Social Responsibility

Over the last three years, I have developed a considerable interest in the marketing and fundraising of non-profit organizations. I am now working on the “win-win” approach of “sponsored fundraising” whereby firms would send out fundraising appeals on behalf of non-profit organizations. The firms could potentially receive a much greater promotional value from being associated with this support of the organization than they would from similar expenditures on traditional advertising. The non-profit organizations, in turn, win both by being able to devote more of their proceeds to the substantive objectives of the organization and by the increased likelihood that potential donors will select organizations that devote less of their resources to fundraising. The non-profit group, then, not only gets to keep most if not all of the pie, it also is likely to have a bigger one. I discuss these issues in more detail in my 2007 "Unholiday Letter."