Here’s a question more people should ask, from the Good Agency blog: Pro bono. Where’s the bono?
… it’s not pro bono if there is no bono — no actual good. No new donors, campaigners or volunteers. No new services funded or vulnerable people reached. No research paid for or hungry mouths fed.
Ad agencies and marketing companies like to do pro-bono work for nonprofits. It’s a chance to bulk up their portfolios. (And who knows, maybe some of them just want to do good deeds.)
It turns out free work is worth about what it costs you: nothing.
If someone does a really cool project that makes you say ooh but lays an egg in the donor marketplace, you’ve taken a bigger hit than you might think…
The most common and uncounted cost is opportunity cost — hours spent managing a dealing with a pro bono project that could have been spent doing something productive.
Then there’s damage that can be done to your brand by heedless work that’s driven by creative whim.
Just take a run through this shop of horrors and you’ll see how badly things can go awry. And that free doesn’t necessarily mean good. Or even free.
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on Mar 3rd, 2013. Comment. 
In a recent MondayMorningMemo, Roy Williams one of the real secrets to success. Something Better Than Creativity:
The secret of guaranteed success is to import a tested and reliable methodology into a business category where it has never been used. Repurpose the proven. They’ll call you a brilliant creative innovator. You might even be able to patent your breakthrough.
Watch what works outside of fundraising. Or even what’s working in fundraising categories other than your own. There are golden ideas hiding there, ready for whoever finds them and puts them to use.
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on Feb 24th, 2013. Comment.
Filed under Nicva by on Feb 20th, 2013. Comment.
I know it seems unlikely, but I can’t help but wonder if this glorious piece of stupidity is a conspiracy of the Australian meat industry.
Why would the meat industry create a video (for airing in cinemas and on television) for Animals Australia a pro-animal organization that’s campaigning against factory farming and the cruelty it inflicts on animals?
Well, take a look. I think you’ll see what I mean.
(This is a long video, more than 11 minutes, but the Stupid Ad part is at the beginning.)
(Or watch it here on Vimeo.)
Take note of the song they’re singing: “There’s a Place for Us” from West Side Story. Sung by the main characters when their messed-up world is about to get very much worse, and they find out there is not a place for them.
Oops. Things are not looking good for the pigs and chickens.
Okay, I can almost overlook that, since not everyone will think about the story, but take the song at face value.
But then the ad hits us with a blinding flash of utter stupidity: The a pig sprouts wings and flies away from the factory.
So the message? How could it be anything but: There will be no more factory farming … when pigs have wings!
That is, never. That interpretation is pretty much unavoidable.
I wondered if I was missing something, so I asked alert reader Sean Triner in Australia if the “… when pigs have wings” idiom has the same currency and meaning Down Under as it does in the US.
Alas, it does. This is a video that clearly states that factory farming is permanent and inevitable. Who’d waste their time campaigning against it?
I can see only two explanations for this video:
- The Australian meat industry secretly did this to undermine public opposition to factory farming by persuading everyone that it will never end.
- The agency creatives who produced this stupid ad were so in love with their goofy concept and high-end production that they didn’t notice they directly contradicted the message they meant to make, and did so more clearly and loudly than the message itself.
Sadly, I’m afraid it’s #2.
I prefer the other explanation. It’s more interesting.
More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on Jan 4th, 2013. Comment.
by guest blogger Andrew Rogers
Effective fundraising through social media tools like Twitter and Facebook is an elusive goal. It’s possible to be tempted by exceptional cases (disaster relief, celebrity-endorsed campaigns by big-name charities), into believing “social” is all you need. But exceptions are exactly that. For most organizations, social media is part of a well-built donor-communication plan, not the cornerstone of it.
Bit by bit, though, smart marketers are finding new ways to put social media to work. The Hilborn Charity Info blog reports on one technique where Facebook has generated promising results: campaigns where donors approach friends and family on behalf of a cause (Facebook and peer-to-peer fundraising: pair them up to raise more money).
The post reports on 25 such campaigns in the US and Canada that found 15% to 18% — in one case, 33% — of donations came through Facebook. Additionally, donors who could log in to campaign sites with their Facebook IDs “raised on average 40% more than those who used traditional registration.”
Earthshaking? Maybe not yet. Something to keep in mind? Sure. One key point is that social media was one element of the campaign, not the complete strategy. As more and more charities start to get a handle on how social media can strengthen their ties with their donors, we’ll start to find more ways to make social-media fundraising success less exceptional.
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on Dec 27th, 2012. Comment.