We’ve done our share of sounding the alarm lately, from Roger’s post highlighting 23 changes necessary for the future of the sector, to my alert that we could lose more than half our donors in the next decade, to the need for new acquisition approaches.

The TL;DR version is that we need to find new ways to bring new people into philanthropy lest individual giving fade away.

Thankfully, there is at least one area where giving has increased: cause-related marketing, now a $2 billion industry in the United States.

“Wait!”  I hear you cry through your WiFi connection.  (That’s why you shouldn’t use “Monkey123” as your password.)  “Cause-related marketing isn’t really philanthropy.”

You are, of course, right.  When someone buys a product and a portion of the proceeds go to a nonprofit, it’s a small fraction of the purchase price, usually in line with what the company would have spent in marketing to secure the sale.  The ur-example of this is Amazon Smile, where you can get .5% of a person’s Amazon purchases donated.  Now Amazon has thousands of nonprofits running ads for them – if you had a nickel for every Amazon Smile Facebook post or tweet from a nonprofit, well, you wouldn’t need .5% anymore.

For most, it’s a win-win-win: the consumer feels good; the for-profit gets the sale; the nonprofit gets some passive or relatively passive income.

But there’s still some opportunity left on the table.  I’ve taken platforms to task for not sharing donor data with nonprofits and must do likewise here for CRM relationships – the for-profit keeps the givers’ information in most cases.

This is a pity, because people who purchase a product helping a cause are more likely to give in the future (abstract here).  Our win-win-win could have even more win: the consumer could feel even better; the nonprofit could build a relationship with that consumer; and the for-profit could be a part of ongoing communications, extending their brand value.

Or, if that’s not enough benefit for the for-profit, wouldn’t you take less of a cut of the transaction in order to be able to talk with consumers who obviously care for your cause?  There would have to be serious negotiations on how you would communicate with these donors, but a cultivative communication stream based on consent and learning about that individual’s preferences and identity could but help all parties.

There’s a strong chance that your corporate partners will balk at this.  It’s new.  It relies on them giving up a bit of control.  And, since you want to retain the corporate partner, you won’t push.  I’ve managed these relationships and know how delicate they can be.

So what if you became your own corporate partner?  Recall the example of SCOPE and Mindful Monsters we discussed a few months ago:

“SCOPE faced … a significant loss of donor file with GPDR.  They identified mothers as their key donor identity.  But rather than asking them for donations over and over, they created something of value for those mums: Mindful Monster cards.

These are family activity cards that help kids get the benefits of mindfulness training.  Each month, the mothers would get a park of seven activity cards with playful monsters on them for kids.  This is available for a £7.5 monthly donation – a true give-to-get proposition.

They are finding that donors who come in through Mindful Monsters retain nine times better and break-even in half the time.  Ninety-five percent of their supporter base is new in the past 15 months since the launch.   More about the “how: is available here.”

This product gave Scope a year’s worth of communication to build trust and affinity for their organization even if the consumer was tepid at the beginning.

Donors will not fall like manna from heaven.  We must create the next generation.  Thankfully, there are some people raising their hands with their product purchases.  It’s up to us to try to capture the willing subset of these folks for greater philanthropy, whether in the current cause-related marketing structure or going out on our own.

Nick