Cause Marketing

The issue of Time magazine currently on newsstands is all about cancer, including a story on cancer research charities called ' Check Your Charity .' One charity highlighted in the article, called the National Breast Cancer Research Charity, made me do a double-take. Time reports that it took $12.7 million in 2009, and spent 52 percent on fundraising. The reporter’s lead says a lot; “It's not that the National Breast Cancer Research Center is a scam….” What gave me the double-take was that National Breast Cancer Research Center sounds so much like The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the New York nonprofit which took in $30.2 million in revenue in 2009 and spent a scant 5.9 percent on fundraising. The phrase ‘cancer research’ has become a marketing conceit. Put the words together and you have fundraising magic. But it sucks to be a well-proven charity like The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, when a less efficient charity can invoke the same magic words. "I shudd...