What Association Execs Want to Know about Cause Marketing

Association execs representing about 200 association and nonprofit organizations have now responded to my survey asking about cause related marketing. I sent to survey to four ASAE list serves with the goal of helping me craft my cause marketing presentation at ASAE's Great Ideas conference in February.

Some interesting results to date:

• Even though 59.1% of those responding represent a foundation or charitable organization, only 21.9% are actively involved in a cause marketing program with their organization.
• 74.1% of the respondents say they don't know about cuase marketing or have no direct experience with cause marketing.

Yet, cause marketing represents a growing potential for nonprofits to partner with a corporation ... the partnership offers a way to advance the nonprofits mission as well as generate additional funding for its programs (cause).

The top three reasons these execs say their organizations have NOT implemented a cause marketing campaing are:

1. 44.3% - Hadn't really thought about it (a cause marketing program)
2. 26.2% - It's not a priority
3. 23.0% - Don't have the staff time or expertise to develop a cause marketing program

What do these execs want to know about cause marketing? Here are the top four issues they listed in the survey responses:

1. What is it and how do I get started (what steps, how do I get buy-in, etc.)
2. How do we find a corporation that would be willing to partner with us? And, how to we "vet" the company to make sure we're not embarrassed?
3. How to we create "marketing buzz" about our cause marketing program?
4. How do we evaluate a cause marketing program? What is its ROI?

Since space is limited, I'll end this post here ... but ... if you want a copy of my ASAE Great Ideas Conference presentation (available about Feb 1, 2009), please email me at drake@drakeco.com and put "Great Ideas Presentation" in the subject line.

Meanwhile, I'll try to get time to answer some of these questions in posts later this fall. I say try because our own cause marketing program (the 2008 Trees for Troops campaign) kicks off Wednesday (Nov 12) ... working with staff to collect and ship fresh, farm-grown Christmas trees to about 16,000 families at 40+ military bases keeps us a bit busy. To watch the Trees for Troops story, see the post and link below.

Steve