Who Should Pay for Cause Marketing Expenses?

On his Selfish Giving blog, Joe Waters posed the question: Who Should Pay for Cause Marketing Expenses?
http://selfishgiving.com/cause-practices/who-should-pay-for-cause-marketing-expenses

My response was too long for his comment section so I'm posting it here.


Joe, thanks for posting this discussion!

Thinking this was another case of someone not realizing that it takes money to raise money, I went back to the original article in the NYT. It appears that the author understands charities have expenses related to raising funds so they can do good work. Rather this appears to be a request for transparency. And, I hear the same request in Jen's comment on your blog.

If a company supporting a cause has expenses for their part of the cause marketing, those expenses are coming from someone in the company budget ... whether the marketing budget, PR budget or the company's foundation.

Like you, we have not charged our corporate sponsors any "entry fees" and have assumed most of the costs as part of the charity's fund-raising expenses.

And, like you, I have heard that some of the "big brand charities" do charge upfront "participation" fees (sometimes in the form of a minimum donation). None of the charities we manage are in that category.

In fact, when FedEx initially approached the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation about supporting the Trees for Troops (www.treesfortroops.org) program, they asked if we expected an upfront fee. Since this was our first major corporate sponsor, I really debated before answering that "while we would love an upfront cash donation, it was not required." I later learned that had the upfront donation been a requirement, FedEx would not have become a corporate partner. And, this week and next, FedEx Freight and the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation are touching the lives of another 16,000 military families by delivering them a free farm-grown Christmas tree.

Back to your key point: someone pays the expenses. If not the company supporting the cause, then the charity itself. Either way, we the consumer/donor are ultimately paying. As David says, we just hope there is plenty of transparency and wise use of the funds (e.g., keeping expenses low) to benefit the real mission of the charity.

Steve (@causeaholic)