Great discussion going on now about Beth Kanter's post on vote-for-me nonprofit fundraising. Beth turns up some disturbing facts about the Pepsi Refresh competition, and questions this sort of philanthropy in general. There's lots of criticism from the sector over the way that marketing data is used by Pepsi.
In the discussion on Facebook, I shared an idea about one way that nonprofits could turn these sorts of competitions to the greater good --
I agree that aspects of the Pepsi challenge seem not so well thought out. Particularly what Beth points out in her post -- it's not too difficult to limit that kind of gaming by bots in rules or in code. (But I'm biased: We've done that kind of thing for smaller grant competitions at the Case Foundation.)
But Pepsi has at least put large amounts of $$ at stake for their contest. Each organization has to answer for itself if that money and potential exposure makes it worthwhile.
One thing that might influence how these contests are done would be for nonprofits to pool their applications -- and their appeals to voters. Why not a "Homelessness" project that uses the expertise of a number of organizations in the field?
Beth, do I remember a post calling for competition rules that might encourage pooling of effort? Even without these, I'd be surprised if Pepsi's rules prohibited a team approach.
Of course teamwork is hard... It's also hard in the funder/corporate world.
Will be interesting to see if we're nearing the end of these sorts of competitions (because everybody's doing it) or just the beginning (because Gen Y does less TV).
Thanks, @cdegger for tweeted about this and prompting me to share.
Comments (3)
The idea of nonprofits pooling their resources in these scenarios definitely makes sense, especially if the nonprofits who do that have more to gain from working together (ideally, amplifying each others' impact for the community's benefit) than just a more efficient cost-to-benefit ratio where prize-related funding is concerned.
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