Cause Marketing

Patagonia, that region of Chile and Argentina at the southern tip of South America famous for its beauty and end-of-the-earth ruggedness, had a terrible fire in 2011 that left vast areas denuded of trees. Now a Santiago, Chile-based cause called Reforest Patagonia is working to replant a million trees in four of Chile’s national parks and reserves, and they’re asking for your help. Here’s how it works: they ask that you go to www.reforestpatagonia.com and donate $4. They’ll plant a tree in your name and email you the gps coordinates of where your tree will be planted. The website is reminiscent in its own way of the fundraising platform called www.supportewall.com which enables nonprofits to easily set up online donor walls. I conducted a Twitter interview… my first ever… with Brenna Loury, an American by birth, but a Chilean by adoption. She got her start in Chile working for Habitat for Humanity there. That’s my first question and Brenna’s response in 140 characters or less at th...

When you donate $1 at beapartoftheheart.com , you help struggling musical artists, enter into a sweepstakes to go to the 2012 Grammy Awards show, and place your picture on a giant online mosaic. “Proceeds,” the website says, “from the mosaic will go to MusiCares, an organization that helps music people who don't have safety nets for emergencies. When you donate and upload your photo(s) to the MusiCares mosaic, you'll be giving to a good cause and you can share how music has given back to you.” The goal is to put up 1 million photos. The ad above, from the June 17, 2011 issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine also mentions the support of six artists: Selena Gomez; Parachute; Sugarland; Owl City; Melanie Fiona; and, Colbie Caillat. The website mentions that Sony is a campaign sponsor and by my count all these artists save Parachute are affiliated with Sony Music. In effect, MusiCares , which is a nonprofit subset of the Grammy Foundation, has created a kind of online paper icon e...

SupporterWall.com is an interactive grid wall that displays pictures and links to your website that you could use for fundraising for you nonprofit or crowd funding your business idea. Presently in beta, the individual grids sell for $100, $20 and $10. The donations from the beta wall go to SupporterWall. But when it comes out of beta the app will be released in three rounds, first to $100 donors, then $20 donors, then $10 donors. In effect, SupporterWall is crowd funding its own startup with the sale of an app that helps you crowd fund. It’s sorta like looking at your reflection in an infinity mirror. The money deposits into your PayPal account. SupporterWall is customizable and can be installed on your website. There’s no deadlines or timelines. Leave it up as long as you see fit. SupporterWall also has teeny-tiny little grids that it gives away for free. If you look really closely, you can see my photo on the top row of the freebies section in the 45th square from the left. That’s...

Buy a virtual glass of lemonade from Lemonadestandforlife.com , sponsored by Volvo, and the money goes to Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation to support families who must travel for their child’s cancer treatments. Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, is named for Alex Scott, who in the year 2000 at the age of 4 announced to her parents that pediatric cancer must be cured and to do her part she was going to sell lemonade from a stand. Alex herself suffered from neuroblastoma and died in 2004 at the tender age of 8. By then she had already raised $1 million for cancer research. Now a 501(c)(3) charity, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, has generated $35 million for cancer research, $12 million of it from lemonade stands. Volvo’s relationship with ALSF began in 2002 when Alex was nominated for the inaugural Volvo for Life Awards. She won it in 2003. And in 2004 Volvo dealers helped Alex meet her goal to raise $1 million for pediatric cancer research before the year end. Sadly, Alex died in Aug...

You can’t swing a corded mouse online without running into the daytime double-threat actress/talk show host Kelly Ripa and her work on behalf of the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund . I get, it seems like, weekly email notices from Electrolux telling me to visit the ‘ Lemonade Stands ,’ of OCRF supporters. The Lemonade Stands are the charity part of a broader Kelly Ripa-powered promotion for Electrolux curiously called ‘ Kelly Confidential .’ The Stands represent an intriguing variation on virtual paper icons for MDA that I’ve profiled before. To support the stands you’re asked to donate amounts from $1 (the default) to $50. The donations are processed through Paypal. When you open a stand, Electrolux will donate the first $1. There's also a win a refrigerator contest element when you open a stand. Electrolux will donate up to a total maximum of $15,000 for the lemonade campaign. That is, just the first 15,000 stands get the $1 donation. Electrolux’s total pledge to OCRF is $500,000. ...