Cause Marketing

There he is at your fancy gala; rich, successful, and bored out of his mind. He’s got an MBA from an Ivy League school, an undergrad in economics and a wife… who studied art history… and who drags him kicking and screaming to your events. He’s worth a mint, but the most you may ever get from him is the price of the gala’s tickets. Is it even possible to get this Philistine to change his mind about your cause? The answer has as much to do with how people learn and what kind of ideas they are exposed to as it does how much money they have to give. (Read more about the learning side of this equation on my blog on informal learning called The Learner's Guild .) A yet-to-be published study by Professor Raymond Fisman from Columbia Business School… along with Shachar Kariv of UC Berkeley and Daniel Markovitz of the Yale Law School… suggests that even mature students can change their minds when presented with powerful ideas. In this study Fisman and his co-authors Shachar Kariv and D...

Early this month Forbes ran a guest column by Columbia Business School Professor Raymond Fisman that is strangely relatable to both cause-related marketing and informal learning, the topics of my two blogs. The Forbes headline describes it beautifully; “You Are What You Learn.” I’ve posted on what Fisman’s findings mean to informal learners on my blog on informal learning called The Learner’s Guild . Tomorrow in this space I’ll post on what Fisman’s study might mean to fundraisers and to those of us who practice cause-related marketing. So why the brain in the box on the left? Fisman’s study supports two seemingly diametrically-opposed conclusions. The first is that your training determines who you are. The second is that you can change all that. Stay tuned...

Cause-Related Marketing in the Newest Social Media In the last quarter three charity/social networking mashups have crossed my desk, each with their own distinctive tang. All three are in beta, that is, they’re works in progress. All are for-profit endeavors. All could benefit from a little ‘network effect’ love. The network effect aka Metcalf’s Law postulates that the value of a network is proportionate to the square of the number of users. That is, a network only starts demonstrating value after reaching the critical mass described by the equation. In other words, each of these outfits has some selling to do. uPlej . With an approach that could probably only come from Utah is uPlej , which owes its business model as much to multi-level marketing as it does to Facebook. Here’s how it works: you sign up as a member of uPlej and designate a charity, create your own profile, alert your personal network to your new uPlej page and UPlej dings your credit card for $4.99 a month. Of that, $...

On May 16 Oliver’s Artisan Breads in Los Angeles announced that it will donate 10 percent of net profits from their store line of breads to the Bread for the World Institute , the first case of a CRM campaign benefiting an advocacy and public policy charity I can think of. Oliver’s Artisan Breads sells a line of organic bread in stores like Whole Foods and Wild Oats ( which have merged ) in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Oregon, southwestern Nevada and Washington state. The term of the agreement is for one year with an option to renew. Oliver’s has guaranteed an undisclosed minimum donation. The money will go to support the Bread for the World Institute, a 501(c)(3) public charity division of Bread for the World. Bread for the World is an advocacy group, a “nationwide Christian movement that seeks justice for the world’s hungry people by the lobbying our nation’s decision-makers.” The Bread for the World Institute has more of public policy bent, engaging “in research and education on ...

For most of my life the best analogy that science had to offer about the brain was that by the time you were 35 or so everything your genes could give your brain was cemented into place. And then that block of cement was basically dropped into a fast flowing river where time (and maybe chemicals) eroded your brain. And then, sometime later, you died. Cheery, huh? But for the last two decades especially researchers have grown less deterministic in their view about the human brain. Increasingly, science is showing that brain cells and the connections between them continue to grow over time. But like muscles those cells and connectors can atrophy. And like muscles, neurons (brain cells), ganglia and synapses can be trained and even expanded. How do you do that? Check my posting at my blog on informal learning called The Learner’s Guild for some real-world suggestions.

There you are walking down Lake Shore Drive past the rising Chicago Spire building eating a Chicago Red Hot , when you’re struck by a billboard with a message from, say, MercyCorps , asking for help providing relief to the cyclone-battered people in Myanmar’s Irrawaddy delta. But the sign doesn’t feature a website URL, a toll-free telephone number or even an address to send a check. Instead the sign tells you to text the word ‘Give’ to a number using your cell phone and a $5 donation will be made. To the Japanese or Europeans that scenario probably sounds not so much futuristic as so 2006. But it’s new in the United States, made possible by lower fees from the cell phone carriers. If analysts are correct, cell phone fundraising may be a prominent future fundraising channel for charities with a clear mission, strong brand recognition and the ability to effectively get their message to their audience. What’s the potential upside of this mobile phone fundraising in the United States? “$...

In the last few months The Home Depot , has made a giant right turn in its charitable endeavors and landed in bed with Habitat for Humanity in a five-year, $30 million sponsorship deal , a little more than a year after CEO Frank Blake got his job. It’s a familiar place for Blake, whose wife, Mrs. Liz Blake is a Senior Vice President at Habitat for Humanity . Mr. and Mrs. Blake told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that they recused themselves in the negotiations between the two parties. I’m sure they did. And to be completely accurate, the relationship is actually between The Home Depot Foundation, which is a 501(c)(3), and Habitat for Humanity. Moreover Mr. Blake doesn’t hold a position on the Foundation’s 10-member board which consists entirely of Home Depot employees; I counted one executive vice president, three senior vice presidents, and six lesser lights. But to be frank, a CEO doesn’t need to have a vote to influence how the vote turns out on a board where everyone, in effect,...