Cause Marketing Two Liver Transplants

In my ongoing quest to highlight cause marketing efforts large and small, here’s a smaller one.

The Skinner family is facing not one, but two liver transplants. Their two children, 2-year-old Claire and 4-year-old Benson both suffer from primary hyperoxaluria, a genetic disorder that causes their livers to produce too much oxalate. Claire’s case is the more acute, requiring her to spend as much as 15 hours a day on dialysis.

Claire is already on the transplant list and Benson will almost certainly join her there in the near future.

So their friends at Shelf Reliance, a company that sells emergency preparedness supplies, are conducting a cause marketing campaign on behalf of the Skinner kids.

When you buy a #10 can of Shelf Reliance brownie mix, they will donate the full purchase price… $14.90… to the Children’s Organ Transplant Association in support of liver transplants for Claire and Benson.

The ‘call out’ in this flyer I received isn’t as good as it needs to be, or even fully accurate. The call out says that ‘100 percent of the proceeds’ benefits the children through the Children’s Organ Transplant Association. Instead 100 percent of the purchase price is donated to COTA.

This ‘proceeds’ language seems to trip up a lot of people, so for the sake of clarity let me reiterate that the proceeds language means a net total after expenses.

COTA helps families fundraise for their children’s organ transplant expenses. One of COTA’s services is that it will set up an account for families to raise funds for their child under COTA’s 501(c)(3) umbrella. That way donors can easily make tax deductible donations.

But whether is the money raised by Shelf Reliance goes to Claire’s and Benson’s accounts or to COTA’s general coffers, we are left to wonder.

Shelf Reliance activates the sponsorship in several other ways besides this flyer. They mention it on their corporate blog and Facebook page.

They’re also running a giveaway promotion wherein one of the ways to enter the contest is to buy the brownie mix or to make a donation directly to COTA.

Short of these two small deficiencies, this is a nice campaign and at $14.90 a pop, a generous one!

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