at the end of the promotion, t-shirts, or a celebrity visit. Maybe there’s a menu of prizes. Participation at a certain level might put you in the drawing for something grand like a trip, or a new PS3. And don’t forget to incentivize managers, too. When managers get competitive the product/service is far more likely to move.

Who pays for all this? That’s a dealpoint. Sometimes the sponsor does. Sometimes the charity does. Sometimes the charity secures donated prizes.

Whatever the case, be sure to have the incentives in place well before you unveil it to employees.

One final point, I once tried to put an incentive campaign in place with a new sponsor, but the sponsor refused. It wasn’t in their culture to respond to something so “crass,” she said. This was our first time with this sponsor so I agreed. The program failed. And it failed again the following year.

Fact is, employee incentives work.

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Kind Readers:

Kate A. from Boston is the latest person to join the Cause-Related Marketing Googlegroup. I invite you to join, too.

When you join, each new posting to Cause-Related Marketing comes direct to your email box.

As an inducement, everyone that joins receives a copy of the "Five Flavors of Cause-Related Marketing" which explains Cause-Related Marketing in an easy-to-follow matrix and includes examples.

It's a great brainstorming tool and helps ensure that your campaign has all the components appropriate for that flavor of Cause-Related Marketing.

To join, simply send me your name and your email address to aldenkeene@gmail.com.

Your privacy is important to me, so be assured that I will never sell your name or email address.

Warm regards,
Paul Jones

Never Sell Title Sponsorships, (Unless You Have To)

Toys for Teens

It’s Christmas time in the States and American’s open their hearts and their wallets to causes of all kinds.

Since the early post-WWII years, one of the organizations that Americans have responded to generously is Toys for Tots, now known as the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation. In 2005 they took in $233 million in receipts and gave out $221 million in toys.

The original mission was to give at least one toy to a child orphaned by the war at Christmas time. As the orphans grew up, the mission changed from giving toys to war orphans to giving them to children in poverty. Toys for Tots remains very much a military operation. Here’s their stated mission, for instance:

“The mission of Marine Toys for Tots Foundation is to raise funds to provide toys to supplement the collections of local Toys for Tots coordinators; defray the costs of conducting annual Toys for Tots campaigns; provide administrative, advisory, financial, logistic and promotional support of local coordinators; provide other support that the Marine Corps, as a federal agency, cannot provide; and conduct public education and information programs, which call the general public to action in support of Toys for Tots.”

They have toy drop-off locations in 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. A few days before Christmas Marine Reservists in uniforms and volunteers pick up the toys and they’re delivered to waiting children.

In 2001, with the sponsorship of Best Buy (a national electronics retailer), they launched Toys for Teens, which is probably self-explanatory. The logo for Toys for Teens incorporates Best Buy’s logo. This kind of title sponsor co-branding is very tricky. You have to balance the support you get from the title sponsor against the question, could I get more (from more sponsors) if I don’t sell the title?

When I was at Children’s Miracle Network the immortal Tim McInnis (now in development at the University of Utah) sold a poster child campaign called ‘Champions Across America’ and ‘Champions Across Canada’ to IOF Foresters (nee 'Foresters') for a cool $3 million. In time I got that account. When I left Children’s Miracle Network, two of the lessons I was sure I had learned was never sell title sponsorship and try your best to keep exclusivity off the table, too.

The problem, as I saw it, was that title sponsorship crowds everybody else out. A charity program is not like a sports arena which can be named for a sponsor on the outside of the building, but still have plenty of room for other sponsors on the inside. You just can’t pack that many sponsors into a nonprofit campaign when there’s a title sponsor.

Toys for Teens and Best Buy cleverly straddle the issue by calling the campaign ‘Toys for Teens’ rather than ‘Best Buy Toys for Teens.’ The logo says ‘title sponsor’ but nothing else does.
As for Children’s Miracle Network, the fact is, when Tim sold the Champions campaign, we were darn glad for it. It was only after a few years of building equity into the campaign that we begin to wonder if we couldn’t get more for it.

The lesson? Don’t sell a title sponsorship (unless you have to). And try to get away with ‘splitting the baby’ like Toys for Teens has.

In Case You Wondered...

... It Works, Cause-Related Marketing Works!

The Utah Food Bank is a monster of cause-related marketing in my state this time of year. The need for food is slightly higher in this season, but the fact is they use the generosity of the Christmas season to generate food donations that will see them into next summer; that’s one of the reasons why they ask for canned goods.

To cite just a few examples, right now all the TV advertising for Jiffy Lube, the quick oil-change outfit with 70 locations in the state, highlights their long-standing relationship to the Utah Food Bank. TV ads on behalf of the Utah Food Bank are also airing from Smiths (a grocery chain that’s a part of Kroger), Wells Fargo (a national bank), and Siegfried & Jensen (personal injury law firm), among others. There’s also direct mail campaign provided by the sponsors, and newspaper and radio ads. I haven't seen it yet, but they usually do a publicity stunt for public relations purposes as well.

I’ll do a fuller review of the Utah Food Bank’s cause-related marketing activities later this month, but for now witness the power of a local nonprofit brand in full flower.

Here’s why I say that.

The illustration is a flyer from a real estate agent named Rick Southwick who hosts an annual Christmas party for his clients at a movie theater. Bring in one can of food per person for the Utah Food Bank, and Rick pays for the movie of your choice.

Rick is a demon marketer. Every month he sends me a well-prepared newsletter. He’s hosted this party for five years now, too. So when Rick decides to do something charitable in conjunction with his annual party, who does he choose? Why the Utah Food Bank, of course. It’s a no-brainer.

Did they contact him about doing this? No. The fact is, that Jiffy Lube, Smiths, Wells Fargo, Siegfried & Jensen and others have done such a bang up job marketing the Utah Food Bank, that Rick would be hard-pressed to find something better for him to support this time of year. And the Utah Food Bank’s pickup locations are so efficiently sited, he’ll probably just take all the donations to the nearest Smiths after the party.

Done well, this is what cause-related marketing can do for a charity brand. It can inspire people to start doing stuff for you that you’ll never know about and that you didn’t specifically ask for.

Wise as Serpents, Harmless as Doves

Circuit City-Mary J. Blige Duet Album for Boys and Girls Clubs of America

Throughout November 2006, Circuit City diligently promoted its exclusive deal with Hip Hop Soul artist Mary J. Blige called Mary J. Blige & Friends that benefits the Boys and Girls Clubs of America in commemoration of their centennial year. The recording features the appealing Blige in duets with an impressive array of artists include Sting, LL Cool J, Jamie Foxx, Elton John, Santana, and others.

Given the season, you’d expect this to be a charity Christmas album. But it’s not. Evidence, I think, of the creativity of the dealmakers at Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

The offer is straightforward. The album is ‘specially-priced’ at $16.99 for a two-disk set, and “all proceeds benefit Boys and Girls Clubs of America.” I’m almost always critical of the ‘proceeds’ language as being too vague to be helpful. The last research I saw on this said that consumers prefer more concrete language.

But I’m not here to criticize so much as praise and warn.

Led by Kurt Aschermann, who is still there so far as I know, the cause-related marketing efforts of the Boys and Girls Clubs have long been impressive, especially given the organizational constraints of Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

The Boys and Girls Clubs of America is itself a kind of a club. Organizations can apply for membership and may be admitted based on whether they meet the national organization’s criteria. Local clubs must recertify periodically. The national organization has programs that are available to the local clubs, but they’re generally not required to use them.

This loose affiliation means that cause-related staff can do deals, but the local affiliates are under little or no obligation to administer the campaigns in their local clubs or markets. For instance, the national headquarters did a deal with Coke 10 or more years ago that involved placing Coke vending machines in the clubs. Some local clubs accepted the deal, but others did not because they had existing relationships with local bottlers that were more lucrative.

So bully for the Boys and Girls Club cause-related marketing dealmakers for this deal as well as a long string of cause-related marketing successes that preceded it.

It’s easy when you’re putting together a deal like this to get caught up working on creative side: securing the artists, the music, the arrangements and the musicians; cover art; promotions; setting up the recording times and places. A producer probably did most of the heavy-lifting on these details, but the charity was certainly very involved.

But two of the most important determinants of the success of one of these charity albums isn’t creativity, it’s accounting. If the charity has to cover returns, which always come, they lose. If they accept trade credit terms 2-10 Net 30, which are standard in retailing, then the charity loses 2% of the proceeds, because retailers typically have terrific cashflow and will pay quickly in order to get a discount. 2-10 Net 30 credit terms…which means the payer gets a 2 percent discount if they pay within 10 days of delivery… are one of the finance tricks large discount retailers use to ensure profitibility.

So while nonprofit charities are thought of as harmless doves in business, they need to be wise as serpents when negotiating these deals.