Inger Stole at the Center for Media and Democracy offers a thought-provoking piece entitled “Questioning CRM: Social Causes and Marketing Don’t Mix.” She discusses the pros and cons of cause-related marketing, which is when a business and a nonprofit link up to bring attention and/or fundraising to a good cause while generating goodwill (and often profits) to the corporate partner. I consider this area of marketing separate from social marketing, which is behavior change-focused and generally does not have the ultimate goal of profiting a corporate entity (though a corporation may provide the funding for a social marketing campaign).
Inger describes seven main types of CRM arrangements (she actually says there are six, so perhaps two of these are supposed to be listed together?):
- Advertising, where a business aligns itself with a particular cause and uses ads to communicate the cause’s message;
- Public relations, where a business calls press and public attention to a strategic partnership between itself and a non-profit group;
- Sponsorship, where a business helps fund a particular program or event;
- Licensing, where a business pays to use a charity logo on its products or services;
- Direct marketing, where both a business and a non-profit raise funds and promote brand awareness;
- Facilitated giving, where a business facilitates customer donations to the charity … or to themselves! [e.g., under the guise of helping other low income utility customers pay their bills]; and
- Purchase-triggered
donations, where a company pledges to contribute a percentage
or set amount of a product’s price to a charitable cause or
organizations.
While CRM would seem to be a win-win situation, Inger provides plenty of reasons for caution by nonprofits entering into a cause marketing relationship. They include:
- CRM partnerships are often far from equal, with the business that is providing the funding holding most of the power in the relationship.
- Benefactors of CRM campaigns generally shy away from any issue that might be controversial or not sufficiently publicity-worthy.
- Some companies tie their identities so closely with their CRM efforts that they appear to be a nonprofit themselves (e.g., Working Assets – the “socially responsible long distance telephone and credit card company”)
- The implied endorsement of a particular product or company by a nonprofit may end up being harmful to the nonprofit (e.g., the American Medical Association and the Sunbeam Corp.)
- A company may use CRM to mask problems that they are directly or indirectly responsible for.
- The nonprofit sector may become nothing more than a marketing tool for business, and so dependent upon these types of relationships that they alter their approaches and services to become more attractive CRM partners.
While Inger raises some important ethical and social issues that nonprofits need to consider before entering into a cause marketing partnership, I think her title “Social Causes and Marketing Don’t Mix” is a little too alarmist (especially speaking as a social marketer for whom social causes and marketing absolutely mix). When nonprofits and public agencies build a partnership with a corporate entity based on strategic considerations, albeit without entering into it blindly, this can be an excellent way to reach new audiences and shape their own brands. It is up to them to take these issues into consideration and decide whether the relationship would actually be brilliant or whether it would turn out to be horribly misguided.
Nedra helps nonprofits and public agencies create positive change on health and social issues through social marketing and transmedia storytelling strategies at Weinreich Communications since founding the company in 1995. She helps organizations make a difference for the populations they serve by strategically designing programs that draw on state-of-the-art behavior change techniques, digital media approaches and the power of stories. 
