The 2012 Global Philanthropy Forum is ending it's three-day run today. Be sure to tune into the live stream to catch the final topics of the forum discussed live. Today's topics include global health delivery and climate change. Let us know what you think about the live sessions in the comments.
Chalk Ping Pong & Billiards Lounge invites Dress for Success Young Executives for Success to celebrate a new year and a new start with an evening of fun and games this Thursday, March 29th.
Please join us for a complimentary cocktail hour from 7:00PM - 8:00PM. And get ready to get your game on from 8:00PM - 9:00PM.
A $20 donation to this great cause is requested at the door. For more information about Dress for Success please visit their website.
Please RSVP at ChalkMiami.com, RSVP is required for entrance; please specify the event you are attending in your email.
In one of the early scenes from the dystopian 70s cult classic Soylent Green the camera shows a largely homeless and grotesquely overpopulated New York City street whose riotous masses are cleared with dump trucks – called scoops – treated more like rubbish than people. And in later scenes the audience learns not only is prostitution legal, but the women that come with the little remaining luxury property that’s left are called “furniture.” Nice.
If only treating people like objects was confined to Charlton Heston-starring science fiction.
Instead, the recent marketing misstep by BBH Labs, the innovation arm of the international marketing agency BBH, has brought us all a notch lower on the “soylent slide.” Earlier this week, at the annual tech-fest better known as the SXSW technology conference, BBH Labs hired 13 volunteer homeless people to stand in as human mobile hot spots. Carrying Wi-Fi devices and wearing t-shirts that read: “I’m [name] a 4G Hotspot,” the volunteers were enlisted to help prevent the overload of the existing mobile network, a common occurrence at tech-crowded events. It was also intended as a conversation starter – homeless workers would have an opportunity to speak with mobile users about their plight and discuss America’s homeless problem. And who knows, maybe a chance encounter would aid their employment and housing prospects?
In fact, Saneel Radia, the director of innovation at BBH Labs, who was quoted in a New York Times story about the Austin, Texas event, seemed utterly surprised by the public backlash.
“We saw it as a means to raise awareness by giving homeless people a way to engage with mainstream society and talk to people,” he said. “The hot spot is a way for them to tell their story.”
Somehow I think that positive outcome is unlikely, especially when you start with turning homeless people into an awkward marketing ploy while treating them like glorified telephone poles –albeit telephone poles with enough of a human voice to request that their 4G “customers” consider a donation to help them survive. While it’s true that these unlucky 13 did volunteer for their services and were paid for their efforts (more on that later), the program speaks to the worst kind of human exploitation. It’s one thing to know your actions are exploitative and nevertheless carry them out based on some flawed “greater good” logic, but it’s another level entirely when you’re oblivious to that cruelty.
The marketing carelessness also highlights another disturbing trend related to technology, a term that Chris Klauda, a vice president at D.K. Shifflet & Associates, a travel and hospitality market research company calls, “isolated togetherness” – people in close physical spaces, but remaining disconnected from the “real world” and are instead solely focused on the goings on in their virtual worlds via their smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.
As the technology through which we all communicate continues to advance, becoming more immersive, digitally interactive, and mobile, it’s critical we – not as public relations professionals but as moral, caring, and empathetic members of the human race – remember that treating people with respect isn’t just about asking for someone’s assistance or paying them for their efforts in some endeavor. Nor does calling a marketing misfire a “charitable experiment,” excuse BBH Labs from their decision. That kind of qualified and dare I say bullsh*t language serves no one. In fact, it’s the kind of language PR professionals rely on so often that gives our industry a bad reputation and further fans the flames of the media mess at the heart of this blog post.
For their efforts the 13 volunteers, selected from the Front Steps homeless shelter, earned themselves free t-shirts, $20 a day (which based on an 8-hour work day amounts to $2.50 an hour or about the same legal minimum wage in 1976, and $4.75 below today’s legal minimum), and the opportunity to collect some extra donations.
But if you ask me, and the many others who were similarly disturbed by this story, I think they all got a lot less than they bargained for. Consider this “charitable experiment” a dismal failure, and hopefully one that will not be re-dressed and re-hashed for the next South by Southwest technology conference.
They may not have been called furniture as in Soylent Green, but these 13 volunteers definitely served as a 2012 appliance.
Shame on us all.
Almost a year ago we predicted that nonprofits would face stricter budgets cuts and less government funding over the next few years - and sadly, it looks like we were right.
Many nonprofits are becoming increasingly worried over the President’s new budget plan that was announced early last week. President Obama’s new tax plan will limit write-offs for all itemized deductions, including those for charitable donations, to just 28%. This is a 7% decrease from the current rate of 35%. A recent article showed that many nonprofit leaders fear the extra taxes the wealthy could end up paying will deter them from giving as generously as they have done in the past. And none of us want that.
Many organizations have spoken up in opposition of the President’s plan. Sue Santa, Senior Vice President of the Philanthropy Roundtable feels the President is sending charities mixed messages. “On one hand, he wants to limit the charitable deduction. On the other, he wants millionaires to continue to give to charity while also paying higher taxes.”
Unfortunately, we can’t have it both ways.
Global nonprofit programs are also being affected by the new tax plan: while there’s a proposed increase in spending on international aid there are cuts to global-health and humanitarian-assistance programs, which could affect nonprofits that are working overseas.
With higher taxes on charitable donations and budget cuts to government funded groups, nonprofits have taken quite a hit in the past week. And given the current state of the “giving climate” it’s the last thing they need.
What do you think about the proposed tax plan? How do you think this will impact your nonprofit? The ThinkTank would love to hear from you.
Here’s something that almost anyone from any side of the political spectrum can agree upon: the past week has been heinous for Susan G. Komen. And it has shown that the organization most known for its staunch (some, like me, would say steamrolling) support for finding a cure and raising awareness for a single type of cancer -- breast cancer -- above any other has a cancer all its own. It’s a cancer common to any group that has become bloated with a false sense of self-righteousness and one whose arrogance and hubris causes it to stray from its stated (if overzealous) mission and become embroiled in a politicized mess.
What I'm talking about, of course, is this week's announcement that Karen Handel, Susan G. Komen’s vice president of public policy, jumped before she was pushed. A speedy resignation with no severance package, Handel excised herself from the organization before mounting pressure within the group would have forced her imminent departure.
Her resignation caps a week of intense public backlash over Susan G. Komen's decision to first cut and then hurriedly restore about $680,000 in funding to Planned Parenthood, a provider of reproductive health services, including contraception and abortions.
In her resignation letter, which has been posted on Forbes, Handel goes to great lengths to explain how the situation got so out of control. Her defense? Komen is in the business of saving lives. Anything that distracts from that goal is a disservice -- thus the decision to pull funding and divorce itself from a controversial organization that might be spending money illegally, like funding abortions.
In October 2011, during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I wrote about how the "pinking" of America was diluting the message of curing cancer and replacing it with corporate capitalism and too much consumption. I also took issue with Susan G.’s near-bullying tactics as they related to how the fundraising and marketing gargantuan has left smaller cancer-fighting organizations to fend for themselves, and how they aggressively muscle out any group that seeks to challenge breast cancer as the only cancer worth raising money for.
This latest misstep only adds to my great concern that Susan G. Komen, for all the good it has admittedly done for breast cancer awareness, has become a monopolistic and politically compromised organization. If she were alive today, I wonder what Susan Goodman Komen -- whom the organization gets its name from -- would think. After what must have been a grueling fight for her life, finding a cure and staying true to the organization's mission and goals would be more important to her then whether or not grant money was going to another group similarly charged with helping save the lives of young, often poor women -- an organization that happens to provide abortions.
Letters of resignation aside, let's not forget that Karen Handel is a former Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate, whose campaign promises included cutting funding for Planned Parenthood, and was Georgia's 26th Secretary of the State.
On Sunday, the Huffington Post reported that it had obtained an email exchange between Komen leadership confirming that Handel had the sole authority in crafting and implementing the Planned Parenthood policy.
Does this not have all the makings of a woman hell-bent on achieving a personal goal and using a behemoth organization which itself had become too politically connected, as cover to achieve her aims?
Yes -- the organization did reverse course in barely 72 hours, and restored the funds. It also made changes to its grant awarding guidelines that say only organizations under criminal investigation would be denied funding. But like a true cancer, this organizational one has already done much damage -- to those who truly believed in the structure of non-profits being “doers of good,” to those who held Komen as saviors of women, and to the brands who’ve invested heavily to be part of Komen’s shiny pink halo.
The upside to all this? Susan G. Komen’s misdeeds have opened up an enormous pathway for all the non-profits around the country, breast-cancer-related or not -- to start reclaiming their place in consumers’ hearts, minds and wallets.
And as for the PR advice, first administered by Ari Fleisher and now Ogilvy, all I can say is that it will take a lot more than some clever PR tactics and new positioning to rebuild this country’s trust in the Susan G. Komen brand and its “values.”
Please join Catalyst Miami & the Consultants Collaborative for Increa$e Money February, their inaugural Learning Circle Workshop on February 7th! Attending nonprofits will learn strategies to increase money in their organization. Check out the official invite for more details & we hope to see you there!
Please click here to register.
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