In the ‘90s, regional AIDS walks were among the most successful charity events in the country. Corporate sponsorship was plentiful, and businesses sent teams in the hundreds to participate.
But all that has changed, according to AIDS Project Rhode Island, which saw a downturn in corporate involvement for its annual AIDS Walk as early as 2000.
On May 15, more than 40,000 New Yorkers will hit the streets for the 20th annual AIDS Walk New York, the world’s largest AIDS fundraising event. To commemorate the anniversary, FS spoke with Craig R. Miller, the activist fundraiser who created the AIDS Walk model more than two decades ago. Miller is president and CEO of MZA Events, an event-production, campaign-management and grassroots-fundraising firm that produces AIDS Walks in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, among others. He now pauses to reflect on Ronald Reagan, the Internet and the future of AIDS Walks as fundraisers and awareness builders.
Not many Americans understand the cruel reach of Crohn’s disease. Perhaps because it’s a disease that, while afflicting millions of people of all ages, makes folks undeniably squeamish. It involves blood and guts and diarrhea. It inflames your digestive and gastrointestinal tract and eats away at your colon.
But Roger F. Koman, former for-profit marketing maven and current vice president of new enterprises and new business development for the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America, wants to shatter those perceptions, raise awareness and funds, and afford patients, families and anyone who will listen a comfortable forum to speak freely about the disease.
How Do You Plan to Use the Internet as Part of Your Next Special-Event Fundraiser?
What to do? A legend in direct marketing comes up with an idea for your nonprofit, an idea that would increase donations dramatically. But it’s an idea that goes against the very core of your mission.
If you’re Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, you reject it. You send direct marketing guru Jerry Huntsinger away and quietly hope he’ll come back.
