Charity Vox Pops meet iPhone 3G and Hellboy (Too)

A few of us get together each week to kick around ideas for raising awareness and donations for Raising Malawi. I'm a marketing gal by education (Northwestern - MS, Integrated Marketing Communications) and training (PR, research, advertising, strategic planning), so I keep thinking I should be able to serve up the one big idea to bring all of our good intentions to fruition. I haven't even come close (yet), but recently started toying with the idea of The Long Tail.

You know the 80/20 rule, right? In business it translates as, "80% of your sales comes from 20% of your customers." It's also called the Pareto principle. I love this definition: for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. So, bottom line, as marketers, it seems to make the most sense to focus on that 20%. As fundraisers, it means, find your able donors and ask for big donations.

But our world is changing. We're in a new digital era, a la the Internet. Here's where the long tail comes in. It looks like this:

To the right is the long tail, to the left are the few that dominate (the 80-20 rule). Traditional models still hold (shoot for that skinny, blue '20'), but today, it's much easier to target and have a meaningful dialog with the '80' - the large population of consumers who represent small or niche interests that no one ever bothered to talk to; you just wouldn't get much return on your investment.

When I look at the long tail through a fundraising lens, it's clear to me that that's how I managed to raise $33,846.29 over the past two years. (My goal is $101K by Christmas). The long tail is represented by you. It's me. It's your dry cleaner. It's your babysitter. It's the 'little guy' with who-knows-what in his wallet. $2 bucks. Not much, no. But put 100,000 of these little guys together and they can really make a difference in the world. They're the ones funding Obama's presidential campaign. They're the ones who drive the success of micro-lending concepts like Kiva.org or Grameen bank. They're the ones who make marketing go viral.

So, last Friday three of us from my fundraising team (me, Meital AKA Rivka and Leah) executed a long tail concept to raise awareness and funds for Raising Malawi as it relates to ending extreme poverty. Our idea is to intercept 200 or so conscious/aware people to capture their perspectives of what the world might look like if we were to effectively eradicate extreme poverty, or more simply what comes to mind when they think about this possibility in the world. We will then cut these photos into a viral video to upload onto consumer activism and social marketing/cause related sites. We'll include the facts re: what's happening around the issue of extreme poverty and how Raising Malawi is helping to end it....but what's most inspiring is that we'll do it by showing the faces of the people who are behind the movement, in consciousness and donations.

To help our idea take off, we plan to conduct loads of man-on-the-street intercepts (Vox Pops).

This week, we hit the Grove. The first person we talked to was Kate. Actually, we first approached her friend who claimed to be too camera-unfriendly/about-to-barf-from-last-night at the moment to participate in our campaign. She looked WAY better than she described, but we didn't push it. Instead, we asked Kate across the table if she cared to participate.

Kate was an immediate yes -- all about ending extreme poverty and helping orphans and vulnerable children. She quickly wrote out her word and donated $10 to Raising Malawi on the spot. We were off and running.


The next seemingly conscious chap we see is Mark here. He's as Irish as they come. He participates without question and also opens his wallet to us, all apologies for not having more cash on hand. I laugh. I do the same thing. "Here's my donation. I'm sorry it's not more." Lovely.


Time to hit the insanely long line of captive consumers in front of the Apple store. The new iPhone 3G came out today. "Twice as fast. Half the price." We were quick with our pitch, but had to coach our buddy here a little. He was supportive of our idea, but kept insisting on writing "iPhone" on his whiteboard. Fortunately, he found a word and concept to work better with our campaign.


And then there's this word: Access. Access says it all.


We even got bilingual commentary - there's only one way to end extreme poverty: with real solutions. So tell me and then tell it to me one more time, amigo. I liked our new friend here. He lamented his daughter not being around because this is exactly her sort of movement.


All in all, we got lots of great photos for our campaign. But just when we thought our day was done, sure enough, the evil Prince from Hellboy II comes walking by. It's Luke Goss. Meital recognized him. The movie opened today (7/11) and is getting good reviews.

Luke in real life was positively polite and more than happy to partake in our campaign. His word: compassion. A world without poverty reflects a world of compassion. We couldn't agree more.


Perhaps you'll join our campaign. Just send a picture of yourself (julia.silka@raisingmalawi.org or jsilka@yahoo.com) with your whiteboard word/thought/phrase about a world without extreme poverty. It's a world I'd love to live in someday. And it's entirely possible. By 2015 to be exact.

Also, if you'd like to make a 100% tax deductible donation to this amazing charity, you can do that too. Just please let me know how much so I can count it toward my goal to raise $101,000 and acknowledge your donation on my blog. CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO RAISING MALAWI. Or, to learn more about their programs to end extreme poverty and help orphans and vulnerable children visit raisingmalawi.org.

Adding up our latest contributions from Friday with special acknowledgements to Leah Reynolds, Heather Lounsbury, Kate Palazzolo and Irish Mark, we raised an additional $436 pushing our total donated to date to $33,846.29!

Only $67,153.71 left to raise by Christmas 2008.