Cause Marketing

Keep a Child Alive Featuring Alicia Keys On May 20 I wrote about how for the first time in the United States it was possible for nonprofits to use cell phones to raise money, $5 at a time. For the last three months the Brooklyn, New York-based nonprofit charity called Keep a Child Alive , has been using cell phone fundraising to generate nearly $40,000 from some 7,800 people. Keep a Child Alive provides antiretroviral drugs to children and adults with HIV/AIDS in Africa. Antiretroviral drugs are what keep people with HIV/AIDS like Magic Johnson from dying. In Africa there are 2.3 million children with HIV/AIDS, and many times that many adults (read ‘parents’). Keep a Child Alive cell phone fundraising approach is to use a film produced for the charity called Alicia in Africa , featuring the impossibly lovely and talented R and B artist Alicia Keys , who is the organization’s official ambassador. In effect, they ask you to pay $5 for the pleasure of watching the film by texting “Alive...