Cause Marketing for Hunger Free Families

Feeding America, which generates donations of funds and food for affiliated food banks all over the country, wants you to spread the word to 10 other people about families in hunger in America, and when you do you could win the chance to present a check for $10,000 to your local food bank.

The campaign is called Hunger Free Families and the spokespeople are Laila Ali and Curtis Conway. Curtis is a former NFL wide receiver and current color analyst for NFL radio broadcasts and Laila is a former boxing champion and the daughter of Muhammad Ali, who was something of a boxer himself.

You go to the website, watch the videos, sign up and agree to send an email to 10 people… I choose the preformatted one, but I could have modified the language… to 10 people. This isn’t one of those deals that pulls out all your emails addresses out your Outlook or Yahoo account. That would be spam. I had to copy and paste them in one by one.

After you send out the email, it takes you to a screen that allows you to post to your account on the major social networks; Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, Twitter and Yahoo.

Here’s how it went out on Twitter:

Can you TELL 10 people about family hunger in America? I did. http://soc.li/yZu6kyZ #HungerFreeFamilies: http://soc.li/IAWZU2M

The system comes from Convio the nonprofit software company that specializes in this kinds of ‘friends and family’ email and fundraising efforts, especially for charity race-type events.

My favorite part of this is the contest to win the chance to present a check for $10,000 to your local food bank. That’s neat. The impulse to be generous is very strong, especially this time of year. So handing a giant check to a local food bank official and having your picture taken with the local food bank official is rewarding by itself, even if the check isn’t drawn on your account.

Almost any charity could offer a similar privilege in a similar contest.

By the way, a search of the voluminous Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database shows that this is the second cause marketing effort to feature the lovely Laila Ali. Last year at this time she was seen in a campaign for the American Heart Association and sponsored by Subway. Versions of the ad to the left appeared in at least three different magazines. She's also involved with the Black AIDS Institute.

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