geoff livingston

It depends on what you’re trying to achieve by having a spokesperson represent your issue.

Many nonprofit organizations have enlisted celebrities to help them not only to raise awareness about a specific issue, but also to support their organization’s fundraising efforts. I bet you can name a few without even having to think twice—there’s Marlo Thomas for St. Jude’s Children Hospital, Heidi Klum for The Heart Truth campaign, and Ryan Gosling who worked earlier this year with the ENOUGH Project.

For some, integrating a celebrity into your promotional model is par for the course—but should it be? While these A-list celebrities certainly draw attention to an issue, just how effective are they when it comes to enlisting the support of donors online?

Today, Geoff Livingston and Henry T. Dunbar of Zoetica released a white paper focusing on the effectiveness of celebrity spokespeople in social fundraisers. The report looked at the effectiveness of a number of online fundraising campaigns for nonprofits—including both those that did and did not— involve high-profile celebrities. 

They concluded that a celebrity “presence” does not always guarantee that a fundraising initiative will be successful. Rather, bringing on board lesser known celebrities and “weblebrities” can often times be more effective in connecting with donors. The key differences for the more successful, but less well known celebrities included the fact that they had: a personal and relevant story related to the cause; a willingness to engage and be active with the community focused on that particular issue; and an authentic tie to the cause.

The authors also found that while integration of a celebrity spokesperson can help galvanize a community around an issue, getting a star’s fans and followers to commit to a particular call-to-action—such as donating—is not always a guarantee.

“Nonprofits have turned to their celebrity partners with fans and followers in the millions to raise money. The numbers can be astounding, both positively and negatively. Save the Children just ran a celebrity campaign on social media with the likes of Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber that raised $100,000 in the first day. However, deeper analysis showed the fundraiser achieved $0.0001 per celebrity follower.”

In addition, the 2011 Millennial Donor survey (conducted by Achieve and Johnson, Grossnickle and Associates) found that for Millennials specifically, 85% responded that they are “motivated to give by a compelling mission or cause, and 56% by a personal connection or trust in the leadership of the organization.” Not surprisingly when compared to the findings from this white paper, “only 2% of Millennials were motivated to give by celebrity endorsements.”

Katya Andresen, Chief Strategy Officer of Network for Good offered Livingston and Dunbar three factors to consider when assessing whether or not a celebrity presence could help promote social fundraising efforts:

• Does the spokesperson have a personal story related to the issue?
• Does the spokesperson have a tight knit community that interacts with them?
• Can the spokesperson be considered an authentic messenger who can deliver issue related messages?

Similarly, the white paper offers suggestions for what a nonprofit manager should consider before integrating a celebrity component into their social fundraising campaign.

• Does the celebrity have a personal connections and authentic passion for the cause?
• Does the celebrity spokesperson demonstrate a willingness to ask their personal friends to become involved, and not just their public?
• Welcome the non-traditional celebrity and consider those who are avid users of social media or who have large/strong social networks

Livingston and Dunbar’s ultimate conclusion is that “the best results do not come from the most well-known celebrities and bloggers, but the most engaged ones.” Taking a page from more traditional fundraising techniques that focus on the creation of relationships, the authors conclude that in order for socially driven fundraising efforts be successful, they too must focus on the building of relationships.

Whether or not you get Lady Gaga to do a public service announcement or Justin Beiber to make an appearance at your next fundraiser—real success for any organization’s fundraising and mobilization efforts will come from connections with the creation and cultivation of relationships.

What techniques for online and socially driven fundraising have you used or seen? Have you ever engaged a celebrity spokesperson to help your nonprofit? If so, what lessons learned can you share?

At the Case Foundation we believe strongly in taking risks, pushing the envelope and experimenting with technology in order to better understand how it can be leveraged for social good. Yesterday was an experiment in all of these things as we opened the “virtual” doors to the Millennial Donor Summit.

Conducted exclusively online, the conference set out to engage some of the most forward thinking voices in Millennial giving and engagement. We will be sharing a lot of take-aways from our event, both in terms of sharing the rich content and discussions that came out of the sessions, as well as the logistical back end work involved with conducting an online convening.

Our thanks go out to all who made the day a success -- our speakers, our participants from across the country who tuned in from coffee shops, conference rooms and hotel lobbies, and of course, to our partners at Achieve and JGA.

Here’s a quick round up of some of the stories and posts from around the web that covered the event and discussion topics. And the conversation continues on Twitter using the hashtag #MDS11.

• How To Get Fire in Your Organization’s Belly: Key Insight from the Millennial Donor Summit (Beth’s Blog)

• 7 things I learned about Millennial Engagement from Mr. Youth (Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog)

• Live blogging from the 2011 Millennial Donor Summit: Exploring the Latest Millennial Research (Amy Sample Ward's Version of NPTech Blog)

• A fireside chat with Jean Case at #MDS11 (Nonprofit Nate)
• Microvolunteering: Small Jobs on Your Own Time #mds11 (Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog)

• Live blogging from the 2011 Millennial Donor Summit: The Generational Divide (Panel Discussion) (NTEN)

• Philanthropy’s Community: Observers, Fans, Evangelists & Ambassadors (Tactical Philanthropy)

• Applying Social Storytelling to Strategic Online Fundraising (Geoff Livingston)

If you missed out on the Summit, don’t worry – you can still catch all the action by registering for post-Summit access to all of the videos on www.mdsummit11.com.

Since my recent post encouraging would-be nonprofit founders to think again before converting their passion and ideas into a 501(c)3, I have been excited to see the great conversation around this issue. Thanks to everyone who has weighed in thoughtfully on entrepreneurship, innovation and replication - those who gave me an amen, gave me a strong rebuttal and, last but not least, gave me a raise. Since this issue seems to have struck such a nerve and it's not as black and white as to found or not to found, I think there's still more conversation to be had about how we can achieve a balance that benefits society.

Geoff Livingston suggests rather than discouraging entrepreneurs, who we're not going to be able to stop anyway, we should help them be successful by providing education and resources. That was my thought with suggesting people pursue incubation or fellowship programs - so that new ideas and models can flourish with help - but the existing programs obviously will not accommodate all the innovators ready to start up. I agree that smart innovation and unique entrepreneurial ways of addressing social problems makes the sector stronger and keeps established organizations on their toes by challenging the status quo. But can we encourage the social innovators we need while redirecting people who have passion and ideas, but who would be more effective as part of an existing initiative?

I will also concede Colleen Dilenschneider's point that even if the new nonprofits fail, there's nothing like hands on experience to teach leaders what it means to run an organization. She cites a 2006 Bridgespan Group study, which says the upcoming leadership deficit in the nonprofit sector will require about 640,000 new senior managers in the next 10 years. No doubt experienced young people will be in high demand. But is there another way these Millennial leaders can capture this learning experience without spending charitable dollars to no other end than knowledge of how to do it better next time?

My colleague Eric Johnson added his thoughts as well, comparing the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. He suggests that as a nonprofit startup, it can be more difficult to know if you're making progress because we don't have great established metrics for success, market valuation, and other mechanisms of the for-profit world. And while many nonprofit leaders are starting to recognize that you have to treat donors like consumers, the structure is complicated because the people who are funding your work are often different, and may have different interests than, the people you are serving.

So what are some possible solutions? As Geoff and I talked more about it, we tossed around one idea. If nonprofits are charged with looking after the social health of our communities, like doctors are charged with looking after our physical health, why shouldn't nonprofit leaders have to be certified to operate? If we require something more of doctors than just a desire to make us well, should we require something more of nonprofit executives than just a desire to make a difference? People have to get licenses to do our taxes, to drive our cabs, to cut our hair, and apparently to collect our rags (see photo), but we are going to give them our extra income without having any guarantee they know how to use it effectively to make the world a better place?

In an ideal world, we would all do thorough research to see how effective organizations are before we give our hard-earned money to them, but the reality is most of us don't. The average person does not have Guidestar bookmarked and is not motivated to break his piggybanks because he sees a tightly run NGO. We don't check nonprofits' 990s, what executive salaries are or how much goes to overhead. Research has indicated that including that financial information in an appeal actually makes donors less likely to give than if they receive an emotional appeal alone.

I know increased regulation sounds like a big Debbie Downer, but it can protect and benefit both donors and nonprofit founders. Is it better in the long run if someone spends two years in a program learning how to run a successful nonprofit than if they spend two years wasting money and time, jumping in before they're ready? If we have a nonprofit version of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg, who have all achieved amazing success and benefitted society without even a college degree, it may not serve us to delay their brilliant innovations, so exceptions would have to be made, but most people fit the rule and not the exception. Maybe a license requirement is just another roadblock, but it's helped me to trust my dentist, my accountant and my stylist as professionals. I think we should brainstorm and consider ways to help steer and encourage people with entrepreneurial passion and ideas toward the smartest choices and the greatest social good.