With the Tony Awards broadcast last weekend, the buzz around the smash hit Broadway musical Hamilton hit yet another fever pitch. It’s nearly impossible to consume any kind of media without seeing a cast member. With the songs and lessons of Hamilton in the air, it’s no surprise that as I listened to the stars of the nonprofit world speak at the Cause Marketing Forum earlier this month, the question that kept floating to the top of my mind was: What Did I Miss?
The 2016 Cause Marketing Forum (CMF) made it abundantly clear that nonprofits today must deal with change at a dizzying pace – in their issue, their competition, in the marketplace. Successful nonprofit leaders are those that continually ask themselves and their organizations, “what did I miss?” What insight, what competitive threat, what change in donor preference will fundamentally affect our ability to deliver on our mission in the future?
Several of these nonprofit leaders spoke at CMF on how they are creating a culture of perpetual inquiry to future proof their organizations.
The Issue
Nonprofits have established missions, but those missions target ever-changing issues. In its CMF presentation Safe Kids Worldwide discussed ongoing efforts to better understand how and why kids accidentally swallow adults’ medication. In its inquiry it discovered that today, 48 percent of emergency room visits for child medicine poisoning are because a child swallowed a grandparent’s medicine, not a parent’s. Parents’ medication now account for only 38 percent of cases. This signified a fundamental shift in the issue, caused by changing U.S. demographics, i.e. the number of adults ages 65+ in the U.S. increased 35 percent between 2003 and 2014. Today more than seven million grandparents live with their grandchildren. Safe Kids Worldwide’s active research allowed it to catch this critical shift and, as a result, re-prioritize its efforts to focus on grandparents as a priority audience.
The Competition
Goodwill’s presentation provided a fascinating glimpse into the 100+ year-old nonprofit’s determination to thrive in the competitive thrift industry. The lion’s share of Goodwill’s revenue comes from in-kind donations; and, the nonprofit had learned the hard way that new, online for-profit competitors (e.g., eBay, thredUP) could choke off their supply. This past year, Goodwill smartly used the online shopping threat to its advantage with the launch of the Give Back Box. Through this ingenious program, Goodwill asks consumers to send in donated clothes and household items in the used shipping boxes from online retail purchases. Goodwill partners with a host of online retailers to operate the program, using the retailers’ ecommerce sites to allow customers to print shipping labels and send their contributions off to Goodwill for free. A creative, practical solution if ever there were one, this project has yielded Goodwill 6,000 shipments of donated goods, in just a few months
The Marketplace
UNHCR – an unlikely attendee – came to present not one but three new cause marketing partnerships. The refugee issue historically has not been a top candidate for cause marketers, often discounted as too dark, too politically fraught. But the UNHCR actively looked around the marketplace and noted that the refugee crisis had now reached such horrific heights that in 2015 a majority of the U.S. public was in support of aiding refugees. The UNHCR was able to prove to a trio of (Google, Kickstarter, and Instacart) that theirs was an all too human cause customers were ready – and eager – to support.
As Hamilton’s Jefferson wisely observes: there is no more status quo. It is incumbent upon all of us who work in support of social causes to keep our ears pricked and our curiosity active to make sure we don’t miss a beat.
Andrea Helisek, vice president, in the Business + Social Purpose practice.