Five Ways to Use Your Celebrity Supporters

Yesterday, the always interesting Michael Chatman raised this question on Twitter: Does celebrity participation in a non-profit charity influence you to donate money? Or, is their participation overrated?



I answered Michael's question briefly on Twitter, saying that I think their participation is mostly overrated, but can be very useful in targeted efforts, like in a high-dollar giving club.


But I wanted to take some time to expand my thoughts. Because a lot of organizations I've worked with have celebrity supporters and allies, and how best to leverage their support has come up in nearly every strategy meeting I've ever attended. 


First, a "celebrity" isn't just a famous actor or musician. It can be anyone related to your specific community who has name recognition and credibility. For a health-related nonprofit, that might be a super-star physician, for a science advocacy group, a former astronaut or Nobel Prize-winner. For fundraising purposes, a "celebrity" is anyone your supporters will recognize and relate to.


Five Ways to Use Your Celebrity Supporters

1. Ask them to be the Chair (or Honorary Chair) of a specific Membership group, probably a high-dollar giving group. This can involve anything from simply signing fundraising materials directed at the group, to taking a more active role, depending on their interests, time and level of commitment.
2. Ask them to sign a Prospecting Letter or a Lift Letter in your Acquisition package. NRDC and Friends of the Earth both use celebrity signers -- actors known for their environmental passions -- in their acquisition packages to great success. 
3. Ask them to make a video expressing why they support your organization and asking others to do the same. You can post this on the Web or send it in your e-mail newsletter as an extra endorsement for what you do.
4. Ask them to host (even in an honorary capacity) a major special event. A good name will draw more people to your event, and their participation can lend a "stamp of approval" that inspires others to give.
5. Present them with an award at a major special event. An alternative to asking them to host, this technique can also up attendance at your event. And it could be a first step to a more fruitful relationship with that celebrity, ensuring they help you more in the future.

There are, of course, some sticky issues with using celebrity supporters to assist in your fundraising. If your celebrity becomes embroiled in a scandal, for example, your association with them could hurt your organization more than help. And obviously, you should always treat these supporters with respect and gratitude. Don't push them to do more than they're comfortable doing, and don't take them for granted.

But if you have a loyal celebrity supporter or two who is willing to use their acclaim to call attention to your cause, and you target that attention in one of the ways listed above, you can give your fundraising a boost.

How does your organization harness the wattage of its celebrity supporters? Tell me below!

Make it Personal

Direct mailer writers always talk about making our mail "personal". For us that means lots of "I, you, we", using a conversational tone, and, quite often, fudging the rules of grammar a bit.

But the other day, a couple of things happened that reminded me that there is another way to keep things personal -- something it's all too easy to forget in this day and age of social media connections and conducting business by e-mail.

First, I ran into an acquaintance who runs an arts organization. She was thrilled because her group had just been notified that they were the recipients of a big grant. I congratulated her, and she told me this story:

"You know, we thought for sure we were out of the running this year. The group giving the grant just announced they were eliminating arts funding! So when I got word, I immediately called them up to say 'thank you'. The man in charge of granting the awards told me that he had gone against the new policy specifically for us because he remembered meeting our Executive Director and having a great conversation with her at an unrelated event. Personal connections really do count!"

Do they ever.

A similar thing happened to me a couple of months ago. A client I'd been working with for a couple of years went through some restructuring. They completely reevaluated all of their old contracts with an eye on reinventing their program from the ground up. I fully expected to lose the business.

But the Development Director called me up and asked that I stay on, one of the few contractors asked to do so. Now, I'm sure my strong work ethic and quality product played a part in that decision. But the tipping point?

I took the time while on a vacation in their city to stop by and meet the gang at their office.

This wasn't actually a calculated move on my part. At the time, I had no idea that they were planning on restructuring. I just wanted to be able to put faces to the e-mail addresses and conference call voices. But those couple of hours out of my vacation paid off.

Those face-to-face connections are important -- maybe even more so now that so many of us do business with people across the country...or across the globe. It might take a little extra time and effort, but the payoff could make it all worth it.