Especially for a small, local organization, driving people to Amazon in order to collect half a percentage of what they may spend undermines the work most of us aim to accomplish. Amazon is the most ravenous of the wolves roaming our economy. Since they are valuable, they are worth spending money on - not just other people’s, but our own, because supporting the people and the world around us is the right thing to do. It is valuable for a community to have sports leagues and after-school programs and hospitals and, yes, even theater companies. The belief in something for nothing has a corrosive effect. By getting out and talking about their work, fundraisers also get feedback about whether their appeal is effective or if they need to change the way they describe what their organization does - or even need to take a look at whether particular programs are worthwhile. Awkward elevator speeches and other efforts to demonstrate a nonprofit’s worth help build relationships with donors not just as sources of money but as volunteers, advocates, and possibly staff or board members. While I wasn’t interested in the amount our donors spent on Amazon, I would have liked to let them know how much their choice meant to us - but there was no way to determine who should even receive such as message. One of the problems with AmazonSmile was that there was no accounting of who selected a particular organization, or how much their selection was worth. So as no-cost marketeers for a megabillionaire’s empire, what did charities like mine give away? … They ended up making all these grassroots charities into a referral source.” A marketing consultant quoted by the New York Times called it “incredibly clever and incredibly effective in bringing in new customers.
When donors signed up to give AmazonSmile donations to the theater company, we gratefully took the money.īut I think about the words of my Ukrainian colleague - or, as is often said of social media, “if you’re not paying for the product, then you’re the product.” AmazonSmile was not so much a charitable-giving program as it was an advertising scheme in sheep’s clothing.
“Give us some of Amazon’s money” is not an especially hard sell. There were no awkward phone calls or patiently repeated elevator pitches explaining our mission, vision, and values.
0 kommentar(er)
