Cause Marketing

Yesterday I talked about the power and ease of working with other nonprofits who serve as sponsors. I mentioned that when I worked at Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals (CMNH) my four nonprofit sponsors were collectively worth more than $5 million a year to CMNH. That was more than 10 years ago and I’d be surprised if the current number for those four sponsors wasn't some multiple of $5 million. So how do you recruit valuable nonprofit sponsors? Here’s five tips: Network, network, network. The initial contact with the American Legion came through Riley Hospital for Children, the CMNH member hospital in Indianapolis. Someone knew someone at the Legion headquarters there, and my predecessor sweet-talked, cajoled and weaseled his way towards the decision-makers, many of whom had had personal experience with Riley. A ‘no’ doesn’t always mean no; sometimes it just means not now. What I mean is that persistence is vital if you want to recruit new sponsors. So, too, is good-timi...

One of the things that Children’s Miracle Network learned early on in its production of its eponymous Telethon was that it had to tell specific stories of the individuals who benefited from its efforts: sick children. CMN, which was a path-breaking cause marketer, specifically decided that the narrative arc of those stories had to be about children who were sick but got better thanks to the specialized care available only at children’s hospitals in North America. And so there would be no stories about children who died and none suggesting that if only people had been more generous with their donations that a child might still be alive. CMN decided that such approaches were exploitive of children. By the time I joined the organization less than 10 years after its founding, the tone of these stories was well laid down. As was the name by which we referred to them; 'Miracle Stories.' The term ‘Miracle Story’ described not only the videos that would appear on the Telethon, but i...

Right now at Mimi’s restaurants, when you buy a ‘Miracle Balloon’ pin for $5 benefiting Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, you get a paper icon to be displayed in the restaurant and three bounceback coupons worth as much as $30. I once wrote that Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals had forgotten more about cause marketing than almost any other charity knew about the practice. I meant that as a back-handed compliment. From my vantage-point it seemed to me that many of the things that CMNH had once known in its bones about what did and didn’t work in cause marketing seemed to be lost to CMNH’s institutional memory. But this promotion tells me that Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals has regained its footing. This is a very solid paper icon campaign.   Mimi’s Café is a casual dining restaurant chain with more than 100 stores in 22 states, with a heavy concentration of the total units in California. Mimi’s Café is a division of Bob Evans Farms. What’s to like about the camp...