Marketing Deals Shouldn’t Be Child’s Play

Print and television advertisements for the office-supply chain Office Depot now carry the imprimatur of the National P.T.A., which describes itself as “the oldest and largest volunteer association working exclusively on behalf of children and youth.” Meanwhile, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, which has a similar mission, is pushing Coca-Cola at 2,000 of its clubs around the country.

Both organizations received significant fees for their deals. The P.T.A. won’t reveal the exact amount of what it got, but the Boys & Girls Clubs boasted that its deal is worth $60-million to the charity, as though to taunt those organizations that didn’t strike such a deal first.

For both the P.T.A. and the Boys & Girls Clubs, the question of whether such marketing deals with companies are a good thing seems to have been answered. As Kurt Aschermann, senior vice-president for marketing at Boys & Girls Clubs of America, puts it, “The debate is over on whether ‘cause-related marketing’ is a good thing or not. Those standing back are going to watch the world march right on by.”

And indeed, the world does seem to be marching by. Across the country, more and more charities are allowing corporations to cash in on their good names. While Mr. Aschermann and his counterparts may think they have discovered the elusive philosopher’s stone, however, such deals look to me more like fool’s gold than the real thing.

Consider the Boys & Girls Clubs’ deal with Coca-Cola. As most parents know, the combination of sugar and caffeine contained in Coca-Cola not only has little or no nutritional value but also is a contributing cause to hyperactivity among young children. And The New York Times recently wrote about a study on caffeine withdrawal, conducted by the University of Minnesota Medical School, that found that when children stop their cola intake cold turkey, their academic performance plummets and stays that way for at least a week.

Is Coke really a product with which the Boys & Girls Clubs wants to be associated? The mission of the organization, supposedly, is to protect the interests of young people. But as a result of the deal, it appears to many observers as if the Boys & Girls Clubs is prepared to sell its program — and its children — to the highest bidder.

In their compulsion to find new and different ways to raise money, non-profit groups in ever-growing numbers seem to be willing to say that the good that they do is sufficient reason to justify any kind of deal or arrangement that brings in the money. The ends, in other words, justify the means.

How else can one explain the plethora of non-profit groups entering questionable sponsorship deals, or those willing to become part of the scam of donated vehicles, for which the donor gets a ridiculously high tax deduction for his worthless clunker and the non-profit usually gets little or nothing? Most charities now seem willing to accept the argument that since it’s money they wouldn’t have gotten any other way, it’s a plus for the cause.

My quarrel is not with Coca-Cola or the other companies seeking to increase their market share; in fact, I applaud their good business sense. Coca-Cola’s deal with the Boys & Girls Clubs gets them a $60-million business write-off, the public applauds them for helping the youth clubs, they now have access to thousands of customers trained to drink Coke with the approval of Boys & Girls Clubs, and Coke has hooked those kids on caffeine.

But how far are non-profit groups willing to go in search of arrangements like the one Boys & Girls Clubs has with Coke? Charities seem to have given up on philanthropy and are now in a race to see which one can make the best marketing deal.

One can imagine the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts contacting Pepsi-Cola and asking for $70-million to push Pepsi products at the scouts’ clubs, or the Boys & Girls Clubs trying to negotiate a deal with a candy manufacturer. Perhaps, even, a non-profit children’s group is waiting in the wings ready to strike a deal with a cigarette manufacturer. No, we probably haven’t reached that point yet, but in a world in which the line between charities and businesses is already blurry, the fact that many large charities are willing to become the marketing arms of big business is not good for the non-profit world.

Despite many charities’ conviction that the debate on cause marketing is over, some people still believe that marketing and philanthropy are not compatible. As the late author and esteemed fund raiser Maury Gurin wrote, cause-related marketing “commercializes and degrades so much of what is altruistic and priceless in the voluntary sector.”

The consumer advocate Ralph Nader, among many others, is deeply concerned about the trend toward harmful, immoral, or intrusive commercialism in homes, schools, and communities across the country. This month, he founded the organization Commercial Alert to help families defend themselves against such excesses.

To be sure, there is no way that any group or combination of individuals is going to bring non-profit marketing to a screeching halt. But at least charities should set standards for marketing that don’t compromise the ethical integrity of their causes. It does not profit a worthwhile program to gain corporate dollars while losing sight of its mission.

Irving Warner, author of The Art of Fund Raising and a fund-raising consultant in Los Angeles, is a regular contributor to these pages. His e-mail address is irwarner@earthlink.net.