Leadership Series: Is Change an Uphill Battle?
Break the mold
Authors Chip and Dan Heath, in their book, “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” (Random House, 2007), call this the “Mother Theresa Effect” — that is, donors respond better to individuals than to abstract causes.
Child sponsorship appeals to a large and vital group of World Vision’s donors. But diversification of opportunities has become a foundational strategy to engage donors who want to know more about the nations where we work and the projects we undertake to help the poor. Among the examples:
- Some are intrigued with our gift catalog, with items from a $75 goat to a $22,000 school construction project that allow people to make a donation in the name of a friend or relative.
- Others want to walk through “The World Vision Experience: AIDS,” a traveling exhibit depicting the lives of four children in Africa whose lives have been devastated by AIDS.
- Some will volunteer to assemble AIDS caregiver kits for those in sub-Saharan Africa serving people affected by AIDS.
- Others with a higher capacity to give have helped to fund community lending institutions from Honduras to Cambodia.
- Others partner through the Hope Initiative, an opportunity for Americans to care for widows and orphans ravaged by the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
- And nearly 85,000 new donors partnered with World Vision for the opportunity to help the 2005 tsunami victims in Asia.
World Vision has broadened its donor-recruitment channels from direct mail and television in the late ’90s to the Internet, event marketing, affinity partnerships, city campaigns, radio, retail and volunteer groups by 2007. Nearly two-thirds of our cash income comes from opportunities launched in the last five years. Today, we rely on non-traditional channels for more than 70 percent of our donor recruitment — a reversal of our 1999 numbers.
