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.”

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Association of Fundraising Professionals Brown Bag today to hear me, Joanna MacDonald and Dan Curtin, General Manager of Zipcar Boston, talk about cause marketing.

As promised, here are my slides from the presentation (at least the most relevant ones). I’ve linked them to several posts that might be helpful to you.

What is Cause Marketing? Read my post of the same name, and be sure to check out the comments.

Point-of-Sale. You can read about several great examples of pinup programs that support Komen, Jake’s Ride and BMC. Not familiar with pinup programs? Here’s a primer.

Percentage-of-Sale. Check out this post I wrote on Absolut Boston and the Charles River Conservancy.

Sponsorships. As I explained today, cause marketing isn’t sponsorship, but I know selling sponsorships are still a big part of what nonprofits do. That’s why I’ve written a whole series on it called Selling Local Sponsorships for Nonprofits.

iParty and Ocean State Job Lots. You heard a lot about iParty and Ocean State today. These links share some more background about them and our partnerships with them.

Zipcar. As you heard today, this car-sharing company has been a good friend of the hospital. Here are some more details about the email pinup they did for us.

Foursquare. I’ve written three posts on Foursquare and one on CauseWorld. You should also read this AdAge article on Foursquare, which highlights how businesses are using the service. Consider the possible extensions to cause marketing.

Cause Marketing Forum. Their annual conference shouldn’t be missed! You can also follow CMF’s founder on Twitter. Visit CMF for loads of case studies on cause marketing and info on the conference.

The future is free. I talked about this in my “prophecies” for cause marketing. Read about it here.

Hire us. BMC is always looking for new nonprofit and for-profit partners. You can learn more about the different ways we can work together here.

Last week I was part of a group of Boston cause marketers David Hessekiel from Cause Marketing Forum pulled together to discuss the field. It was a lot of fun, and I think we all learned something from each other.

In addition to my own organization, there were reps from The Jimmy Fund, Oxfam, Pine Street Inn, Children’s Hospital, Project Bread and The Home for Little Wanderers. We all run cause marketing programs, albeit all at different stages from the dormant to the sophisticated. We all had some success to speak of, but in each of us, myself included, there was talk of frustrations, challenges and even inadequacies.

But there was also a great sense of determination among everyone there to get the job done and support our respective organizations.

For the Home of Little Wanderers, there was talk of low brand recognition and the struggle to communicate all the things they did in the community.

Solution: The Home is focusing its corporate efforts on the holiday season where it has its most well known and most successful programs (i.e. annual toy drive and holiday card sales).

Brand recognition has never been a problem for The Jimmy Fund here in New England, but it is outside the hospital’s service area. This has become a bigger problem as national companies gravitate toward working with national charities that mirror their customer base.

Solution: The Jimmy Fund developed a national cause marketing program for cancer charities of which they are a member. Incredibly, now they are raising more money than ever before thanks to their national footprint! It’s nice to see that some good deeds are rewarded.

Like The Jimmy Fund, The Pine Street Inn, is no stranger to innovation. While their cause marketing program is currently in transition, they were the geniuses behind what I called their Tower of Power. I hope in these tough times they will now see the wisdom in bringing it back!

If The Pine Street Inn was the smallest organization represented in the group, Oxfam was by far the biggest. We discussed how there were very few international cause marketing brands, and how Oxfam was strategically positioned to be one of them. Wow! What an incredibly exciting and powerful opportunity.

Project Bread has incredible cause marketing potential with its annual Walk For Hunger that last year had 44,000 walkers. But even with this huge public event, Project Bread is still mistaken for other local banks, like the New England Food Bank. But this isn’t deterring them from pursuing corporate sponsorships.

Children’s Hospital – Boston certainly had one of the more powerful brands in the room. Sick kids and fundraising are a pretty potent combo. But walled out from pursuing many national pacts because of their partnership with Children’s Miracle Network (which for sure brings them money) they are also penned in to a very competitive Boston marketplace where “sick kids” have to compete with every other worthy cause under the sun. Or do they?

Solution: Children’s has escaped their earthly bonds for virtual freedom! Generation Cures, an online gaming community, empowers ‘tweens and families across the country to learn how science saves lives while raising money to develop cures for kids. Corporate sponsors can participate via coupon programs, cause marketing, and naming opportunities.

Sitting around that table last week in Boston we didn’t talk like we were some of New England’s better cause marketers, but we were.  We were better because there were a hundred reasons why each of our organizations should have never started a cause marketing program, but they did.

We were better because once established in cause marketing we continued to drive innovation (cue: Keep Walking). The folks at The Pine Street Inn looked up at the tower that lorded over them. Children’s Hospital saw an opportunity in the ether of online. The Jimmy Fund saw dollar signs in working with other cancer organizations. And BMC decided to become showmen and launch its very own Halloween event in downtown Boston.

The same could even be said of David Hessekiel when he gave up journalism and started a cause-venture, Cause Marketing Forum, that benefits so many people who want to start or to grow in the field of cause marketing.

You could see on everyone’s faces and hear in all their stories that not everything had gone as planned. There were roadblocks. Stumbles. Lost opportunities. But each of us, in our own way, was pressing toward the mark with intelligence, resourcefulness and grit.

It wasn’t hard to understand why. We didn’t start as winners. But we are working hard to make ourselves ones every day.

Sitting at Cause Marketing Forum’s annual conference last month listening to all the great presentations from St. Jude’s, Ronald McDonald House and other big charities on their hugely successful cause marketing programs and looking around at all the small nonprofits in the room actively listening and taking copious notes, I was reminded of something the late runner-philosopher George Sheehan said years ago. 

In a similar setting but with elite athletes speaking on marathon training to ordinary runners he was blunt when it was his turn to speak: “Forget what they just told you,” he advised the crowd.  “They’re animals.”  What he meant was that elite marathoners are so gifted and so fundamentally different from the rest of us, their advice and experiences really don’t apply to the rest of us.  That’s one of the things I wanted to tell the other nonprofits that populated the room that day.  Given the chance, here’s what else I would have told them.

Big cause marketing programs have dedicated cause marketing teams.  Yours won’t.  I’m just not director of cause marketing at my nonprofit, I’m also director of events.  I manage our marathon program, annual gala and golf tournament, among other things.  Oh, and I also do cause marketing.  But because I have a strong interest and expertise in the area, I try to bring cause marketing in to everything I do, including events.  Regardless of what we do, I’m always looking for that intersection of philanthropy, marketing and business.  You should too.

Big cause marketing programs raise gobs of money from cause marketing.  Yours won’t.  Of course, raising “big money” is a relative term.  Even the millions of cause marketing dollars generated by cause marketing leaders like Komen or St. Jude’s is only a small percentage of the total funds they raise.  On average, nonprofits raise just 5-15% from all corporate giving, including cause marketing.  Now, if you’re raising $400 million a year, five percent is still a tidy sum.  But what if you organization only raises $400,000?  Five percent isn’t so significant, right?  That said, you need to look beyond  money to the exposure cause marketing offers and the potential connections to  both individual donors and corporate foundations.  I hate to use the term “loss leader” when describing cause marketing, but its value to nonprofits certainly goes beyond dollars and cents.  Because if it was all about the money, no one would do it except the big players. 

Big cause marketing programs deal with cause branding, passion branding and corporate social responsibility.  Yours won’t.   Local cause marketing programs are generally simple, limited, and transactional.  One of things I admire about big programs like St. Jude’s is how sophisticated they are.  They have a lot of layers and moving parts: in-store promotion, point of sale, percentage-of-sale on products, media, celebrity endorsements, events, and all happening simultaneously to boot.  It’s impressive.  That’s why they have large teams to execute their cause marketing programs and why they raise tens of millions of dollars each year.  But that’s not what your program is going to look like, nor does it have to to be modestly successful. 

Most local cause marketing programs are point-of-sale programs that involve little promotion or media beyond what’s sold at the register, which is fitting because the success of the program hinges on the cashier making ”the ask” (e. g. “Would you like to donate a dollar to help a sick child”).  Most local cause marketing partners will limit the time they work with you to a specific time of year (Halloween and Christmas are big ones for us) so they can work with other charities the rest of the year.  Very few will deeply drink the cool-aid and commit to a long-term strategic partnership. 

While you should never stop trying to evolve cause marketing programs into multi-year, comprehensive, strategic partnerships (I have two to my credit in my four year tenure at my current position, despite executing two dozen cause marketing pacts of all sizes), sticking with just cause marketing doesn’t make your efforts a failure.  It still serves your organization in a lot of important ways.  While not every oyster has a pearl, their soft bellies can make for a satisfying meal!