Is Raising Visibility a Waste of Time?

All across America, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, and even preschoolers were dumping buckets of ice water on their heads last month to call attention to the nerve disorder ALS. The charity the phenomenon supported was flooded with a wave of new donors and more than $100-million in gifts.

Now the ALS Association faces the challenge a growing number of nonprofits and their critics are grappling with: When is it time to stop attracting attention to a problem at the center of a charity’s mission—in this particular case, the desire to find a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—and start working to solve it?

That’s not an easy question to answer. Raising money to make the public aware of a rare or widespread disease—or a problem like childhood hunger or climate change—has never been easier or cheaper than it is in the era of social media. Some experts say too many organizations are too reliant on the fundraising bumps that awareness campaigns bring, a short-sighted strategy aimed more at ensuring the financial health of a charity than advancing the overall cause.

The questions are being raised as drives to win attention proliferate. Nearly 100 groups have formed ribbon campaigns to make the public aware of various causes. The trend began in earnest in the mid-1980s, with red ribbons designed to express support for AIDS patients, and the ease and relatively low cost of such appeals on social media has accelerated the use of the approach.

Laments Brian Reich, a marketing consultant who has worked for groups like the American Red Cross, Feeding America, and Planned Parenthood: “What’s the next ice-bucket challenge? Will it be bungee jumping for cleft palates? It’s crazy.”

Awareness Not Enough

The large number of campaigns aimed heavily at boosting awareness worries people like Mr. Reich, who fear that charities have become addicted to the approach, sometimes to the long-term detriment of their causes.

“Awareness does not solve complex problems,” he says. “If we know that—and I think we do—why are we concentrating so much on it?”

“There’s more to solving problems than running your organization or getting people to like you,” he adds. “What the nonprofit world needs is not more awareness. It needs more disruptive ideas,” more fresh solutions to old, nagging problems.

Beyond the concern that awareness-oriented campaigns deflect attention and money away from solving real problems, some researchers have begun to conclude that such drives provide mostly short-term financial benefit without doing much lasting good, either for a cause or the organization that pushes it.

Research conducted at the University of Michigan, the University of Southern California, and elsewhere has found that when people are subjected to repeated messages designed to raise awareness, they are less responsive than they might otherwise be and are likely to give less to the sponsoring charities. Other studies have shown that people who buy products whose sales benefit charities tend to be less inclined to donate later to those groups.

What’s more, researchers have found, identifying your charity as one aimed at raising awareness isn’t a good strategy once donors learn more about the cause. When people receive information from different charities devoted to the same disease, studies have found, they are much more likely to donate to an organization working to prevent the disease than to one focused mainly on raising awareness. “People tend to think that charities that work to raise, say, breast-cancer awareness don’t need their help,” says Robert Smith, an assistant professor of marketing at Ohio State University. “They see that as something that is well known and not in need of their donation.”

Researchers have also found that people sometimes align themselves with a charitable cause without donating to it. “They may be wearing pink bracelets not necessarily to support breast-cancer research but as social signifiers to make themselves look socially conscious or as a way to make themselves look like a good person,” says Mr. Smith.

Push for Action

Some critics of the proliferation of awareness efforts are so frustrated they say it’s time for some groups to go out of business.

Charities that draw attention to breast cancer, for example, have raised billions of dollars to fight the disease. But a cure remains elusive, says Joyce Bichler, deputy director of Breast Cancer Action, an advocacy group that focuses on the causes of cancer, such as environmental toxins.

Groups devoted primarily to raising awareness, she suggests, waste time, money, and effort by repeating a stale message to the public.

“Who isn’t aware of breast cancer? Who’s been living under that rock all these years?” she asks. “Awareness for awareness’ sake is meaningless now. We need to turn all that awareness into action. We need to push for ways to prevent this disease and come up with better treatments.”

Looking Inward

Several organizations that have grown big focusing on awareness say they are now more sensitive to criticism and have made some changes in how they run campaigns. For instance, Komen and the American Cancer Society have come under scrutiny in recent years for emphasizing awareness while reducing the share of their donations they give to medical research.

Two years ago, American Cancer was accused of donating too little—about 5 percent—to breast-cancer research from the proceeds raised during a campaign held jointly with the National Football League.

Both groups say they are directing more of their efforts today toward reaching those who face lower survival rates from the disease, by offering cancer screening to low-income and minority people, for example. At a recent event in rural South Carolina sponsored by Komen to aid detection, several women were found to have breast cancer, including one whose illness was in an advanced stage.

“Some of them may have heard that ‘pink’ means breast cancer, but what they need to know more about is how we can help them with the disease,” says Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman at Susan G. Komen. “We have to keep reaching out.”

Still, she says, she understands the concerns of people who are critical of awareness drives.

“It’s an expression of the frustration we all feel when dealing with a disease like cancer,” says Ms. Rader. “It’s difficult to cure, is very complex to diagnose and treat, and it takes a lot of money to move all that along. You really can’t blame people for being impatient.”

For the American Cancer Society, emphasizing services means making sure people know, for instance, that the charity will provide free lodging and transportation for cancer patients while they undergo treatment.

“Awareness needs to lead to engagement to be worth anything,” says Hilary Noon, vice president for consumer insight and experience at the American Cancer Society. “We apply our awareness funds much more toward engaging the underserved.”

Responding to Change

Other groups have also expanded their focus to go well beyond drawing attention to their cause.

Since its founding in 1980, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, has helped cut in half the number of drunk-driving fatalities in the United States, to around 10,000 people per year.

It did so largely by informing lawmakers, the press, and the public about the problem, says Amy George, a senior vice president at the organization. The persuasion campaign helped push real-world progress on the issue: In the 1980s, several states enacted tougher drunk-driving laws; in 1984, Congress passed a law that forced states to raise their legal drinking age to 21 or lose federal highway funds.

More recently, MADD has spearheaded campaigns highlighting underage drinking and pressed auto manufacturers to make car ignitions inaccessible to inebriated motorists. But the charity spends very little money on awareness campaigns these days, in part because public knowledge of the problem has grown.

The organization has changed its strategies for reducing drunk-driving accidents four times over the years, Ms. George says. During each change, the group has weighed the value of its awareness work against its advocacy efforts and the quality of the services it offers victims and their families.

“There are many factors for a board to consider, including how the environment has changed” regarding awareness-raising, says Ms. George. “Awareness can only take an issue so far.”

New Audiences

Still, for causes that are little known or lack a strong base of public support, increasing awareness remains critical.

“Awareness is what drives research funding, which is the only way we can cure difficult diseases,” says Julie Fleshman, president of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, which was founded in 1999. The organization plans to kick off a nationwide campaign to raise awareness about the deadly disease in November.

“If you can raise the dollars, then you have to use them to tackle the hard issues,” she says. “But you need both—money and an intelligent strategy.”

And other groups continue to focus on attracting visibility because they believe that even though a cause may be well publicized, the message may not have reached all who need to hear it. Young people who have not yet learned about the dangers of impaired driving, for example, could still benefit from messages from MADD.

Other charities seek to convey their messages deeper into far-flung corners of society.

The It Gets Better Project, for instance, uses testimonial videos to comfort bullied teenagers, including young gay people. Its cause has gained more attention in recent years, but it still sees plenty of need for its work, says Ted Farley, the project’s executive director.

“There’s a general feeling that things have gotten better for people who’ve been bullied, or that there is less need for awareness or advocacy for this group of people. But we hear something different when we get away from big cities with saturated media markets,” says Mr. Farley.

“People in small towns who find our message online tell us they still need to hear it.”

For the ALS Association, the viral popularity of the ice-bucket challenge means it might not have to choose between paying for research and spreading awareness: It can afford to do both generously. “We want to fund research that will move the needle on this disease,” says Barbara Newhouse, the group’s chief executive.

But the charity will also continue to highlight its message. About half of Americans didn’t know anything about ALS before people started pouring ice water over their heads, she notes, reason enough to keep getting the word out.

“We’re in the process now of figuring out how to leverage all this awareness,” says Ms. Newhouse. “Maybe we’ll do a PSA campaign to keep awareness high.”