Cute and Lucrative
Sidebar to "Crisis Mentality:" some species attract donors more than others.
Sidebar to "Crisis Mentality:" some species attract donors more than others.
How one nonprofit uses an NFL team’s celebrity to improve poor children’s eyesight - and life chances.
Why nonprofits should do their homework before communicating with the public.
Nonprofits do not use -- and often don't want -- for-profit marketing techniques.
How nonprofits can distinguish themselves from for-profits by using their unique brand attributes.
Despite spending vast amounts of money and helping to create the world’s largest nonprofit sector, philanthropists have fallen far short of solving America’s most pressing problems. What the nation needs is “catalytic philanthropy”—a new approach that is already being practiced by some of the most innovative donors.
Two veterans of consumer psychology, marketing, and entrepreneurship provide a guide to using social media for social change.
From pink ribbons to Product Red, cause marketing adroitly serves two masters, earning profits for corporations while raising funds for charities. Yet the short-term benefits of cause marketing—also known as consumption philanthropy—belie its long-term costs. These hidden costs include individualizing solutions to collective problems; replacing virtuous action with mindless buying; and hiding how markets create many social problems in the first place. Consumption philanthropy is therefore unsuited to create real social change.
Consumers say they want to buy ecologically friendly products and reduce their impact on the environment. But when they get to the cash register, their Earth-minded sentiments die on the vine. Although individual quirks underlie some of this hypocrisy, businesses can do a lot more to help would-be green consumers turn their talk into walk.
mPowering has created an app that awards goods and services to individuals facing extreme poverty when they make beneficial choices.