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100,000+ NONPROFITS COUNT ON US.
GENEROSITY UNLEASHED: $830 MILLION IN DONATIONS
100,000+ NONPROFITS COUNT ON US.
GENEROSITY UNLEASHED: $830 MILLION IN DONATIONS
By Kate Olsen | @Kate4Good & Allison McGuire | @Calimcg
Consumers in the age of social media can smell disingenuous cause marketing a mile away. Plus, they now have the tools to broadcast the bad (and the good) with every share, tweet, and pin.
To ward off any cause marketing backlash, clearly answer the following questions before embarking on your next campaign.
By Allison McGuire | @Calimcg
This is a continuation of a blog post on how The Container Store unpacks employee engagement.
While The Container Store does great community outreach and disaster relief work, what surprised us most in this interview was the company’s laser focus on its employees.
Here are the ways The Container Store prioritizes its workforce:
Employees first.
A-Team.
No HR needed.
Recession-proof strategy.
Conscious capitalists.
Keep reading for the details on how The Container Store puts its values to work...
By Allison McGuire | @Calimcg
Kate Olsen and I had the chance to chat with Audrey Robertson, VP of cultural programs, community relations, and social media, about the company’s digital and cultural impact programs.
While The Container Store does great community outreach and disaster relief work, what surprised us most in this interview was the company’s laser focus on its employees.
Keep reading to discover how the company prioritizes its workforce...
By Katya Andresen | @KatyaN4G
The following post was originally featured on Edelman's goodpurpose blog.
That’s why your heart races when your favorite athlete soars toward the basket or why the sight of a mother struggling to save her child from floodwaters causes you pain.
While our hearts translate empathy into helping another person, our brains have another reaction: We’re rewarded with happy feelings, thanks to a dopamine dose to our brain’s pleasure center.
If empathy is a preexisting human condition, and if it feels good to do good, then it should be easy-peasy to be a cause marketer. Take your product, slap on a pink ribbon, and watch people act.
Guess what? It’s not that easy.
By Kate Olsen | @Kate4Good
Are you attending the Conference on Volunteering and Service this year? Network for Good is looking forward to inspiring conversation about social impact and change this June 19-22 here in DC.
1) Cross-sector knowledge transfer and opportunities for collaboration
2) Inspiration from a broad range of speakers (celebrities included)
3) Opportunities to meet digital friends in real life – who knows what ideas will spark?
By Kate Olsen | @Kate4Good
By now, the words ‘authentic’ and ‘story’ are commonplace as short form for what we cause marketers must strive for. But what do they mean?
By recognizing outstanding achievements in volunteer engagement by businesses, VolunteerMatch announced the winners of its annual Corporate Volunteer Awards.By Kate Olsen | @Kate4Good
Research demonstrates that the closer we feel to a cause – and the closer we believe the company is to a cause - the more likely consumers are to act. So what is the takeaway for cause marketers?
By Allison McGuire | @Calimcg
Did you know your brand’s social ID (think digital fingerprint) can rally external supporters?
Here’s Ted Rubin and Kathyrn Rose’s social checklist from their book Return on Relationships, (ROR) and my take on how you can use these items to boost the ‘good’ your company does.
Now it’s a different story. Everyone has a rubber bracelet with an affiliated color campaign. While Livestrong has now expanded branding to incorporate other goods and events to stay ahead of the curve, the yellow band has left an indelible impression on the American public.
Go ahead, try something new. If the campaign is a complete flop, move on. If it’s a wild success, creativity for the win!
By Allison McGuire | @Calimcg
Building solid relationships, without asking for anything in return, is key for companies looking to gain consumer loyalty and/or expand a trusted brand presence.
Social media marketing is a perfect way to do just that.
One thing worth remembering: social media marketing needs to be fully integrated into your company’s overall marketing plan. Digital engagement tools are useless when operating in a vacuum.
As Ted Rubin and Kathryn Rose write,
“Social integration is especially important around customer service, where the disparity between the customer experience in the social media channel and the customer experience in the traditional channel is a dangerous chasm. The result is a mixed message around customer service—an area where none of us can afford to be unclear or inconsistent.”
Rubin and Rose go on to explain how your brand’s social ID (think digital fingerprint) can be used to rally external supporters. I’ve noted their social checklist below, and added my take on how you can use these items to boost the ‘good’ your company does.
By Kate Olsen | @Kate4Good
A rival campaign didn’t fare so well. Its slogan was less tangible, not to mention wordy: “1 pack will help eradicate newborn tetanus globally.”
Be like P&G! Here are 3 reasons for tangible cause marketing messages.
By Allison McGuire | @Calimcg & Kate Olsen | @Kate4Good
We're closely monitoring the severe storms and tornadoes in Oklahoma and surrounding states. Companies have asked us how they can support relief efforts. Here are our recommendations:
By Katya Andresen | @KatyaN4G
The following is a guest post from Network for Good's CSO & COO. A similar version originally appeared on her blog, Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog.
Social media for social good is growing. Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communication and Waggener Edstrom Worldwide just released a new study that delves into the perceptions, behavior and motivations for cause support (locally and globally) among digitally engaged American adults.
Here are some of the most interesting findings:
Conversations about causes are occurring primarily online, whether people choose to support the cause online or off. Social media is a go-to source of cause information, especially for global and faith-based causes. More than 8 in 10 respondents agreed that social media is effective in getting people talking about causes and issues. Animals and children topped the list of popular causes on social media (of course - puppies and babies win every time!).
By Allison McGuire | @Calimcg
It’s not surprising that Millennials like beer. Everyone likes beer. Okay, maybe not everyone, but many, many people enjoy a cold brew. Through their core business values, profit model, and internal organization, one company is drawing Millennials left and right: New Belgium Brewery.
Through a series of “happy accidents” Katie Wallace found herself at New Belgium. The employee-owned business embodies happiness itself. I had a chance to chat with Wallace about her work, and why the company operates the way it does. All quotations are from Ms. Wallace.
Being human. Jordan’s background in social work and marketing has brought a human touch to a business that is all about people. For starters, she insisted on New Belgium being employee-owned, with an open-book management policy.
“Honoring our humanness – we’re not machines – unlocks this amazing power in the business, making us more profitable and successful in the long run.”
By Allison McGuire | @Calimcg
You can read our COO/CSO Katya Andresen’s take on this data here.
Here’s a headline I like reading: Consumers Care about Buying from Socially Responsible Brands Now More Than Ever. It’s some good news from my favorite print magazine, Fast Company.
Good.Must.Grow., a socially responsible marketing company, recently conducted a poll of 1,015 Americans around conscious consumerism, and the results are encouraging. In 2011, 18% reported buying from socially responsible companies. In 2012, that number jumped to 30% saying they plan to purchase more goods from these companies.
What’s perhaps most interesting is that while 31% said they sought out socially responsible companies, 25% said they “avoided buying products from a company specifically because it wasn’t socially responsible”.
By Allison McGuire | @Calimcg
This is a continuation of yesterday's post.
Let’s face it: Engaged employees are the best. I don’t mean the best at their jobs—although that can be true—I mean the most spirited, zestful people.
TalentZoo recently explored the ‘5 I’s’ of employee engagement. Definitely check out the post in its entirety, and find part II of our take below.
1) Inform.
2) Inspire.
3) Instruct. As we’ve mentioned before, everyone can use professional skillset enhancements—especially Millennials. By providing employees with clear directives and leadership opportunities, you set them up to succeed.
By Kate Olsen | @Kate4Good
Research shows that, above all, emotion is what galvanizes people to act.
Today, we release a brand new eGuide - The Brainiac's Guide to Cause Marketing by our own COO and CSO Katya Andresen - that explores how people’s minds really work, and what that means for your next campaign. By understanding how people think, you'll learn how to make them act.
By Allison McGuire | @Calimcg
Soon-to-be college graduates Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez learned how gourmet mushrooms could be grown out of recycled coffee grounds. The idea – intriguing if nothing else – made them think: Should they forgo stable careers in the banking world for innovative entrepreneurship in the…mushroom world?
As you might have guessed, the answer is yes.
Their mission is simple: To make food personal again through the passionate development of tools that educate and inspire, one family at a time.
As are their values: Hustle. Passion. Family. Universal Happiness.
By Allison McGuire | @Calimcg
This is a continuation of a Follow Friday Feature with Sodexo.
Sodexo is a massive global quality of life services company, reaching 75 million people on a daily basis. In spite of its size, Sodexo is committed to the local communities it touches, keeping its 425,000 employees engaged, communicating those core CSR values, and giving back.
I was able to learn more about how such a big company communicates its CSR values, through an interview with Neil Barrett, Sodexo’s Group VP of Sustainable Development. All italicized text is that of Mr. Barrett’s.
Sodexo’s Better Tomorrow Plan is structured around four pillars and sets out 18 defined commitments.
This structure governs who we are, what we do and how we engage with our clients, consumers, suppliers, and communities, in fact all of our stakeholders in order to be a responsible company.
But that is a lot of initiatives to remember, so in order to share them with the general public, we looked for common themes and came up with those four communications priorities, based on what our research said people cared about most...
The four macro themes of Sodexo’s CSR communications are:
By Allison McGuire | @Calimcg
Sodexo is a global quality of life services company, reaching 75 million people on a daily basis. In spite of its size, Sodexo is committed to the local communities it touches and keeping its nearly half a million employees engaged in its mission and values..
Through an interview with Neil Barrett, Sodexo’s Group VP of Sustainable Development, I was able to learn more about how such a big company can be so personal. All italicized text is that of Mr. Barrett’s.
On being a local, global company:
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