Non-Profit Marketing

Donate to me! Donate to me! There. We just did non-profit marketing. Or rather, that would be non-profit marketing, if we were, in fact, non-profit. Or rather, intentionally non-profit. Yeah, education doesn’t pay all that well these days.

Anyway, non-profit marketing has come under enormous fire of late, mainly because so little money collected by marketing firms actually reaches the coffers of the saving-the-child-from-cancer-in-Africa-after-the-flood-before-the-warlords-come.

A marketing firm goes to a given non-profit and says, “Hey. We like you. We believe in your cause. Uh…what was that cause again? Oh yeah. Great cause. Anyway…we think that by advertising on late night TV and putting out a bunch of banner ads with a cute kid, labeling them as dying or sick or abused, whether they are or aren’t, we could get a lot of poor saps, er, um, nice, well-meaning people to donate. Whaddya say?”

Well, the non-profit is poor. They have no dough. So if someone comes along asking for no capital and offering a chance to make money, why wouldn’t the-non profit just go along with it? The deal the marketing firm cuts with the non-profit is that the marketing firm will front the $3 million for a first media buy. They then agree to distribute back to the non-profit half of the, um, profits.

Then things get dicey. The $3 million campaign brings in $5 million. So then the marketing firm gets a million and the non-profit gets a million? Is that how it works?

Well, no. The marketing firm has operating expenses. The $3 million buy just bought TV ads and some internet banner ads. There’s their office. And overhead. And insurance. And that corporate retreat with the nice steak dinners for everyone. And and and. So tack on another $1.5 million in expenses. There’s 500 grand left now. That’s the part that gets split 50/50. So the non-profit did, in fact, get 250 grand. But that was after, um “leveraging” their usually good work to bring in $5 million.

Fair? Not fair?

Well, a bunch of reporters followed the chicanery in this mini-industry and wrote about it and angered a lot of would-be donors. So now a bunch of decent honest efforts are ignored….the baby thrown out with the bath water.

Difficult space, tough ethics. Bottom line: figure out where the money goes if you do decide to donate. Otherwise, it’s usually hard to go wrong, donating to your university. We suggest their English Departments, please. We need more lowly paid writers here at Shmoop.