I’ve been talking to a lot of people about the difference between transactional cause marketing and transformative cause marketing. I’ve concluded that I’m not being very clear on the difference and need this post as much as the people who ask me to explain it to them.

I did what I usually do when I don’t understand something: I talked to someone smarter than I am. In this case, someone A LOT smarter: Kristian Darigan Merenda, Senior Vice President of Business + Social Purpose at Edelman. Kristian is also one of the four talented women, including my cause marketing “mom” Carol Cone and Jocelyne Daw, who co-authored my favorite book on cause marketing: Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding.

At an airport restaurant in Cleveland between flights she explained the difference to me on two napkins. Unbeknownst to Kristian, she wiped her mouth on the back of one so so I guess I have her DNA if I ever need to clone her. Added bonus.

Here’s the back of the napkin explanation.

Everything I need to know about cause marketing on two napkins. I may frame them.

What is Transactional Cause Marketing?

Transactional cause marketing is a marketing strategy that’s defined by:

• One-off promotions that are generally reactive to opportunities in the marketplace.
• First generation partnerships that have a short promotional cycle.
• Single platform programs.
• Dominance of transactions over relationships to maximize immediate giving.
• Promotions that aren’t central to or defined by the brands of either partner.
• Primary goal is to raise money and build awareness for the nonprofit partner.

Thanks to everyone who came out to my presentation today! It was fun.

Here’s a copy of my presentation.

Remember, you can join Hubspot and me on Thursday at 1pm for  a FREE webinar on how to use inbound marketing (blogging, social media, SEO) to recruit more sponsors and corporate partners.

Here’s my case for why inbound marketing is critical for causes.

Here are some other resources that will further your learning from today.

What is Cause Marketing?

A Primer on Pinups

I spoke of Maggie Keenan and her new cause marketing program with KFC and Dairy Queen. This is a great example of local cause marketing.

Lots of great examples of purchase and action triggered donations in my latest post on “pinktober” promotions. Here’s a recent example of action-triggered cause marketing for Halloween!

Here’s a link to a great program by the Ellie Fund, a Boston-based organization.

Brendan had a question on text messaging for cause marketing. Here the post I spoke of.

I talked about Massage Envy & The Arthritis Foundation and how to choose a cause for cause marketing. Check 0ut this post.

I just finished putting together an updated list of cause marketing resources you should check out.

Are you interested in mobile cause marketing. You’ll enjoy these two posts on Give.mobi.

Let me know if you have any questions. Also, if you are specifically interested in using point of sale/pinups in your next cause marketing promotion, consider buying my three-part course Six Figure Cause Marketing. The recorded version is only $99! It covers everything you need to plan and execute a successful program.

I love when students put their education to good use.

Maggie Keenan, a branding and cause marketing consultant in Savannah, Georgia, is a graduate of my Six Figure Cause Marketing course, which shows nonprofits and businesses how to develop and execute an effective and lucrative cause marketing program.

Maggie gets an A+ for her latest effort: a regional cause marketing program to support the Chatham-Savannah Authority for the Homeless, Inc. Hodges Management Company, which owns the local KFCs, KFC/TacoBells and DQ Grill & Chills, approached the Housing Authority about doing something to help the homeless this holiday season.

Thanks to Maggie, they came up with a great campaign: Dishing Out Meals: Fighting to End Hunger & Homelessness in Our Community.

You can read all about Maggie’s outstanding cause marketing program on her blog. But let me take a moment to mention some of the things I really love about it.

It embraces the easiest and most lucrative type of cause marketing: point of sale. The pin-up below sold for a buck. While there are other types of cause marketing Maggie could have recommended to the partners, point of the sale is truly the best, especially for local programs like this one. I’ve raised as much as $300,000 in just a few weeks with pinups.

It taps every asset the business had for giving. Realizing that the pinup wasn’t the best option for drive thru customers, Maggie created a value card with a QR code that takes customers directly to the Homeless Authority website for more information or to make a donation. Great thinking, Maggie! [One suggestion: The mobile donation page isn't optimized for smartphones. Check out what my friend Bob Jones at Give.mobi can do to make this a better experience and raise you more money!]

It battled indifference and apathy from the outset. Have you ever been asked to buy a pinup but the total lack of interest from the cashier convinced you that he or she didn’t really care if you did? Hodges Management Company did their best to ensure that apathy and indifference wouldn’t be part of this program. All general managers spent a Saturday learning and volunteering for the cause, an experience they’ll share with their employees.

I’m proud of everyone involved in this program, and I’m eager to see the results when it’s done. Most of all, I’m really proud of Maggie Keenan. She’s a great student, asked lots of good questions and kept in touch with me to make sure she didn’t make any of the many, many mistakes I made in my first programs.

Congratulations, Maggie! I’m sure this won’t be that last post I’ll write on one of your successful cause marketing campaigns!

Maggie learned about creating and executing point of sale cause marketing programs in my Six Figure Cause Marketing program. You can too! Buy the recorded version of 6FCM for just $99!

I’m fascinated by the whole food truck phenomenon. We have a number of food trucks here in Boston and I just finished watching The Great Food Truck Race on The Food Network. I’m also heading out to Los Angeles today for the Blogworld Expo and am hoping to sample some of their great food trucks!

I’m impressed by how food trucks market themselves and are such big users of social media.

A lot of nonprofits, fundraisers and cause marketers can learn a lot from these mobile eateries that have a nose for where the business is and know how to keep fans coming back.

Their product is distinctive. Food trucks are more than just cokes, hot dogs and hamburgers. They specialize in delicious, unique foods and, depending on consumer demand, aren’t copycats that duplicate menus. Consider some of these names of Boston food trucks: Grilled Cheese Nation, Kickass Cupcakes, Bon Me Truck [Vietnamese], Clover Food Truck [vegetarian]. Food trucks set themselves apart from the competition and excel within their category. Shouldn’t the same be true for nonprofits and the programs they run?

They adapt. Many food trucks pride themselves on local ingredients and will change their menus to meet the ebb and flow of the seasons. If something isn’t selling they switch it for something else. If what they usually use isn’t in season they switch to something else. If they run out of the something, they improvise. You saw this firsthand if you watched the Great Food Truck Race and saw the curveballs host Tyler Florence threw contestants. Food trucks know how to turn on a dime! How often can that be said about nonprofits, which steer more like the Titanic than a food truck.

They’re people persons. Food trucks don’t wait around for people to come to them. They go where the people are, where the hunger and need is greatest. It could be a college campus or outside a convention center. But too many nonprofits are ivy towers that cut themselves off from the people they can help and the people that can help them. Mark Horvath of Invisible People tweets all the time about groups that say they want to help the homeless but then set themselves apart or create barriers that make delivering that help ineffective or impossible. Food trucks are for and by the people. They exist to serve others. So should you.

They have a cult-like following. Notice I didn’t say that they were good with social media or technology, which they are. Food trucks are focused not on what these tools do but on what they accomplish: build a rabid following that looks forward to their tweets and postings and doggedly follow them. Food trucks thrive because they turn customers into fans and fans into ambassadors. Most importantly, they make it easy to love them. Can you say the same about your nonprofit?

They understand what’s truly important. Food trucks succeed or fail for one reason only: their food. It all starts with something that’s good, interesting and a heck of a lot better than your average fast food joint. Nonprofits need to focus on delivering a product that is superior, valuable and feeds the soul.

Like the Green Muenster Melt Boston’s Roxy’s Gourmet Grilled Cheese sells you want to be the thing that people just can’t live without.

I get lots of good questions about cause marketing from people who are new to the field. Most of them are about where to start. It’s not always an easy answer as people are at different points in their development.

Here are three strategies for cause marketing newbies, regardless of where you are in the journey.

1. I’m a big fan of cause marketing, but everyone else in my office knows nothing about it, including my boss. How do I get them onboard?

It starts by educating them about cause marketing. Sharing some posts from my blog, CauseRelatedMarketing.biz or Cause Marketing Forum would be a good start. I would also try to find examples from either similar sized organizations or nonprofits and companies they respect. Persuasion occurs through identification. This means that when your boss or colleagues can relate to what you’re talking about, the better chance you have of them accepting your ideas.

After education comes execution. Start with a test program that just involves one or two stores. That way you can see how the program works and you’ll have some results to share with colleagues.

More information: Pages 32 – 33, Cause Marketing for Dummies

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2. I already have a company to work with, but I have no idea what to do with them. Can you help?

First, congrats on having a partner lined up. This is critical piece for cause marketing success! What kind of cause marketing program you choose depends a lot on the type of company it is. If they’re a retailer, you’ll have lots of good options ranging from point-of-sale to purchase and action-triggered donations, etc. But what if your partner makes cardboard boxes? Lots of options there too, but you’ll need to be more creative.  The key is to focus on assets: what does this box company have that can help you raise money? Can the boxes they make include something about your organization? Can you tap their employees for volunteer opportunities? Since a box company works with all kinds of businesses, can they introduce you to a business-to-consumer company that would be willing to execute a cause marketing program.

More Information: Pages 10 – 17, Cause Marketing for Dummies

3. My nonprofit has worked with lots companies but only on sponsorships, not cause marketing. How do I convert these partners to cause marketing?

Like cause marketing, sponsorship is win-win – both partners benefit. But with sponsorship the company is writing a check so they can market themselves to the nonprofit’s supporters. If a company buys a sponsorship at a nonprofit walk they get access to the walkers. But when a company embarks on a cause marketing promotion they open their customers, employees and other stakeholders to the nonprofit. It’s important that both nonprofits and companies understand the difference between the two strategies.

Your goal as the nonprofit is to convince the company you’re not asking for more money. But you are asking them to do something else that will benefit both of you. Not every company will be willing to dive in so you might need to give them an incentive. Maybe charging them less for the sponsorship and gambling that you’ll raise more money with cause marketing. This isn’t as risky as you might think. Cause marketing almost always raises more money than a traditional sponsorship.

More Information: Page 254, Cause Marketing for Dummies 

I could go on and on, but are you a cause marketing newbie with a question? Ask away!

Niccolo Machiavelli, the Italian diplomat who wrote the classical treatise The Prince 500 years ago, probably would have been a big fan of cause marketing. For a man so interested in statecraft, Machiavelli would appreciate the bottom-line benefits of cause marketing to causes and companies.

Some have called Machiavelli a manipulator. I see him more as a realist. He was practical and committed to getting things done – in any way possible.

That doesn’t mean Machiavelli didn’t believe in ethics, morals and scruples. He did, but not just because doing good was the right thing. It was frequently the best thing for any savvy prince to get what he wanted.

While Machiavelli never bought a pinup to help children made orphans by the plague, or “liked” a Facebook page to trigger a donation from the powerful Medici family in Florence that would support local artists (including some guy named Michelangelo), Machiavelli’s advice transcends the renaissance and politics. It can arm us for the effort between companies and causes to woo a new prince: consumer attention, favor and their all-mighty dollar.

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“God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.”

Machiavelli lived during a time when unbelievers were burned as heretics for denying the omniscience of God. Nevertheless, he asserts that men and women need to play a more active role in accomplishing their goals. This is true for your cause as well. You’re waiting for donors, fate, luck, even God to save you when opportunities like cause marketing and social media may help you save yourself.

“Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.”

As we learned from the controversy surrounding a cause marketing promotion between Kentucky Fried Chicken and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, cause promotions are about marketing and perception, not truth and reality. Smart causes leverage their strongest emotional appeal in cause marketing campaigns to engage consumers quickly and powerfully. Other nonprofits worry that this one appeal is limiting and won’t accurately reflect its full mission. You’ll have plenty of time to explain and expand on your work after you set an emotional hook, which cause marketing provides.

“Men are driven by two two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.”

The emotional appeal for cause marketing has to tap something that consumers either deeply love (e.g. pets, green spaces, children) or seriously fear. When consumers donate to cancer causes, it’s done out of fear. Fear that it will afflict us and our loved ones. Whether it’s love or fear, your appeal should elicit a strong response from consumers.

“Hence it comes that all armed prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed prophets have been destroyed. . . . Before all else, be armed.”

Are you truly ready to try cause marketing, which demands staff, time, money and a stiff sail? Cause marketing is much easier when you have a partner already lined up. But what if you don’t? Do you know enough about the practice to sell a prospective partner on it? Do you know how cause marketing can give businesses a competitive edge that goes beyond product and price? If you recruited a new partner tomorrow, what would be the first thing you’d do? Arm yourself for success. Or be prepared to fail.

“A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it.”

There are lots of great resources and people to help new cause marketers. Cause Marketing Forum is one of the best, but there are also people online you can follow and learn from. Larger companies and causes are also good teachers. Check out the cause marketing programs CMF honored earlier this month with Halo Awards. Your program probably won’t be as successful as theirs, but it will have a “tinge of it” and you’ll be on your way.

“Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great. “

Nothing is accomplished without enthusiasm. If you’re excited about and committed to cause marketing you’ll overcome any hurdle, meet any challenge. But if you’re just going through the motions because your boss told you to, expect half-hearted results from your half-hearted effort. Machiavelli said that nothing is accomplished without danger. But no danger was ever surmounted without a strong will to succeed.

“The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”

Try to view your cause marketing promotion through the eyes of everyday consumers and donors that are seeing your promotion for the first time in aisles, at checkout or on shopping sites. Examples abound of programs that may have had good intentions but didn’t have the intended effect. Consider the Urban Outfitters t-shirt that benefited National Public Radio. Sold online by both NPR and Urban Outfitters, only tees sold in the nonprofit’s online store raised money for public radio. But don’t you think shoppers that bought the t-shirt on Urban Outfitters’ site thought NPR would receive a portion of their purchase? There was nothing on the site saying that NPR would benefit. But what expectations did consumers have? How do you think they felt about Urban Outfitters when they learned the truth?

Machiavelli believed that success meant constantly adapting for the times. When cause marketing was first introduced in the 1980′s it represented a new kind of corporate giving that smart causes and companies latched on to. With the rise of the web in the late 1990′s, together they explored online initiatives. The progress continued as social media platforms were introduced and developed. Today, innovative nonprofits and businesses are embracing location-based marketing, QR codes and mobile technology for cause marketing.

For Machiavelli, a prince’s success depends on his ability to prepare for the future and execute his designs without fear, hesitation or regret. If you add transparency, honesty and authenticity to these cause marketing lessons from Machiavelli you’ll avoid becoming the cunning, grasping Machiavellian that The Prince sought to overthrow.

I’m really excited to have Jocelyne Daw guest post on my blog today. In addition to being a wonderful author who’s written two of my favorite books on cause marketing, Cause Marketing for Nonprofits and Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding (with Carol Cone), Jocelyne has been a great mentor to me and other cause marketers.

In her post today, Jocelyne makes an important distinction between cause marketing and sponsorship. Too often, we lump everything cause and company related into cause marketing. But if cause marketing doesn’t stand for something, it won’t mean anything. Thanks to Jocelyne for standing tall today for all cause marketers!

~~~

Recently I presented at the AFP Toronto congress, a national gathering of nonprofit professionals, on cause marketing trends and best practices.   It’s always a great group. I deem a presentation successful if the attendees are engaged and ask lots of questions.  At this session I was not to be disappointed.  One question that popped up and generated a great deal of good discussion was “What is the difference between sponsorship and cause marketing?”.

This is an important question that I have been asked regularly during my presentations.  So I wasn’t surprised when it became part of a Twitter conversation between two cause-marketing experts (and friends of mine) – Joe Waters and Steve Drake.

In my perspective, the difference between the two is simple.  It’s in the tactics and the benefits of each execution.

Let’s look at cause marketing

Let me start with my definition of cause marketing.  This sets the stage for differentiating between these two growing forms of corporate community involvement – methods that go beyond traditional corporate philanthropic donations.

I define cause marketing as a mutually beneficial business and nonprofit partnership that sees a company put the power of its brand and marketing behind the cause to generate profits for both. In cause marketing, the company uses the cause as the focus of its marketing tactics. Think the traditional 4 P’s of marketing: product, price, promotion and place.  Product ties to cause.  Price includes a donation or percentage to the cause.  Promotion focuses on the cause connection.  Place reaches consumers in an untraditional way and place with cause messages often supported by in-store point of purchase advertising.

The company’s expectation is that it will directly earn profits from the affiliation. The cause tie helps the product and company to stand out in the crowded marketplace.  It demonstrates an alignment with the company and customers’ values. Research proves that if price and quality are equal, the cause differentiator will (in more cases than not) result in a sale.

Sponsorship on the other hand…

Sponsorship sees companies providing financial contribution to a nonprofit event or program.  In return, the nonprofit uses its marketing and communications tools to promote a company’s involvement and support of the cause.   The tools could include featuring the company’s logo on a poster, t-shirt, brochure or other nonprofit marketing and communications material.   In the end, it’s really just another marketing and promotional tool for the company.  Similar to the way TV advertising or social media is used to reach a distinct target audience.

Profits, on the other hand for the nonprofit are less ambiguous.  They receive a payment – in the form of a non-tax receipted contribution.  It is essentially an advertising expense paid in a commercial exchange for a corporate recognition tied to the cause.  Benefits for the company come in the form of reaching a target audience in a unique way and creating community goodwill.  Neither is seen as a competitive advantage that will guarantee a sale.  Generating corporate profits are less direct than in the case of cause marketing.

The difference is clear, but can still be blurry

While my definition clearly differentiates between the two business-cause partnerships, there are occasionally blurry lines.  Take Komen Race for the Cure® and Yoplait’s involvement.

Yoplait has been the main sponsor of the race for a number of years.  Komen promotes their support through the organization’s various race marketing and communication vehicles.  Yoplait’s logo can be seen on the Komen Race for the Cure® t-shirt.  It is featured on the poster and as in the picture the on-site race banners.  However, during the month of October, Yoplait parallels its race support with a cause marketing in-store promotion – “Save Lids, Save Lives.”  People see both.  Some call their support “sponsorship”.  Others call it “cause marketing”.  In fact, it’s a smart use of both that leverages Yoplait’s cause involvement in the breast cancer movement.  By doing so, it turns the entire involvement into something that is bigger than the sum of individual parts.

In the end, both cause marketing and sponsorship are commercial, mutually beneficial relationships between companies and causes.  We know both are growing.  When done right, they provide powerful shared value and reflect shared values.

Want to learn more about cause marketing? Do these things right now:

1. Sign up for my bi-monthly newsletter (top right of this page).
2. Buy my book, Cause Marketing for Dummies, and get some great free stuff.
3. Invite me to speak at your next event!
4. Learn more by reading my latest post: The Difference Between Transactional, Transformative Cause Marketing.

Last January I wrote a post on What is Cause Marketing? that got a lot of great feedback. Over the past year I’ve gone back to that post many time and reread the comments again and thought about how I was defining cause marketing.

I felt I had the first part right.

Cause marketing is a partnership between a nonprofit and a for-profit for mutual profit

What I thought needed redefining was just what it encompassed. In last year’s post I wrote that cause marketing involved three types of programs: point-of-sale, percentage-of-sale and licensing.

This year, I’m much more open to including most activities between a company and a cause. They include:

Point-of-sale. When a cashier either solicits a shopper for a donation (active cause marketing) or signage is prominently displayed at the register to encourage the shopper to make a gift (passive cause marketing) that’s point-of-sale. Unless you’re completely new to my blog, you know that POS, in the form of pinups, is my bread-and-butter program. But if you are new here’s a primer.

Purchase or action triggered donation. When a consumer buys a product or service (like a latte at Starbucks on World Aids Day) a donation (5 cents) is made to a cause (Product Red) that’s a purchase-triggered donation (I think this is a better describer of what happens when a shopper buys a cause product than the “percentage-of-sale” tag I used last year). Sometimes instead of a purchase, a donation is made when the consumer performs some type of action. For example, Macy’s donated a dollar the Make-a-Wish Foundation for every letter to Santa dropped into their special letter boxes at Macy’s stores.

Licensing. This is when a company pays a fee to use a nonprofit’s brand on its product. Licensing may include a certification process by the nonprofit before the company is allowed to use the logo. A longstanding licensing pact is Arthritis Foundation’s Ease of Use Commendation for the Advil Caplets Easy Open Arthritis Cap. Cause marketing licensing is practiced by the only the biggest causes (e. g. Komen for the Cure, American Heart Association) and is not a tactic for your average or local cause.

Message Promotion. This is when a business puts its resources to work to promote a cause-focused message. David Hessekiel at Cause Marketing Forum has a lot of great examples in his Halo Award Archive.

Employee Engagement. This is when a company leverages its workforce for social good. I think of Home Depot’s Partnership with KaBOOM! to build 1000 Playgrounds in 1000 Days, which involved nearly 100,000 Home Depot volunteers.

Digital Programs. The web, social media and especially location-based services will dramatically impact cause marketing and change the way we execute the above tactics. To leave this out is to leave out the future of cause marketing and how cause and companies will partner in the years to come.

I still don’t think the “marketing of causes” or sponsorship are cause marketing. (Jocelyn Daw told me recently that while sponsorship is when the cause puts its resources to work for the company, cause marketing is when the company goes to work for the cause. I like that!) But there are some interesting and creative ways to integrate cause marketing with sponsorship.

Nor is cause marketing cause branding or corporate social responsibility, although it is a subset of the two.

Finally, cause marketing is not philanthropy. While it has philanthropic aspirations and goals, it’s better described as marketing, and, in some ways, a business.

Those are my thoughts on cause marketing for January 2011. What are yours?

[Update 1/21/11: In the comments be sure to check out Jocelyn Daw's comments on how to distinguish traditional marketing from cause marketing. She makes it quite clear. Also, she outlines the 4 P's of cause marketing: Partner, Purpose, Passion & Profits.]

I love zombie films.

I can’t get enough of them, especially this time of year when the shadows from the leafless trees take on ominous shapes. Yikes!

While you may not share my enthusiasm for the semi-dead, you might agree with this: most of us are surrounded by these mute, will-less, dumb, sometimes evil brutes everyday.

Our zombies are the people and situations we face daily that must be avoided at all cost if we are to be successful cause marketers.

It’s scary stuff. Fortunately, there’s help thanks to my extensive zombie cinematic background and training.

One of my favorite zombie movies is Zombieland, which has an extensive list of rules for survival, which are articulated by the main character of the film Columbus.

Eight of these rules are critical to your cause marketing survival. Ignore them at your own peril.

1. Cardio. The calorically-challenged don’t do well with zombies because they can’t outrun them. Your cause marketing program will also meet a terrible end if you’re not prepared to go the distance and persevere year after year. Cause marketing success doesn’t happen overnight. It requires endurance. Don’t let your program fall prey to the zombies just because it wasn’t up to the challenge of going long.

2. Double Tap. What a waste to die at the hands of a zombie just because you were lazy and didn’t shoot them twice. Just like it would be a waste to give up on your cause marketing program after the first try because a company said no, or because the first campaign had mixed or poor results. Get used to companies turning you down and expect some programs to fail. Like W. C. Fields said: Try, and if you fail, try again. Then quit. No sense being a fool about it. But try again! Don’t give into the zombies that want you to quit after one try.

3. Kill with Efficiency. Why fumble with reloading a gun when a nice, heavy toilet cover is handy? Don’t focus on the preferred or cool way to get the job done. Focus on executing. Everyone wants to do online cause marketing, location-based smartphone promotions, national programs and trendy partnerships with cool retailers like Apple and The Gap. But what’s at hand is easy to execute pinup and percentage-of-sale programs with local retailers. They’re not sexy, but they get the job done (raising money, increasing awareness), which is just what zombies hate.

4. Beware of Bathrooms. Confining yourself to a small space in a, well, compromising position is not the best way to fend off a zombie. A nonprofit putting 100% of their time into cause marketing is like sticking yourself in a bathroom. It’s small, limiting and doesn’t get you anywhere. Cause marketing is a niche fundraising and marketing strategy that is best practiced by nonprofits that are eager to take their brand and fundraising in a new direction. But getting caught up in cause marketing and forgetting your bread and butter programs is letting your zombie get the best of you.

5. Get a Kickass Partner. Loners just don’t last very long in zombie films. Sigh. Doing cause marketing by yourself can be equally short-lived. I have my kickass partner in Joanna MacDonald. Thankfully, I also have Holt, Jessica and Ashley. We all complement each other really well and we have each other’s backs. We’re a kickass team and zombies hate that.

6. Check the Back Seat. It happens all the time in zombie movies: someone gets killed in their car because they didn’t check the back seat. Stupid way to go. To make sure you don’t meet the same end, check your back seat for these nasty surprises.

• A 40-slide PowerPoint that no one wants to see.
• A bureaucrat from your office or board that will spend a whole meeting with a company blathering about your nonprofit’s mission and not saying a word about the marketing opportunity for both partners.
• A sell sheet with levels that forces you squeeze a prospect into a category instead of coming up with a custom plan that works for both of you.

7. Opportunity knocks. We learn in the film that opportunities in life just don’t fall into our hands. You still have to get off your butt and open the door! That’s how I feel about Halloween and even zombie events for fundraising and cause marketing. They are great opportunities if cause marketers will only open the door! The zombies on the other side are there to help you!

8. God Bless Rednecks. Because they have all the guns and ammo you need kill zombies! While other types of fundraising–like major gifts–are blue-blooded, cause marketing is red-blooded because the money comes from regular people like you and me. A few coins in a canister. A buck at the register. Supporters of cause marketing are the nameless masses behind all those pinups and cause products that raise millions for good causes every year.

I don’t know who they are–they’re certainly not rednecks–but God bless them. In this zombie world of ours, they are the ultimate kickass partner.

This post today is dedicated to my friend and kickass partner John Haydon, the founder of InboundZombie!

Over the past few weeks I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how to prepare and use cause marketing proposals. Here are some answers!

First, know when to use them. Proposals are not for first meetings. We greet prospects with paper in hand, but it’s blank. It’s time to listen and explore. We save our proposals for later after we better idea of objectives.

Be transparent on responsibilities. Everyone wants to know what they have to do. We always make sure partners have a checklist to work from. This list is generally must-do items that only they can execute, like monitoring and motivating cashiers to sell pinups. We handle the rest. The key is for partners to understand what they have to do that’s critical to the success of the program that no one else can do except them.

Include everything. Our partnerships tend to have a lot of moving parts (e.g. point of sale, event, cross-promotion, etc.). Make sure this is all broken out and explained in the proposal.

The proposal isn’t about you. Save that for the agreement. It’s about your partner. So make sure to include the examples, the metrics and the benefits a partner needs to turn your proposal into an agreement.

Be clear on money. How will they raise money? Put it in the proposal. Do you have agreed on amount? Put it in the proposal. What if they don’t reach that amount? Put it in the proposal. How long after the promotion will you to wait to receive the money? You get the point.

Learn from others. I share my cause marketing proposals in my Six Figure Cause Marketing webinar. And since I just completed a webinar, and am planning another for September, I’m reserving those for my clients. However, I did find several good examples on the web. The first is from Make-a-Wish/Michigan. This application for a cause marketing program has a lot of the fields you’ll need to cover in a proposal. Also, check out the terms and conditions, which you might find useful to your own proposal.

The next one is from Livestrong, which reports they are not currently accepting applications for cause marketing partnerships (must be nice!). Nevertheless, they have an extensive application that will give you a lot of great ideas for your proposal.

Have legal review it. Fortunately, we have a legal team at my nonprofit that can review the language of our proposals, when needed. If you don’t have onsite legal counsel, ask a lawyer on your board for help or invest in it. It sometimes seems like overkill, but it’s worth it, especially when you’re new to cause marketing.

Proposals don’t close deals, you do. Too often people think if they wallpaper their contacts with proposals they’ll eventually land a sale. That never works. You’re the most important piece in presenting and closing the deal with a prospect. The proposal is just a nail. You’re the hammerer. That’s one reason why you should never ever mail or email your proposals. You need to be there to drive them home.

What other questions do you have about preparing and using cause marketing proposals?