Posts Tagged ‘fundraising’

The logo for the We All Win Lottery. Does this fundraising technique really ensure “we all win?”

There was more than a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth here in Ottawa last week.

The local children’s hospital, CHEO, and the Ottawa Hospital, were running a hospital lottery with a ticket deadline of midnight, Friday, June 22. And apparently, sales weren’t going well.

There were stories all last week in local media about how only about two-thirds of the “We all win”  tickets (which cost $100) have been sold, and that this might reduce the money funding research at the CHEO Research Institute and the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.

Then, on Sunday, we heard that disaster had been averted. The Ottawa Citizen reported that the lottery sold a total of 46,000 tickets. This was enough to allow the hospitals to break even and provide up to $500,000 in research funding, a drop from last year’s $900,000.

Hospital lotteries seem to have proliferated in Canada in recent years. According to the Dream Lottery site, a catalog of Canada’s charity lotteries, there are 15 in Ontario, and by my count of their listings, there are 45 across the country.

I’ve had a few health-care challenges, and I’m now of an age where I see friends experiencing all sorts of health issues. So I like hospitals and I like research. But is this the best way to fund research activities at hospitals?

Let’s take a quick and dirty look at the numbers. (By the way, I asked the hospitals and the foundations to contribute to this post on Friday, but have heard nothing from them.)

The lottery sold 46,000 tickets. Let’s assume that everybody bought single tickets, although some might have bought three at a time for a $50 discount.

Some notes on the assumptions I make here. I have maxmized the revenue generated. I have also used the face value of prizes. I suspect that the prizes are provided at lower than face value.

At first glance, it seems like there’s a lot of money being spent to administer a $4M program, and that something with a budget of $4 million is raising only $500,000 for the stated purpose.

Should hospital foundations be spending money to heavily market high-end lotteries which could be susceptible to local economic conditions (in Ottawa’s case, there are thousands of public servants who face uncertain futures after budget cuts)? And is it worth it for a chunk of their research funding pie that in the case of CHEO is less than 13% and only 5% for the OHRI?

There’s a social implication here, too. I hate to use the word “should” again, but should people have to be bribed with the chance of winning something to donate to these causes? Look at the headlines of what CHEO researchers did just last year:

• A potential treatment for Spinal Muscular Atrophy
• A way of using sugar water to reduce pain in infants
• A treatment for osteogenesis imperfecta

At the OHRI:

• New diagnostic tools for thrombosis, or blood clots.
• New, earlier ways of diagnosing Parkinson’s disease.

These things benefit society. I want to support that, and I don’t need the prospect of a new car or a house to make me. So I just made a donation to the CHEO Research Institute. 

The world was abuzz this week with the story of Karen Klein, a woman from upstate New York who was taunted mercilessly while working as a school bus monitor. As is so often the case, the taunters were not only mean and vile, but stupid enough to record their actions. If you haven’t seen this, you may or may not want to expose yourself to the 10 minutes of evil vapidity.

The video, as is the cliché, went viral. Millions of views. Then a guy in Toronto named Max Sidorov was touched by the video. He set up a campaign on Indiegogo to give her a vacation. He set a goal of $5,000, saying “There’s even a point in the video where one of the kids touches Karen’s arm in an attempt to make fun of her. I’m not sure why these kids would want to bully a senior citizen to tears, but I feel we should do something, or at least try. She doesn’t earn nearly enough ($15,506) to deal with some of the trash she is surrounded by. Lets give her something she will never forget, a vacation of a lifetime!” 

Then Sidorov’s campaign went viral too — in spades. In a matter of days, the campaign raised more than $545,000.

All of this is heartwarming. This is a 68-year-old woman who was treated more than shabbily, and it’s lovely to think that she’s going to be helped by this.

But let’s be honest here. Does Karen Klein need a half-million nest egg? Does the pain or embarrassment she suffered warrant a half-million payday?

Let’s take another example — Caine’s Arcade. The release of a short film about Caine’s Arcade led to a college fund of more than $200,000 and a matching fund to help other kids as creative and deserving as Caine.

After the short film “Caine’s Arcade” was released, more than $208,000 was raised to help Caine Monroy’s education and a foundation pledged to match donations to help others. 

There’s no doubt that these stories are inspiring. But I have this feeling that even the desire to good using the tools of social media can go too far. In themselves, the 25,000 donors to the Klein campaign each did an undeniably good thing. But is the best use of the $545,000 and counting that has been raised to simply go to Ms. Klein?

The other side of this is the response by viewers to reach out to the school or the school district.

The school district website has a message which reads in part:

“The behaviors displayed on this video are not representative of all Greece Central students and this is certainly not what we would like our students to be known for. We have worked very hard to educate students on the damaging impact of bullying and will continue to do so.

We have received thousands of phone calls and emails from people across the country wanting to convey their thoughts. People are outraged by what has happened and they feel the students should be punished. While we agree that discipline is warranted, we cannot condone the kind of vigilante justice some people are calling for. This is just another form of bullying and cannot be tolerated. 

We all need to take a step back and look at how we treat each other. It is our job as educators and parents to teach children and lead by example. We encourage parents to use this as a springboard to begin a dialogue with their children about bullying, respect and consequences. As a school community, we will continue to take the lead in bullying education and we encourage all students and employees subjected to bullying and harassment to report it as soon as it occurs and to take a stand if they are witness to bullying in their lives.” 

I can only imagine the sheer volume of contacts. How could a small upstate New York school or district reasonably handle this level of outrage and demand for response? And what would my angry e-mail add to the situtation?

I don’t really have any answers here; I’m just trying to think through how a bad thing can, through social media, lead to a good thing and then, again through social media, perhaps the good thing becomes too much of a good thing.

What do you think?

I tend to end up volunteering for a lot of stuff. Part of it is because I have a hard time saying no to good causes, part of it because I enjoy doing the work, part of it because it makes me feel good to help, part of it because often it’s friends asking, and part of it because I might learn something or hang out with cool people.

For many of us, the old models of service clubs and voluntarism seem... prehistoric.

One of the things I think has been changed most fundamentally by social media is the relationship between not-for-profit organizations and people wishing to do good things for them.

Back in the day, charities and not-for-profits relied on long-term relationships with volunteers and donors. Every year, Jane Bloggs would “collect” for the Heart Foundation, the March of Dimes, or the Cancer Society (Of course, this still happens.) Every year, people would write cheques (as my parents still do, in memory of my brother) to the local children’s hospital. Memorial donations.

And not-for-profits would have committees which would provide muscle and brainpower to organize events and fundraisers. Need a fashion show? A charity tea? Casino night? Strike a committee, likely with one or more of the same people who canvassed and knitted and hosted the dinner etc… and the event comes together.

I suspect that in many ways, there was even a parallel thing happening with genders. Men would join “service clubs” like Rotary, Kinsmen, and the like, and women would have parallel clubs (in Canada, the IODE or the Catholic Women’s League).

But things are changing. Traditional service clubs are declining in popularity, as noted both by media and by club believers. But at the same time, there are good things happening too. And that’s where social media comes in.

The ability for people to self-organize and act via social media is awe-inspiring. Let me give you a bunch of examples:

• Twestival‘s remarkable success (nearly $2M raised in three years) comes to mind (and I feel justifiably proud in pointing to Ottawa’s superbly done Twestival event last year, organized by Stéphanie Montreuil and a gang of other smart people).
• The recent example of Caine’s Arcade is another heartwarming story, especially now that in addition to providing Caine with the world’s first crowdsourced scholarship (I’m guessing), a foundation has paired up to match those funds and help other kids like Caine.
  

  Caine Monroy, in his arcade. After the short film "Caine's Arcade" was posted online, more than $100,000 was raised in a week

• Hélène Campbell, a young woman from Ottawa, took her diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and turned it into a campaign for organ donation that took the province of Ontario’s Trillium Gift of Life Network by surprise — when she got celebrities such as Jann Arden, Justin Bieber, and Ellen Degeneres involved in urging organ donation, their registrations went from about 50 per day up to hundreds per day. She bumped the whole province’s registration number by two percent — nearly 250,000!
• 12for12K was a campaign organized by Danny Brown back in 2008, which raised more than $100,000 for a number of charities.
• And a couple of years ago, this was brought home to me when I found myself raising money and collecting goods for a local women’s shelter that had suffered a terrible fire.

So what makes all this different? A few things:

• People don’t have the same sort of connection to the organization they’re working on behalf of. 

I didn’t know Cornerstone from a hole in the ground beforehand. I’m not a woman. I’ve never had to live in a shelter. I didn’t know any of the staff or volunteers. I just got riled up by the fire. I don’t think Hélène Campbell was involved in organ donation before she got sick. This sort of spontaneous engagement has good and bad implications. First, it can be an unexpected and serendipitous boon. Yay. Second, it can create unexpected work for charity staff or established volunteers. Not exactly Boo, but uh-oh.

• Not-for-profits can sometimes do best by staying out of the way 

Organizations that aren’t familiar with the ad-hoc, high-energy, short-term nature of these movements might stifle them with excessive bureaucracy, caution, or general wet-blanketing. That in no way means you let people run with a valuable brand. But you don’t want to oversee and second-guess every decision.

• Trying to court these folks into becoming longtime donors or volunteers may not work, or even backfire. 

The irony of these “flash-givers” is that while they may well believe in your cause, be willing to use social media, traditional media, public relations, and the like to  boost it, and make a big difference… it may be a one-night stand. They may feel little to no long-term interest in the organization, and may well be too busy or lack the long-term interest to come back to the organization, volunteer, join a board, etc.

• Use this new energy to leverage your organization. 

In the media relations game,  ”earned media” implies a third-party endorsement of an organization. Well, someone coming out of the blue to support your organization financially or with an event is an EXPLICIT endorsement of what you do. Use them (with their permission and support) to solidify or expand your organization’s brand in the media, to increase your website’s Google juice, or to further promote your own social media initiatives. All parties will benefit.

• Smart charities and NFPs will figure out ways of encouraging and supporting these flash-gives. 

Just as you could stifle an initiative with too much “management”, you can fan the flames with some judicious support. Ask how you can help. Have resources ready for them — logos, sound bites, etc. Be ready to include news about them in your organization’s online presence. Work your existing networks to help the new folks achieve their goals, or at least offer to.

As the old ways of cultivating and managing volunteers become less effective, the NFP sector needs to find ways to harness this somewhat anarchic force. Those who do can reap great benefits.

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Some great resources for not-for-profits:

• Zoetica media and Kami Watson Huyse’s “Communication Overtones” blog
• Socialfish, a consulting company for the NFP sector
• Jamie Notter, an association constultant
• Humanize, the book by Socialfish’s Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter.