PR Agency Briefing

The following presentation provides a quick view of the history of the 1 Dollar Club, and where we plan on taking it.

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Building A Microphilanthropy Movement

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Great Tips for Non-profits during a recession

From the Las Vegas Business Press:

Reframe the message for recession:
Instead of gauzy appeals to a higher good, emphasize practical, tangible uses of donations. In that line, Bob Evans, a principal with EHL Consulting Group in Willow Grove, Pa., has noted a decrease in big capital projects and a shift from touting the elegance of the ones that go ahead to how they meet basic human needs.

Get the Board out of the Boardroom:
Members of boards of directors often get the positions because of their prominence in the community. Set goals for each of them to bring in a certain number of new members.

Communicate:
Major donors should hear again the message of why they should contribute, with a phone call or personal visit being more effective than a letter. Donors who have skipped contributions for a couple of years should also be reached to try to reignite their interest.

Endowment:
Paradoxically, a slow economy may be the best time to build a reserve. Although potential donors may be tight with money, the argument for an endowment to help a nonprofit ride out economic cycles becomes more compelling.

Respect anonymity:
Evans has noted a trend of donors declining public recognition even as they write checks because they don't want people to know they are doing well financially or don't want to flaunt it. Although this may diminish the prestige of a nonprofit's benefactors list, it can help bring in dollars.

Keep trying!!!

Statistics Are A Philanthropic Blind Spot

Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide is a tremendous book. It chronicles the psychological rationale that affects human decision making in all walks of life. I highly recommend getting a copy!

Of particular interest to me was his citing of research done by Dr. Paul Slovic, a psychologist at the University of Oregon. Lehrer writes,

"According to Slovic, the problem with statistics is that they don't activate our moral emotions. The depressing numbers leave us cold: our minds can't comprehend suffering on such a massive scale. This is why we are riveted when one child falls down a well but turn a blind eye to the millions of people who die every year for lack of clean water. And why we donate thousands of dollars to help a single African war orphan featured on the cover of a magazine but ignore widespread genocides in Rwanda and Darfur. As Mother Teresa put it, "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will."

This is of particular importance of us at the 1 Dollar Club - we feel that the paradigm is shifting from the 21st century where people donate only when their emotions have been triggered, to a more proactive, mandatory role.

You don't have to be rich to be a microphilanthropist, Everyone can afford to give a dollar. Donate Today!

Interesting Presentation

A short but useful presentation on how the notion of philanthropy has evolved, and that the increased involvment of the public is democratizing charitable causes.

Sean Stannard-Stockton, calls the time we're in the "Second Great Wave of Philanthropy", that since the advent of social media, the next surge of generosity is coming from the general populace, not just the rich. There really is no reason why the practice of microphilanthropy can't become mainstream.

2008 09 Participatory Philanthropy

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AFL latest commercial

Not related to the microphilanthropy, but here is the latest ad promoting the AFL season - absolutely fantastic!

Is Higher Taxation Going To Kill Philanthropy?

Everywhere you look, there is doom and gloom around predictions that charitable giving will dry up because of the recession. Not helped by higher taxation under the Obama administration, many are predicting that we are facing a philanthropic crisis - that people are counting their pennies and will be less likely to donate to charitable causes.

At any other time in history, this would be a cause for concern. There would be reason to feel that there is not a lot we can do to stop the well of generosity from running dry. But not today - today there is no reason why more of us, as connected as we are, can't group together, pick up the slack, and donate.

With only 8% of Americans actively involved in a cause that matters to them, there is plenty of room for the vast majority to pony up and chip in. In today's economic environment, it is our civic duty for all of us to play our part and become microphilanthropists.

Donate today.

The Battle For The Microphilanthropist's Mind...

In their terrific recent book, "Sway: The Irresistable Pull of Irrational Behavior," brothers Ori and Rom Brafman raised an interesting psychological dichotomy that affects us here in the world of philanthropy.

"It's as if we have two "engines" running in our brains that can't operate simultaneously. We can approach a task either altruistically or from a self-interested perspective. The two different engines run on different fuels and also need different amounts of those fuels to fire up. It doesn't take much to fuel the altruism center: All you need is the sense that you're helping someone or making a postive impact. But the pleasure center seems to need a lot more..."

The penultimate sentence in that paragraph is the kicker "... the sense that you're helping someone or making a postive impact." That is half the battle with philanthropies today. Donors have become disillusioned because they feel that the impact of their donations is getting diluted by large bureacratic style charities crippled with huge overhead costs. That is an unfortunate reality in the history of charitable giving.

But the Internet allows us the ability to create a much leaner, more efficient model of giving - the practice of microphilanthropy. It is not how much you can give personally. It is about the currency that lies within your social network.

So come on, donate today. More importantly, tell your friends to do likewise. Together, there really is no reason why we can't make the practice of microphilanthropy mainstream.

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