This is the seventh installment of the Impact series, #SocialGoodStars. The people highlighted here are passionate, dedicated philanthropists, strengths to their communities, and social media masters. They also happily share their vast knowledge with others, making them shine as leaders in the Social Good world. You can read the sixth interview with Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark here.
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." -Theodore Roosevelt
Ryan Scott, CEO of Causecast, is a visionary idealist with a plan. He is a successful entrepreneur and thinker; a humanist and a philanthropist; and an investor and adviser to many interesting companies and charities. Also, he co-founded two of my favorite sections of the Huffington Post: Impact, and Education. His passion for doing the right thing -- like not charging nonprofits a cent to use Causecast's platform to help their cause -- has helped spur global growth in cause marketing and its effectiveness. As a leader in the cause marketing field, he has some inspiring and thought-provoking insights into the future of Social Good.
You are widely regarded as the "Father of Opt-In Email Marketing." You gave people an additional voice and freedom (to opt-in, or not) before people even asked. How did that affect your charity vision?
Opt-in was the result of my sense of social justice. We have the technology to ask people to subscribe rather than spam them and force them to opt-out - or in the case of the postal world, just spam them without regard for whether or not they want to get off the list. We have the technology for mass customization so what is the excuse for not using it? We can do direct marketing in an ethical way on the internet, and in fact we have to, so let's do it.
My charity vision comes from that same sense of social justice. We ask nonprofits to solve the world's toughest problems with a challenging business model. As a society, we reward selling sugar water far more than we reward building wells. This perverse incentive does nothing to solve the issue of lack of clean water, but it creates the altogether new problem of obesity. Clearly this is not sustainable. Capitalism can and must be better leveraged to help nonprofits do their work. It's just too powerful of a force to ignore. Luckily, it's pretty easy to harness the power of capitalism and by vastly improving this mutually beneficial partnership we will start to actually solve the world's most pressing problems.
As a proponent of environmentalism and social justice, what social media platforms have jumped out at you as far as helping there?
The major social networks and publishing platforms can have a huge impact on social awareness and change. I can't point to just one -- as a marketer you have to use them all for their strengths. Unfortunately this is not one of those questions that has an easy solution.
You are active with many organizations, including Keiretsu Forum, the President's Council of Planned Parenthood, the Long Now Foundation, and the Methuselah Foundation, among others. Are there trends you've seen online that have helped with expanding these causes?
Developments in the online world have increased the capacity of nonprofits and opened up new possibilities. For example, at Causecast we introduced free donation processing, which makes giving far less costly, and the ability for nonprofits to participate in workplace giving programs of corporations, also for free. But there are also pitfalls to online cause innovations. There is so much noise online, and it can be easy to create an app that is too difficult for NPOs to follow. Worse, I've seen some cause marketing campaigns where the brands are getting much more value than the nonprofit partners. I've seen many smaller nonprofits spend valuable time promoting a brand but competing against far more popular nonprofits, giving them no hope of winning. The time spent promoting the brand would have been better spent honing their core fundraising skills. Luckily there a lot of exceptions to this, for example Toyota's 100 Cars for Good program in which all participating organizations walk away with something for their time, and organizations are paired with other organizations of similar size, making it more fair.
What other trends do you think nonprofits can leverage right now to help advance their message?
Workplace giving and volunteer programs are becoming a critical aspect of employee engagement, which is an essential key to employee recruitment and retention. Traditional corporate philanthropy only goes so far -- companies need to get their entire workforce involved in order to make a difference, and nonprofits should make sure that they're exposed to employee-based streams of fundraising and volunteerism. When employees get involved with nonprofits as a part of workplace programs, everyone benefits -- nonprofits, the engaged employees and corporate bottom lines. That's why Causecast developed a technology platform to help nonprofits connect with business workforces.
Social good marketing gets a lot of positive coverage these days. Do you feel it's a win/win for brands and nonprofits? How do consumers/donors benefit from these social good partnerships?
It's always a good thing when the private sector supports the public sector, no matter what the reasons. But cause marketing can feel like just that -- marketing -- if it's not backed up by authentic engagement by the employees of the company.
Where do you see "Social Good/Cause Marketing" heading in the next two years?
Cause marketing is clearly the future of marketing. In fact, when you see that 90% of consumers will switch brands to one that supports a cause, you quickly realize that all marketing will be cause marketing. Despite some attempts at causewashing, it's here to stay.
As you can tell, I'm really excited about employee cause engagement or workplace giving and volunteering. In fact, I predict all cause marketing campaigns will ultimately be launched to the public from within the workplace, by the employees of the corporation, not solely from the marketing department. Because what, after all, is the heart and soul of a company? Its staff. If they pick the nonprofits the company should support, if they are involved in crafting and promoting the campaign, it's as authentic as it can be.
Soon, and this is our most active area of development, we'll see companies competing with each other to make the most positive social change. I can't think of a better reason to be hopeful for the future than that.
Learn more about Ryan Scott on LinkedIn, and follow him on Twitter @ryan_scott.
Amy Neumann is a social entrepreneur, writer, speaker and consultant on social good marketing. Check out her Charity Ideas Blog and follow her on Twitter @CharityIdeas.
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Follow Amy Neumann on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CharityIdeas
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-neumann/causecast-ryan-scott_b_1382897.html
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