SWEET Online Fundraising Blog

Customer Driven Cause Marketing: Some Examples.

Some big companies have incorporated customer-driven progams into their cause marketing.  This is great on so many levels for the companies, customers, and the charities.

Customer-driven cause marketing programs will become the most common form of corporate social responsibility because the company can actually make money while being socialy responsible.  What's more, it's not a handout and shareholders can feel comfortable knowing that there will be an ROI.  I told you so.

Some good recent examples:

Dodge High Caliber Challenge:  Teams of college students from Chicago, Dallas, and Boston drive Dodge calibers to Miami.  They have scheduled stops along the way where they raise money for Doctors Without Borders and raise awareness for the Global Music Project.  Pretty basic but it has many components of a good customer-driven cause marketing program:

1. third party fundraising and awareness building
2. lots of exposure for dodge
3. lots of exposure for the charities
4. inexpensive for dodge
5. no costs for the charity

This program has so much more untapped potential but it's a start.

  Sunkist Take a Stand 2006:  This is my absolute favorite.  It's brilliant and I have to admit that I'm jealous because it was not my idea.  For $25 a child from 7-12 years old can purchase a lemonade stand from Sunkist.  The child sells lemonade to raise money for their favorite charity.  Simple.

This is the second year of the program.  I believe that 7000 lemonade stands have been set up in the last 2 years and over $750,000 has been raised for national and local charities.  BRILLIANT.  This is great for the kids, great PR for Sunkist, "free money" for the charity recipients, and the money is coming from donors  - not a check written by Sunkist so execs at Sunkist don't have to worry about why they cut a check for $750,000 to charities.

This is the future of corporate social reponsibility.  This is the only form that shareholders should accept.  It take some creativity and out-of-the-box thinking but the same old grant-giving corporate foundations are major cost centers with vague ROI's are not fiscally responsible.

Second Skypecast on Online Fundraising

We're on again on 5/25/06 for our second skypecast on online fundraising. We're making some changes after the first skypecast that will hopefully make the call even more useful to directors and development staff.

It's a work in progress but i'm hoping this skypecast will be a regulalry scheduled thing that will continue to grow.  Definitely stop in and say hello.

Results of first Skypecast

We hosted our first Skypecast today.  On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best), I give the whole experience a 6. 

What is a Skypecast?

Skype users can create public "conversations"/conferences on any topic.  Other Skype users can join the conference to contribute or simply listen.  Our first conference today was called:  Online fundraising for nonprofits: Beyond donor management.   We didn't do much to promote the Skypecast as we didn't know what to expect but we unexpectedly found that our Skypecast was featured on Skype.com which was nice.

The good

1. Very easy to set up
2. People actually showed up and talked
3. Very easy to IM or mute any participant in the Skypecast.  I exchanged links with a few participants and continued an conversation with one of the participants after the Skypecast
4. Skype will promote your call if they deem that it is interesting
5. The potential utility in the fundraising arena and others for that matter is pretty astounding

The bad

1. You can't record the conference easily.  It's possible but you'll need to install other software.  I wish Skype would just integrate recording capabilities into Skypecast.
2. There were some audio issues during the call that sounded like a cell phone when you have a bad signal
3. Someone joined the call with their music and speakers on too loud.  That kind of felt like an icepick in the eardrums till I muted the user.

The future

Third party fundraising requires collaboration so Skypecasting can be a useful tool for volunteers to host free conference calls with their committees.  Beyond that, it can also provide nonprofits with a free conference service to engage their members in conversations or to perform lectures or talks.  Board and Strategic Meetings could be recorded as well, archived, and subsequently made public.  Beyond the potential for communicating more with members, Skypecast and other similar technologies may lead to more transparency in nonprofit operations and management.  Almost like a C-SPAN effect.  This can be great for donors and will make their philanthropy more tangible. On the flip side, nonprofits can capitalize on Skypecasting and create live broadcasts (a la a radio show) to the skype community.  I can even imagine some sort of "telethon" or Skype-a-thon happening. 

There are so many other potential uses for this sort of thing in fundraising and nonprofit management.  It's very kool.  There are still bugs for sure but thats to be expected.

Customer-Made Trend Puts Innovation in the Hands of the Customer

CUSTOMER-MADE: “The phenomenon of corporations creating goods, services and experiences in close cooperation with experienced and creative consumers, tapping into their intellectual capital, and in exchange giving them a direct say in (and rewarding them for) what actually gets produced, manufactured, developed, designed, serviced, or processed.”

Read the rest of the article at trendwatching.com.

There are some large and very important companies inviting and even paying customers to develop their products. 

Nonprofits take note.  The days of sending the annual report once a year to keep donors informed is over.  Donors will expect, no - demand, to help shape what you do and and how you finance your operation.  Organizations that can meet this demand will thrive.  Those who can't will die.  Read the rest of the article at trendwatching.com.

Do-It-Yourself Event Planning in Boston

One if by land, two if by sea, three if by broadband.  People planning events in and around Boston can rejoice and look to the North Church tower for that lantern to light three times.  the menu is coming...this summer.

My sincerest apologies to H.W. Longfellow.  Somebody just hit me after reading that corny intro.

This summer Blue Sky Collaborative is launching the menu - a do-it-yourself event planning system that is designed for anyone who wants to plan an event.  the menu will do to event planning what expedia and priceline did for booking travel. 

Users can book venues, purchase supplies and services from vendors, invite people, sell tickets, pass the hat for their costs, and accept donations for their charity. 

the menu streamlines the event planning process.  Individuals, companies, and even nonprofits themselves can forego endless hours of phone tag and administrative hassle.  And we know.  We built the menu after helping people plan 100's of events for charity over the last few years.  The planning phase is repetitive and tedious.  But it's not complicated.  So we created an application that handles all of the annoying work and lets people focus on getting their friends to their event.  People can spend more time getting their networks excited about the event and less time haggling with anonymous service providers and wrestling with spreadsheets and lists.

Boston's hippest venues will be on board when the menu launches.  If you're a venue, nonprofit, or interested in planning an event visit http://www.themenuboston.com for info or sign up here and we will contact you.

Social Networking Sites can make kids easy prey

A disturbing excerpt:

The arrest Tuesday of a 27-year-old man in Connecticut on charges of illegal sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl he met through MySpace underlines the risks of the fast-growing Internet site that boasts about 60 million members.

"MySpace has not taken sufficient steps to ensure that the MySpace Web site is a safe place for minors," Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly said in a letter to MySpace on Tuesday.

The rest of the article can be found here --> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12618278/from/ET/

10 years ago, I would have scoffed at the Massachusetts AG, Tom Reilly, and protested that he is threatening our free speech.

But I have kids now.

Reilly is right.  And a "report inappropriate content link" otherwise known as the "click here to rat" button is not going to fix the problem. 

Kids under 18 clearly enjoy using myspace and it's unfortunate that they have to be wary of stalkers and wierdos.  Adding some exclusivity and privacy to these social networking sites may be the only way to solve the problem.  Eventually linking the private communities will allow users to benefit from the size of the network.  Another benefit of having several private communities is that monitoring the entire network for safety becomes more manageable.

There is definitely a great deal that can be done and just throwing our arms up and saying, "there's nothing we can do about it" is simply unacceptable.