Category: Cause-Related Marketing

The UCSF Challenge for the Children Facebook Causes campaign provides a good example of a successful cause-related marketing strategy using Facebook Causes. The post Social Fundraising Using Facebook: Exhibit A Courtesy of UCSF Challenge for the Children appeared first on VMR. Social Fundraising Using Facebook: Exhibit A Courtesy of UCSF Challenge for the Children was first posted on June 8, 2011 at 7:28 pm.©2015 “VMR”. Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at hugh@vmrcommunications.com

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

In last week’s post, I discussed cause-related marketing and why it can be a terrific fundraising approach for non profits dealing with the negative effects of a slumping economy.

Let’s take a look at one non-profit who benefited from a cause-related marketing campaign: The UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.

The hospital is named after Marc Benioff, who is the Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com, a publicly-traded (NYSE: CRM) on-demand cloud computing company that in 2010 brought in approximately $1.6 billion in revenues.

The UCSF Children’s hospital chose to make use of the Facebook Causes app in its online social fundraising campaign.

I’ll let Marc Benioff explain the logic behind leveraging the power of Facebook to raise money and support from people who who would have otherwise never even known about the hospital, let alone the exciting fundraising campaign on Facebook to support it.

So what were the results of this campaign?

In a word, amazing.

Over 65 different teams from all over the world competed to raise the most money for this cause. And donations came from over 164,000 people.

In under 60 days.

What’s revealing for our purposes in this post as we look at cause-related marketing is how businesses reached out to their customers and other contacts to raise money for this cause.

Take a look:

 

 

You’ll notice the cause started by Zynga was responsible for over 163,000 donations. Zynga is a software company that develops social games played on various social networks including, of course, on Facebook. If you’ve been on Facebook for any length of time, you’re probably familiar with a few of the games Zynga has developed: CityVille, FarmVille, FrontierVille, Mafia Wars, Zynga Poker, Café World, Treasure Isle, YoVille, FishVille and PetVille.

But I digress.

In October of 2009, Zynga’s co-founder, Mark Pincus, founded zynga.org. Its mission? Get this: To transform the world through virtual social goods.

 

Those virtual social goods came in handy for the UCSF Challenge for the Children campaign.

According to a UCSF press release:

Now how’s that for an innovative fundraising idea? Forget cookies and brownies. Sell virtual candy canes!

That’s assuming you’ve got a willing audience ready to buy them, of course! Zynga has over 250 million customers.

There were other companies and celebrities who leverage the power of their social networks on Facebook to raise money for UCSF Children’s Hospital as well. As you can see below, companies like AOL pitched in as did celebrities like Ashton Kutcher.

Hopefully this gets you thinking about ways your fundraising campaign might be able to tap into not just the pocketbooks of your most loyal supporters, but also, perhaps more importantly, their connections and influence.

How can you see such an approach working for your organization? Do you have any questions or comments related to this post? Please feel free to comment below!

 

Photo Credits:

Marc Benioff : https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/db2266f5/File%3AMarc_Benioff_in_2009.jpg

Mark Pincus : https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/db2266f5/File%3AMarkpincus2.jpg

The post Social Fundraising Using Facebook: Exhibit A Courtesy of UCSF Challenge for the Children appeared first on VMR.

Social Fundraising Using Facebook: Exhibit A Courtesy of UCSF Challenge for the Children

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Cause-related marketing (CRM) offers a uniquely powerful way for non-profits to partner with corporate supporters during difficult economic times. The post In A Tough Economy, Non Profits Should Try Cause-Related Marketing appeared first on VMR. In A Tough Economy, Non Profits Should Try Cause-Related Marketing was first posted on June 1, 2011 at 9:05 pm.©2015 “VMR”. Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at hugh@vmrcommunications.com

Cause-related marketing (CRM) offers a uniquely powerful way for non-profits to partner with corporate supporters during difficult economic times. And for those of you struggling to make sense of how to make good use of social media like Facebook, you’ll be happy to know CRM also happens to be a terrific strategy for both businesses and non profits on social networking sites like Facebook.

You can think of CRM as a win-win-win for (1) business, (2) non profits and (3) the non-profit’s beneficiaries.

In this edition of our newsletter I’d like to focus on clarifying our terms to make sure we understand what CRM is and what it is not.

First off, CRM is not marketing aimed at changing societal behavior. So, for example, an MADD radio campaign to reduce drunk driving would not be an example of CRM.

Also, CRM is not a type of corporate philanthropy. Corporate philanthropy generally requires that a business give financial support or in-kind grants to a charity without any expectation of corporate gain in return.

With CRM, a business may have altruistic motives but CRM is expected to positively benefit the business’ bottom line while benefiting a charitable cause in the process.

Let’s look at one early (though not the earliest) example of CRM. It occured in 1983 when American Express partnered with the Statue of Liberty Restoration Project. What’s important to note here to understand the difference between CRM and corporate philanthropy is the non-charitable business impact to American Express’ bottom line.

Put simply, American Express had a business objective of increasing transaction volume and new customer acquisition volume. Its non profit partner, The Statue of Liberty Project, had a charitable objective of ensuring the long-term well being of the Statue of Liberty. In order to accomplish both of these objectives, American Express and the Project chose a CRM strategy in which American Express donated one penny for every transaction and one dollar for every new card issued to new customers.

The result was outstanding for (1) the charity, (2) the business partner’s bottom line, and (3) the many millions of tourists who would later visit the Statue. In only four years, $1.75 million was raised for restoration, new American Express customer applications grew by 45% and customer transaction activity jumped 28%.

This example is one of many that illustrate how CRM has been used for the benefit of both non-profits and their for-profit partners.

NEXT WEEK: An example of a successful online CRM campaign using Facebook.

Photo Credit: charity: water by Julia Roy

The post In A Tough Economy, Non Profits Should Try Cause-Related Marketing appeared first on VMR.

In A Tough Economy, Non Profits Should Try Cause-Related Marketing

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I was hoping I could tout the wonders of Facebook Causes for small and mid sized businesses in their cause-related marketing efforts. Not so fast. The post Facebook Causes: Don’t Forget Main Street appeared first on VMR. Facebook Causes: Don’t Forget Main Street was first posted on March 25, 2011 at 6:30 pm.©2015 “VMR”. Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at hugh@vmrcommunications.com

I have to admit, I was frustrated. Very frustrated.

As a consultant who advises small and mid sized organizations, I was really hoping I could tout the wonders of Facebook Causes for small and mid sized businesses in their cause-related marketing efforts during my upcoming presentation at the Central Wisconsin Social Media Conference and in general when I advise SMBs.

I really took seriously Causes supposed embrace of the notion of equal-opportunity giving.

To quote from the Causes’ app description:

This line in particular made me sure Facebook Causes would be the perfect tool for businesses with limited resources:

All of that is true. But it hides a disturbing fact:

Small and mid-sized businesses, precisely because of their smaller budgets, do not typically have anywhere close to the financial resources required (usually a minimum of $10,000) if they want to start a cause.

Jake mentioned that there are other Facebook apps out there for small business that are useful.

And that too is true.

But why should small business have to think smaller than the 100+ million users who currently use the Facebook Causes app? Why not create a turn-key solution (that would not cost a fortune for Causes developers to customize for each campaign as they do with the big brands) for small and mid-sized business to create true equal opportunity on Causes?

I really hope Causes will consider working with those of us in the small biz community who want to tap into the growing number of smaller businesses on Facebook who can and want to make a world of difference with what I believe is the best tool on the market – Facebook Causes.

The challenge is providing a solution that is profitable for Facebook Causes (which is actually a for-profit company) as well.

I believe that’s possible.  It will require some creative thinking on the part of Causes, the small business community and individuals like myself who admire their work and believe in dreaming big by acting…

….small.

Photo credit: “Main Street Vs. Wall Street” by   Eric Ortner of   Ortner Graphics

The post Facebook Causes: Don’t Forget Main Street appeared first on VMR.

Facebook Causes: Don’t Forget Main Street

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