Charities Urged to Do Better Job of Pitching Marketing Deals to Companies

The amount of money charities raise through marketing arrangements with companies has grown steadily, to nearly $1-billion last year, according to IEG, a Chicago research group. But some charities still do not know how to effectively pitch deals that provide revenue from product sales, sponsorships, and other sources, said speakers here last month at the American Marketing Association’s Nonprofit Marketing Conference.

Too many charities still fail to get in touch with a company’s chief marketing officer, relying instead on someone at the company’s foundation, said Nadine O. Vogel, president of Springboard Consulting in Short Hills, N.J. But working with multiple people at a business and making sure they understand the charity’s work will result in increased corporate dollars and help ensure long-term company support, she said.

Ms. Vogel suggested requesting a copy of a company’s strategic plan and creating a proposal illustrating how a nonprofit organization can help with one or more goals in that plan.

Charity officials don’t want to think of themselves as salespeople, Ms. Vogel said, but that is exactly how they need to act to convince companies that they can help boost corporate profits and reach potential customers.

Cindy Schneible, vice president of cause marketing at the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, in Dallas, described how her organization has expanded its marketing deals from its relationship with one corporate sponsor in 1989 to the more than 50 businesses now involved in promoting the charity and generating about $33-million annually.

The cancer group’s success is partly due to companies’ interest in reaching people in the cities and towns where the charity holds its fund-raising events, Ms. Schneible said.

With the charity’s annual five-kilometer Race for the Cure, which started in 1983, she said, companies are able to get their names and products in front of consumers who appreciate the companies’ support of charitable efforts that benefit their hometowns. Ms. Schneible noted that 75 percent of the proceeds from a local race go to fight breast cancer in the city that held the event and the remaining 25 percent goes to breast-cancer research.

Ms. Schneible also encouraged charities not to be shy about starting new, potentially lucrative deals, saying that her group in 1996 expanded its efforts to go beyond getting race sponsors.

In addition to the marketing deals tied to the local races, Ms. Schneible pointed to another effort, now in its 10th year, that raised about $8-million for the group last year. As part of the organization’s Lee National Denim Day, companies across the country collected $5 apiece from employees who wore jeans to work and provided the money to the breast-cancer charity. Lee Jeans paid for all of the advertising and marketing efforts surrounding the day-long event, including securing celebrity spokesmen from the television show Desperate Housewives.

To prove that marketing deals with charities can help companies reach potential buyers and achieve their other goals, Ms. Schneible suggested conducting a poll of donors to see if they participate in corporate efforts to promote charity and what they think of those activities. A poll of more than 700 donors to the breast-cancer group, Ms. Schneible said, found that more than 90 percent participated in one or more of its marketing campaigns.

Too few charities use their board members to help promote their organizations to companies and other potential donors, said Sam Pettway, director of BoardWalk Consulting, an Atlanta firm that helps charities recruit and manage their boards.

Nonprofit groups should do what they can to make it easy for board members to talk about their organization with others, Mr. Pettway said. Some charities, for example, print business cards for board members that list their affiliation with the charity, or another type of card board members can hand out that contains key information about the nonprofit organization. Charity leaders, he added, can ask trustees to state that they are a board member in their e-mail signature.

Mr. Pettway suggested giving board members an online or other survey that they can complete anonymously. The organization can then assess whether its board members believe they are involved in promoting the charity and determine steps they can take to get the board more engaged in activities such as reaching out to potential donors or speaking about the charity at local events.

While many nonprofit organizations require board members to contribute a certain amount, most do not stipulate how much time each trustee is expected to give, Mr. Pettway said. He recommended requiring board members to sign a “commitment letter” that, in addition to monetary commitments, requires that time be spent on activities such as conducting site visits, establishing contact with grant makers, and attending fund-raising events.

“Board members are there because they are committed to your cause,” said Mr. Pettway. “If you don’t express your expectations, there is no way you can hold them accountable.”

Advocacy organizations that deal with controversial issues often think they cannot get corporate support — but they can do so if they are careful to avoid getting the companies involved in one side of a conflict, said Donna A. Lopiano, chief executive officer of the Women’s Sports Foundation, in New York.

“Corporations don’t want to risk their brand in a fight,” she said. “They want nice advocacy, not edgy advocacy.”

Ms. Lopiano recommended that charities seeking corporate support refrain from provoking groups on the other side of an issue. For example, when discussing failures of Title IX, a law requiring schools to offer equal sports opportunities for girls and boys, she said that her foundation simply reports statistics showing that sports activities for girls still lag behind those available to boys. “We never call anybody a bad guy,” she said.

When groups do engage in advocacy efforts to promote one side of a controversial issue, Ms. Lopiano recommended that organizations use donations from individuals to pay for it. To make sure they get enough from such donors, she urged charities to regularly review and increase minimum contributions at special events and other fund-raising efforts. She said that charities can sometimes take advantage of a certain amount of competition among people who attend fund-raising events, who may vie for the best tables or the distinction of providing the most support for a cause.

Collaborating with like-minded organizations can expand a campaign’s reach and lend more credibility to the efforts, Ms. Lopiano said. When her organization lobbies on Capitol Hill, she said, it joins with groups like the Girls Scouts of America, Girls, Inc., and the YWCA to represent more girls.

Another way to build support for advocacy and marketing campaigns, Ms. Lopiano said, is by stressing a sense of urgency and positive steps that can be taken to avert a problem. Her foundation’s campaigns to fight obesity and breast cancer include those elements.

In considering a campaign message, she urged charity officials to ask themselves: “Can you make it a healthy response to a crisis?” She added: “The American public doesn’t respond to anything unless it’s a crisis.”