The Nonprofit FAQ

How much difference can a celebrity endorsement make?

The American Marketing Association and its Foundation conducted a survey of donors in the Spring of 2005. It found that trust in the organization was far-and-away the most important consideration. At the same time, 58% of the respondents said that celebrity endorsements were "not at all important" in their decisions to give. How to Get Celebrities to Help Summary: To recruit a celebrity to help with PR for your organization, try to find a celebrity with a personal connection to your cause. Then give them plenty of info about your organization and explain what's in it for them. (Janice McKay of California State University posted this message in the Conference Hallway of the Nonprofit Professionals Network on AOL on August 20, 1995. She has given permission to reprint it here.) You want CELEBRITIES to volunteer to diseminate information on behalf of your organization that works to help disabled people. For that, I guess we have to find out what celebrities either have disabilities, have children or parents with disabilities, or are involved in the issue for some other reason. The one that immediately comes to mind is "Linda" from Sesame Street. I'm sure there are others. If you don't know anyone who knows the celebrity you choose, or is connected with his/her employer, you could write a letter directly to the celebrity. Start with a summary, such as "this is a letter of request for ........" and then tell WHY you chose this particular person, so the celebrity will see that this request was specifically targeted and well-thought-out, not just a mass direct mail campaign. Flattery is not flattery if it is honest and sincere. Then introduce your organization, giving your mission, telling of the importance of the service you do, and add a short success story or two. Nobody will be impressed with a bunch of glowing superlative words. Give real facts. Tell how many people you help each year and exactly what that help consists of. Some will want to know why you are the best qualified to do this service, and who else in town also does it, if you can work together, (or how you are different if you can't), and who else supports you with gifts of time and/or money. Most will also want to look over your annual income/expense budget so they can see where your money comes from and what you do with it. You certainly can list the actual cash value of donated time and money in this statement, but MAKE IT CLEAR that this is what you are doing. If the last celebrity donated $25,000 worth of his/her time, make sure you say that that's where you got the $25,000 income and expense item in the budget. You should send a listing of your Board members and their professional affiliations too. Maybe the celebrity knows one of them or works with their company. If there is something in it for the celebrity, it is OK to say that, too, such as, "the public service ad will be distributed to 100 television stations, and thousands of newspapers and magazines, and based upon our experience, we can expect (___number___) major national magazines to publish a full-page version of it, bringing public recognition for your generous voluntary service work." In order to make an informed decision, most will also want to know your IRS (non profit) status, and whether you receive funds from taxes, the United Way, or other federated funding organizations. If this sounds really hard to write, don't let it scare you off. All that is required is clear, logical, step-by-step listing of the facts and reasons. You probably want to start with a good emotional "hook," to insure that the person will be interested enough to read the rest of the letter, but after that, it is facts, not creativity, that you need. And after I just told you of a hundred things to put in the letter---make it SHORT!!!! This means editing it down to just the essential items. They probably will get bored after 2-3 pages of written words and won't read any further. If they can fit multi-million-dollar TV commercials in 60 seconds, you can distill your request to a few pages. Last, let a few other people read and react to your letter before you send it off. You'll be surprised at the good ideas many will have, or the strange way they interpreted what you thought you had expressed so clearly. Best of luck to you, Jan Mackay, American Humanics California State University Posted 6/28/05; two items combined 2/25/08 -- PB