Crowd-Sourcing Offers Companies More Elbow Room to Do Good

It's an increasingly common refrain: it's a challenge to identify aspects in our personal and professional lives that remain unaffected by the explosion in the availability and mobility of personal communications technology.

Companies and brands who are keen to reach out and help foster positive change in their communities and in the world at large are rapidly embracing cutting-edge tools and communication platforms to engage their customers, broadcast positive stories and get the good job done all at once.

In the opening talk that kicked off PR Newswire's first Virtual Conference and Expo, DoSomething.org CEO Nancy Lublin walked participants through the potential payoff and pitfalls to crowd-sourced philanthropy.

In recent times, a CEO may have decided independently to write out a big donation check to his or her alma mater or to a pet project or cause. That's not to say that that's a bad thing, but in today's transformed informational landscape, companies are exploring pathways to involving the public at large in guiding their philanthropic decision making. In so doing, they may find that such benefits as improved public image and an expanded customer base accompany the act of outreach.

As Lublin informs us, the concept of cause marketing describes a union between a brand or service with a particular cause, all for a mutual benefit. This novel approach to corporate philanthropy was introduced by American Express in the 1970s with an initiative that raised money from cardholder purchases to be dedicated to the renovation of The Statue of Liberty. A second, more recent and highly successful example Lublin points to is Yoplait's support of breast cancer research. Yoplait's cause marketing is held up as a particularly solid example owing to the especially solid link between their female-skewed customer base and the selected cause. Yoplait, according to Lublin, can attribute a grown customer base as a direct result of this well-thought-out outreach initiative.

The latest twist in cause marketing is to blast open the doors to access, inviting the public to help guide philanthropic decision making. Technological change has us now witnessing a rapid acceleration in the use of crowd-sourced philanthropy. A recent (and well-discussed) example is offered by the Pepsi Refresh Project, which Lublin cites as making some $1.3 million dollars available each month to support causes that the public has told Pepsi they deem to be of the highest priority.

Of course, as with many things that are largely good, there are risks and pitfalls. First and foremost is the sheer challenge involved in a designing and implementing a successful crowd-sourced campaign. Legal, technical, public relations and financial matters must all come together in a tightly integrated way. What the crowd says may or may reflect what you as a company want or expect to hear, and there's a risk of funding something not well aligned with established strategy.

The potential for surprise, however, can be a very good thing. Pointing to Chase's Community Giving initiative launched through Facebook, the resulting recipient was Invisible Children. This organization dedicated to lending support and service to children impacted by war in Uganda was likely not a beneficiary that was on Chase's radar screen. But the exposure afforded to a once little-known organization, and the public relations payback to Chase, has proven to be a win-win.

Lublin says that we should be prepared to see more of this coming down the philanthropic pike over the next couple years, and the platform to receive information and to participate is more likely to be the smart phone in our pocket in addition to your home computer.

Photo by Search Engine People Blog via Flickr.