Suppose you’re a small entrepreneur with a generous impulse and you want to offer sponsorship dollars to one or more charities, especially prominent ones. How would that phone call or email go? Karma52, an cause-based apparel company, is finding it tough going. That’s because the biggest causes ask for (and get) large upfront commitments from would-be sponsors. They require such commitments as a kind of qualifier. If you can’t afford a cause's upfront, for instance, then it can assume that you’re not a likely partner. Moreover, causes are rightly concerned that they risk their brand by getting involved with a sponsor that is either a bad match, a dishonest operator, or worse. But in their caution, causes are leaving money on the table. The Fortune 1000 has largely been picked through by causes. Most of the large companies are either already doing cause marketing or it doesn’t make sense for them. The future growth of cause marketing for causes will be with smaller companies. ...
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