Hi. My name is Joe and I have Shiny Object Addiction.

I naturally reach for the hot tool of the day. The latest devices, the iPad, the iPhone 4G. The cool services like Twitter, Foursquare and now QR codes. The techie productivity tools like Evernote and Dropbox.

I do this because of peer pressure, buzz and the desire to be first. I have little regard for need or utility. I waste time and money, especially when it’s yours.

I’m guilty of fondling the hammer too much, and I guess I should have been struck with blindness years ago.

Last week when I wrote about QR codes Estrella Rosenberg wrote what I think a lot of us were feeling.

Great Joe….something new for me to obsess over, investigate and plan campaigns around!!

I write about these new shiny objects with gusto, but I feel Estrella’s anxiety and pain.

Fortunately, I spent years in Alcoholics Anonymous. Not for me, but with my Dad, who achieved sobriety thanks to AA.

Like alcohol, shiny objects are an addiction that need their own step program. Here’s mine.

Step 1: I am powerless to shiny objects. I admit I’ve kissed my iPhone before I kissed my wife before bed each night. That’s wrong. (I have since reversed the order.)

Step 2: I believe that a power greater than myself can restore my sanity. That power is a strict adherence to the bottom-line benefits of these shiny objects. If I’m clear on how they can or will raise money for my cause, make me more productive and enhance my professional development they will serve me well.

Step 3: I’ve made a decision to turn my life over to the care of a divine being. Actually, two: my wife, Deb, and my closest colleague, Joanna MacDonald. Because if Shiny Object Addiction doesn’t kill me, they most certainly will. I’m committed to taking their advice on which shiny objects I should stick with and which ones I should shelf. Since my wife introduces herself to people as a “Twidow” whose husband drowned in the stream of Twitter, and Joanna who thinks email is social media, this should be interesting. But I am all trusting. It will be good to get advice from two people outside the beltway of tech and social media.

Step 4: I’ve made a moral inventory of my offenses. I’ve bought new tech I neither needed nor could afford. I’ve checked-in to places I never visited. I’ve tweeted at funerals. I’ve praised shiny objects that I’ve never even tried. I’ve ridiculed people who carry planners. There’s a place for people like me in Hell. And there are no bars.

Step 5: I’ve admitted to others the error of my ways. I plan a full confessional to Geoff Livingston as he was the one who prompted me to reform my wicked ways. Like the public outcry that followed the Komen/Kentucky Fried Chicken cause marketing pact, my chickens have come home to roost. At least I didn’t compound my error by deep frying my chickens and selling them as health food.

Step 6: I’ve created a list of people I’ve offended, and plan to make ammends to them all. My family will be first. As for the rest of you: don’t call me, I’ll call you.

Step 7: I want to bring these steps to others afflicted with Shiny Object Addiction. Surely I’m not the only one who’s trod to the edge of the abyss.

Have you taken similar steps to curb your use of these shiny objects?

What’s your step program to control your addiction and avoid possible blindness?

Whenever I work with a business on a cause marketing program, especially point-of-sale–my bread-and-butter program–they usually ask that after helping a great cause how do they really measure what was gained from the partnership.

It’s a good question, to which there is generally no clear answer, especially for a smaller businesses that can’t invest in focus groups or customer research to determine if cause marketing did what it’s suppose to do: enhance favorability with consumers and employees and drive sales.

As I work almost solely with small and medium-sized businesses–and not the Walmart’s, Starbucks or Chili’s of the world–this is how we measure the ROI on a cause marketing program.

Did the campaign achieve its goal? Before the start of each point-of-sale program we work with the retailer to set a goal for each store involved in the program. A successful program that meets or exceeds goal and is greeted with enthusiasm–and few complaints from shoppers–deserves to be called a success.

Coupon redemptions. Most of the pinups and point-of-sale programs we create include one or more coupons. They add value for the shopper and give the business a tangible way to track consumer interest in the program. Most of the coupons on our pinups are good for a return visit–those on our Halloween Town pinup, for instance, weren’t good until after Halloween–so they’re traffic drivers.

The cross promotion that multiple coupons from several businesses creates can translate into new customers for some stores. A pinup partner of ours was excited to discover that a large number of coupon redemptions weren’t from their own customers, but from those of another partner in the same program (each partner has a unique code on their pinup so they can track coupons from other partners).

Take it out of the store. Because our programs are so multifaceted, we offer a lot more than pinups. Our latest program with Phantom Gourmet gives partners added exposure on radio and television, which is added ROI. Halloween Town gave pinup partners a two-day brand land experience that drew 15,000 guests. No cause marketing program should be one dimensional. Not only do integrated campaigns make for better cause marketing but they also deliver better returns. Whenever I meet with sponsors for a post-campaign wrap-up I always have lots to share with them on how valuable the program was to them.

Measure employee engagement. Getting hard numbers on customer engagement on cause marketing is difficult and expensive, but finding out the impact of cause marketing on employees is easier because the audience is smaller and you have direct access to them. Talk to your managers and rank and file employees about the program. Customers aren’t the only ones that benefit from cause marketing. It can also boost employee satisfaction and loyalty, which has its own bottom-line benefit.

Did you get your money’s worth? I always throw this question out to a partner because as many of you who follow my blog already know, we don’t charge anything for our cause marketing programs (nor should you). I usually make this my final point to a partner as I’ve already established the many rewards of the program. And then I add, “Oh yeah, and it was free.” Great ROI, eh?

Cause marketing delivers karma points and ROI for businesses. Even without fancy and expensive measurement tools you can gauge employee and customer interest and reach potential customers through cross-promotions and events. And if you’re a retailer you can get this all for free.

Who wouldn’t call cause marketing a good investment?

A lot of people come to my blog for cause marketing advice, but Tricia Wilkerson, Senior Marketing Specialists at Conifer Health Solutions, found inspiration. While my posts didn’t uncover exactly what Tricia was looking for, they did get her thinking (she told me afterward) and I’m thankful she took the time to share with me the cause marketing program Conifer created.

As a a company that works with over 100 hospitals nationwide, Conifer was searching for a cause marketing program that would put the power of giving in the hands of their customers.

To achieve this goal, Conifer turned to TisBest to produce a custom charity card.

TisBest works by allowing pre-donated funds to be loaded onto charity gift cards, in the same way that traditional gift cards function, which is then “spent” by the recipient on the charity they select.

Tricia explained how Conifer’s new charity gift card was smartly executed at an industry event.

We targeted our program launch for our industry’s largest healthcare finance conference in late June – Healthcare Financial Management Association annual conference – attended by approximately 2,000 professionals. Originally located in Nashville, the historic Tennessee flooding in early May nearly cancelled the conference before it was hastily relocated to Las Vegas. This conference crisis, in addition to the emerging crisis for the Gulf states and flooding in Arkansas, reinforced our commitment to forgo the traditional conference giveaways (iPads, Wii, etc.) and booth-supported sales efforts.

We pre-donated $10,000 to be distributed in increments of $5 on each charity card. To physically house the charity card for distribution during the conference, we developed a branded “pocket card” brochure that included details about the cause program and brief information about Conifer. The pocket cards were then distributed to conference attendees by Conifer’s conference street team who explained the concept and answered questions. To keep the focus on charity, we did not include sales pitches or direct people to our booth (we chose not to have a traditional conference presence) – to the surprise of many seasoned conference attendees.

Ironically, the program stood in perhaps starker contrast to other marketing efforts at the conference because of the relocation to Las Vegas (not always synonymous with charity efforts) and the intra-community concern for Nashville due to the flooding. We heard numerous comments about the “freshness” of the program and excitement about the opportunity to spread a little good selflessly. And we’re happy to report that we have already seen cards being “redeemed” for charities.

There’s a lot to like about this program, and I have one suggestion that might have made it better.

Cause marketing isn’t just for B-to-C. Although I’m pretty guilty of thinking of cause marketing as only B-to-C, it can work for B-to-B as well. B-to-B cause marketing works more like a percentage-of-sales program in that the donation is “seeded” by the company. But with Conifer’s gift card the cardholder gets to choose which cause gets the money.

Conifer sent the right message at the conference. They wisely let their charity efforts do the talking and didn’t try to push sales. When done well cause marketing distinguishes you from your competitors. While some types of marketing give you visibility that needs to be activated with a sales pitch, cause marketing delivers a favorability that has a built-in persuasiveness that is powerful and independent. You can leave the hard sell back at the office.

Check-in for charity on Foursquare. To gather intelligence on conference attendees active on social media, I would have added a location-marketing promotion for smartphone users to check-in at Conifer’s Cares at HFMA on Foursquare and Gowalla. After showing their check-in to a street team member, they’d receive a second charity card. To involve more attendees you could extend the promotion to anyone at the conferences who used the hashtag #conifercares on Twitter or Facebook.

I’d love to hear about some more examples of B-to-B cause marketing. I got Conifer thinking about cause marketing and now they have me thinking about the possibilities for B-to-B cause marketing! What other programs are out there? And what does this mean for my definition of cause marketing? Do we have to adjust it? If so, how?

I hope you’ll make the trip to the Cause Marketing Forum conference next year. Two weeks after the  event, I’m still thinking about the things I heard and learned at CMF10.

A word that was seemingly on the tongue of every speaker was “strategy.”

Strategy. A plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result.

Every presenter that discussed their cause marketing program either talked of the “strategy” behind their efforts or emphasized the importance of having one.

I get it. And it sounds great. But looking around the conference at all the nonprofits that were new to cause marketing, the best strategy for most of them seemed like a solid set of tactics to get them going.

Tactic. A means for achieving a goal; a maneuver.

A tactic isn’t as sophisticated as a strategy. If your basement floods every now and then [been there] and you pump it out with a floor pump and hose you borrow from your neighbor, that’s a tactic. If you install French drains in your basement and regrade the landscaping outside your house so rain water flows away from it, that’s a strategy.

It’s clear which one is better, but they both do the trick. Tactics have the benefit of educating you on what kind of plan, what kind of strategy you should adopt. Tactics also allow you to get started without waiting for a grand strategy to form first.

I can speak to embracing cause marketing tactics because my Six Figure Cause Marketing webinar, which began just last Thursday, takes a very tactical approach to getting nonprofits up and running with their first program.

Do you have a supporter who owns a chain of stores? You can do cause marketing. No elaborate business plan required.

Do you run a successful event, maybe a walk, run or ride (or maybe a big Halloween event like I do every October!)? You may have an asset that you can turn into cause marketing gold. No need to spend time thinking of how it fits into your larger development strategy.

Most of you have read my post on What is Cause Marketing?. Cause Marketing is a win-win partnership between a nonprofit and a for-profit that generally involves point-of-sale and percentage-of-sale programs.

So if you work for a nonprofit all you need to get started with cause marketing is a company with either foot traffic or locations, preferably both. The important thing is not to get caught up overthinking what your cause marketing strategy is. Just to get going and develop your strategy as your tactics take you step by step to your goal.

As my brother, a high school teacher, likes to tell his students, “You have a wonderful future ahead of you. I suggest you get going.”

“Lazarus! Come Forth!”

Attending Cause Marketing Forum’s annual conference, which happened last week in Chicago, is always a big rush for me because I get to see lot of friends from the field I don’t normally get to see.

It’s also a great recharge because it gets me pumped for the cause marketing work that obviously lies ahead.

But this year was a little different. On the eve of the Cause Marketing Forum Conference, AdAge published The Day Cause Marketing Died by my friend Mike Swenson, CMO at Barkley in Kansas City.

Like Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol, Mike didn’t paint a pretty picture of cause marketing’s future if we continued our wicked ways.

It wasn’t a natural death. It was murder…. From the moment consumers awoke each day until they fell asleep at night, they were inundated with opportunities to give back every time they made a purchase. In between, regardless of what store they were in, point-of-purchase shelf talkers virtually screamed at consumers every 10 feet to buy this or that product and help this or that cause. Consumers were under siege at every checkout lane of every store they shopped to give a dollar for this or a dollar for that.

One talk I was looking forward to at CMF10 was Ed Chansky’s Cause Marketing Legal Issues. Now I know it was like looking forward to a root canal. I was surprised by how many things the law says you can’t do in a cause marketing program. Simple things, like a nonprofit asking its supporters to shop at a retailer that’s supporting the cause is a no-no. Huh? What do you mean you can’t do that, Ed?

My head spinning from Ed’s presenation, I stumbled into Mike Lawrence’s Transparency: Cause Marketing’s Dirty Little Secret. The name alone had me reaching for a Xanax. Mike’s point was that when consumers aren’t confused by corporate cause marketing efforts they’re pretty sure companies aren’t giving them enough details about their programs. Not surprisingly, this isn’t helping Joe and Jane Consumer’s perception of cause marketing one bit.

Mike Swenson had me feeling that we were shelling shoppers with inauthentic cause marketing campaigns. Ed Chansky had me wondering if most cause marketing was ”legally questionable”. Mike Lawrence left me thinking that even if I did things right I was still fighting a losing battle against waning public opinion.

Oy. Any positions open in major gifts?

Each one of these can deliver a potential death blow to cause marketing.

To make sure the day would never come that cause marketing would take to its deathbed gasping for breath, I took a Scrooge-like oath to keep what I learned from these three spirits not just after CMF, but all year long. This is what I plan to do.

Strive for authentic programs. The cause needs to come before the promotion. This is harder than it seems as it often is the promotion that sells the program, not the cause (especially for smaller charities like mine). But Mike is right on this count. If you don’t put the cause first, cause marketing is just plain marketing and you’re on the road to irrelevance.

Know the law. I know the basics of cause marketing law, but there’s still a lot to learn and Ed Chansky is a great resource. Before I left CMF10 he gave me a great packet of info on cause marketing law that he said he’d send electronically to anyone who gave him his business card that day. I think he would send it to you too if you asked him. I plan to learn everything I can about cause marketing legal issues. It’s in my best interest, and the interest of my partners, that we know and follow the law.

Continue to be transparent. Whatever cause marketing program my nonprofit executes, we always try to be clear on where the money is going so there’s no confusion for the consumer. On those few occasions when we’ve done percentage-of-sale programs, we’ve also tried to be transparent on the breakdown of funds. Like Mike Lawrence, I see this as a critical issue for cause marketers. You can’t just slap a “portion of proceeds” sticker on a product or pinup and expect shoppers to fork over their money anymore. We need to either hold ourselves to a higher ideal, or someone else will it for us.

Like Mike Swenson, Ed Chansky and Mike Lawrence, I want cause marketing to be around for a long, long time. Authenticity, legitimacy and transparency may be the closest thing cause marketers have to a trinity. Amen.

Boston’s own Scott Beaudoin, who’s also MS&L Worldwide’s North America director of CSR and cause marketing, asked in PRWeek Insider’s blog last week is this “The End of Corporate Philanthropy?”

Scott’s prompt was Nestle SA Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe’s recent remarks that he’s against corporate philanthropy because it could lead to a misuse of funds. (I guess he had already doubled checked that the company money used for client entertainment was all well spent.)

What Peter and Scott are in favor of are “social investments that are aligned with the business.”

Like it or not, this is the future of corporate giving for businesses large and small. Of course, this won’t be “giving” at all but rather strategic social investing. And the timing is right for several reasons.

• With the drumbeat of earnings and ROI stronger than ever, companies can no longer fund generous philanthropy programs. Investment in causes, not giving, must be the mainstay if companies are to continue to play a meaningful role in addressing societal issues.
• Thoughtful consumers get it. As Scott notes, “Research shows today’s stakeholders understand that companies need to be profitable but also believe they can be purposeful and profitable at the same time.”
• To engage more small and medium size businesses with causes, partnerships need to be win-win as only the biggest companies can afford big budgets for philanthropy.

Reading Peter’s remarks and Scott’s post made me smile because a corporate culture focused on bottom-line benefits for both partners is my reality every day. Nestle SA has had the luxury and, thankfully, the desire to be philanthropic without the worry about the ROI on corporate giving. The restaurant chain I work with may share Nestle’s generous instincts but it lacks their capacity. Interestingly, I’ve noticed that it’s when a business is most focused on benefiting from a partnership with my nonprofit that they do the most good for my cause.

But the shift away from corporate philanthropy won’t be easy for nonprofits. Going from receiving generous handouts to having to work for your food will take a bit of getting used to.

Here are three ways nonprofits can begin the shift away from corporate philanthropy.

Embrace the brave new world. Nonprofits shouldn’t feel guilty that they have to engage businesses as, well, businesses and not donors. Remember, companies still want to make a difference, but they want to help you and society while they help themselves. Think win-win-win.

Make it easy for companies. Don’t make them feel guilty that they used to give you money and now they make you work for it. Don’t wait for them to tell YOU they need more from their partnership with you. Connect the dots so they don’t have to. Create opportunities and programs that are tailored for companies (which leads to my next point).

Start a cause marketing program. The essence of cause marketing is mutual benefit. Whether you use pinups, percentage-of-sale, licensing, cause promotion, etc. cause marketing will help reduce your dependence on corporate giving and give businesses a new way to work with you that is grounded in win-win.

Long live corporate philanthropy. It’s a little absurd to think that corporate philanthropy will just disappear. Walmart just gave $2 billion to fight hunger this past week (although I’m sure hunger causes resonate with Walmart’s core customers so there is a strategic component to the gift). Will it be reduced? Sure, perhaps a lot. But it will always be there in some form so don’t throw away your tin can just yet.

But a world with less corporate philanthropy is here. The challenge for nonprofits is to adapt to the new reality. What seems like the end of corporate philanthropy will actually be a new beginning of opportunity for nonprofits that are up for the challenge.

End or beginning. Which one will your nonprofit choose?

[Note: I'd like your help. I've given three ways nonprofits can begin the shift away from corporate philanthropy to corporate opportunity. What other ways can nonprofits easily and quickly make the move.]

Before you read this post you and I have to agree on some basic things.

1. You should be doing cause marketing. (And not knowing what cause marketing is isn’t an excuse.)
2. If you’re doing cause marketing, you should be discussing and promoting your program online via a website or blog. It’s good for you, for your corporate partners and for business development.

Now that we’re agreed on these two key points, here’s my pitch for using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to achieve better cause marketing results.

But first: what is SEO? Wikipedia has a clear and simple definition:

Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site or a web page (such as a blog) from search engines via unpaid search results [as opposed to paid ads].

We should all be focusing on SEO because people rely on search engines, mainly Google, to find the things they need. It’s that simple.

Looking for details on the side effects of the latest prescription the doctor gave you? Google it. Need an address? Try Google. Looking for a company’s web site? Don’t bother typing it in. Just Google it.

Lately, I’ve been trying to read as much as possible on SEO and I’ve found a great teacher in Jason Falls. Last week I stumbled on his post A SEO Experiment: Targeting One Keyword.

In it, Jason sought to own one search term: “Social Media Monitoring Services.”  Targeting these primary keywords he did just that, and goes on to explain how he accomplished it. I suggest you read the post, especially if you’re like me and don’t know a lot about SEO. It’s very helpful.

My takeaway from it is that if I can better target primary keywords in my posts I can own more search terms and potentially drive more traffic to my site. The ultimate goal, of course, is to better promote my nonprofit’s cause marketing program, the topic I spend most of my time posting on at Selfish Giving.

If I can do this as well as Jason did, think about the potential for me, my nonprofit and my corporate partners. If my site tops more searches that means more companies may seek out my services. I may sign up more nonprofits for my Six Figure Cause Marketing program, which benefits my nonprofit. More reporters may call to write stories about my program or my corporate partners. In general, when I’m #1 on Google my credibility and opportunities soar.

Now think about those very same benefits and how you, your organization and your partners could reap the rewards. That’s powerful stuff.

So I decided to replicate Jason’s experiment and try to win my own search term. Like Jason’s, my term–”Low Budget Cause Marketing”–wasn’t a particularly competitive one. He and I were both riding the long tail of search. But I was convinced by my research that this is a term people are searching on and one I want to own.

Prior to publishing the post, here are the search results for “Low Budget Cause Marketing” on Google.

After writing the post on Headway Themes, which John Haydon tells me is one of the best themes out there for SEO, I ran it through Scribe SEO, which Jason and others have praised, to optimize the content.

Forty-five minutes later my post 5 Tips for Low-Budget Cause Marketing was the #1 search result on Google!

A few hours later it dropped to the third entry–still respectable–and added an additional entry at the #5 spot. But this changes from hour to hour. Check out where I am ranked right now.

It’s not enough for your nonprofit to just be doing cause marketing. You should promote your program online and optimize your visibility for search engines.

I recommend a WordPress blog with a Headway Theme and Scribe SEO to accomplish your goals.

Don’t hesitate to leave me a comment if you have any questions. You know how to reach me. But if you forget, just type Joe Waters into Google. While my name is a fairly common one, this Joe Waters is the #1 result.

The majority of calls I take on cause marketing are from budget-conscious small nonprofits raising anywhere from a few hundred thousand to a few million a year. They have a small staff and one or two development people, who usually have other responsibilities like marketing or public relations (or sometimes everything!). They also have limited resources and can’t invest in new staff, advertising or training.

What they all share is exactly the same question: what are some low-budget and easy ways I can get started with cause marketing?

Here are five tips to get you going.

Look within. The beginnings of cause marketing success are usually found within–via an existing corporate relationship or a board member who is also a business owner–not without. My first two cause marketing partners, iParty and Ocean State Job Lots, supported my nonprofit with in-kind and cash gifts from their CEO’s long before they involved their stores and customers. Look around to see what existing corporate relationships you can take a new direction.

Visit Cause Marketing Forum. Man, if I got a quarter for every time I recommended Cause Marketing Forum to someone I could fund my twice-a-day Starbucks habit with something besides my kids’ college funds. But the fact I promote it gratis shows just how valuable this site is for budding cause marketers. The sheer amount of information on the CMF site is impressive! There’s so much to learn. Just reading the site end to end you would gain quite a knowledge of cause marketing.  I know that firsthand, because I’ve done just that. Enhance your online learning experience by joining me at CMF’s annual conference in Chicago this June.

Stick to pinups. There are lots of ways to raise money with cause marketing, but none of them are easier or more lucrative than pinups. My most recent major pinup program raised $212,000 and had only $7,000 in expenses. The costs on each pinup range from 8 to 15 cents. If you sell your pinups for between $1 and $5 ($1 is typical, but I’ve sold them for as much as $3. Others sell them for as much as $5), you’ll maximize the return for your organization and raise a lot of money. It’s no coincidence that some of the most successful cause marketing programs involve pinups.

Jump into social media. I don’t get the hesitation from nonprofits on social media. I think we can all agree that what social media represents–two way communication, user-generated content, etc.–is here to stay (even if Facebook, Twitter et al are not). Nonprofits also don’t have many other good choices besides social media. I haven’t heard this one lately: “We’re waiting to start a blog because we’re in the midst of a $10 million advertising campaign.” So why aren’t these nonprofits all over social media? And why aren’t they exploring ways to use social media with cause marketing? I’ve written a lot about using Foursquare for cause marketing. One of the ways you can get started in cause marketing is to get busy marrying social media to it. Because this is a match made in heaven. Do it now so you’ll have one less thing to play catch-up on a year from now.

Work with me. Some nonprofits decide they don’t have the time, staff and resources for cause marketing and make the most cost-effective decision they can: they call me. Often it’s a nonprofit that already has a bird in the hand (a corporate relationship!) and wants to get going. They bring the partner to the table, we close them on a cause marketing partnership with our two organizations and execute the program from start to finish. At the end of the program–and after expenses have been paid–we split the money. While the nonprofit could have tried to execute the program themselves and collected 100% of the dollars raised, my team and I know these programs cold and how to squeeze every dime out of the partnership. We do all the work and the nonprofit gets a check. So far it’s worked really well for everyone.

These are my five tips for low-budget cause marketing. What would you add to my list?

Did you get that? It’s all about the ask at the register. The more people your cashiers ask, the more pinups you’ll sell, the more money you’ll raise. It seems simple, but motivating cashiers to ask everyone they meet can be challenging. We cover it at length in the Six Figure Cause Marketing program.

A great team and asking every customer to support the cause is how this iParty store in Quincy, Massachusetts raised more money than any other ($2,800 to be exact). This year’s campaign, which also included restaurants from Fuddruckers New England, raised $42,500, almost 20 percent more than last year!

Thanks to our roving reporter on our team, Joanna MacDonald, for swinging by iParty on her way home from work. It wasn’t a wasted trip, as she needed to replenish the the office’s supply of whoopie cushions and wax mustaches!

Seth Godin wrote last week on the importance of setting a ceiling of support for donors less they opt out all together.

As [marketers of causes] approach people with $10,000 or $100,000 in the bank, this fear of not seeing a limit is very real, and if it’s not confronted, they will fail at both raising the money and generating satisfaction for the donor.

If donors don’t feel like their support will make a difference or make them feel good, they will “avert their eyes.”

Seth contends that fewer people will turn away and a new class of significant donors could rise if they had a ceiling set for them.

And what better way to accomplish this than through cause marketing (as I define it, not as Seth discusses it, which is more the “marketing of causes.”)

• Cause marketing isn’t blue-blooded philanthropy. It’s red-blooded. It’s fundraising for the masses that either asks shoppers for a small donation when they checkout, or makes a donation to their favorite causes when they purchase a product.
• Cause marketing asks always have a ceiling. Donate a buck, two bucks. That’s it. Buy a coffee a dime goes to Haiti. People generally know what they’re getting and it’s an easy gift that can add up and make a real difference.
• And speaking of adding up, how great would it be if consumers who really wanted to use cause marketing as their primary way of giving, had a way of tracking their support from store to store. Perhaps through their credit card and the UPC codes on the back of pinups and cause items.

The power of limits is just one of the reasons you should have a set dollar amount for your cause marketing programs. You should be clear on how much you want the consumer to contribute, whether that be a $1, $2 or even $5. Having a set ask amount makes it easier for them to give. If you let them choose they’ll either give you pocket change and lint or balk because they’ll think you want too much.

The only retailer I’ve worked with that didn’t always ask for a specific dollar amount is Ocean State Job Lots. They like to ask their customers to give what they can in hopes they’ll give more than a buck. But I think their shoppers gravitate to the buck they give at most stores. I also think Ocean State cashiers end up directing shoppers to the standard dollar donation. “Most people give a buck.”

For Seth, it’s all about telling people where the end lies and how much is enough. He goes on to say that that this is true whether you’re trying to persuade people to join a gym or go on a diet, among other things.

Consider that a city like Boston went from having a handful of health clubs 15 years ago to 20 or more today. And some of these clubs get a $130 and up a month in dues. Through the years the industry convinced people that having a gym membership and paying a hefty monthly fee was the standard, especially for young professionals. Rent, food, phone, and, yeah, health club.

A similar standard for giving is within our grasps with cause marketing if we look beyond its impulsive, transactional nature and treat it as a real way to grow consumer support for causes. Critics worry that donor support for cause marketing will drain other forms of giving. But perhaps cause marketing is the vast gold mine buried beneath our feet that will enrich us all.