The science of doing good

• Rosanne Bersten
• 4 July 2008

Photo credit: Marchin Haber

I used to be a research scientist in Washington DC, looking into human infectious diseases. In 2002 I came to Australia. I decided to stay, but realised the government here doesn’t fund my kind of work as much as the United States, so I couldn’t get the backing I needed to keep my research going. I looked at what other skills I had. I was a couple of classes shy of a masters degree in Business Administration, so I said, ‘Well, maybe I could go into business’.

I was working with friends involved in fundraising for non-profit organisations. I realised they were charging huge amounts of money to charities. I thought I could do it for a lot less and that there was a niche, and a value I could bring. I wanted to do it altruistically and offer the same quality of service at a lower price.

Social marketing

Why Not This + Associates is a consultancy that helps not-for-profit and non-government agencies do social marketing, fundraising and project management. It’s an association of independent contractors I pulled together. We use direct mail, the internet, those Avant Card postcard campaigns, things like that, and we come up with strategies and tactics to help them reach people.

So far it’s been going well. I started in July 2007 and currently have clients all over the world. It’s funny, I get more work from overseas than from Australia. At the moment, we’re project managing a campaign with the leading child sponsorship organisation in Korea.

Take the leap

It was an amazing move for me. You just have to cross your fingers and say, ‘I don’t know anyone and the only thing I really have is my pitch’.

Signing up my first client, it was a really big thing for somebody to say they liked my idea and would try it. They felt the service I offered was different. That was something I really wanted to stress. I’d seen what other people were offering and thought I could do a lot more.

Because of my scientific background I do a lot of analysis so my clients learn from the experience. One of my main focuses is to have things based on research and collecting data rather than just thinking about what works for one person. And that gets a great response from clients, who say things such as, ‘I actually learned, it wasn’t just a restatement or a list of tasks’.

One of the first things I learned was, the minute you start making your product for yourself, you exclude the rest of the world. I have a lot of conversations with people who are trying to do things a particular way because they feel it would work for them, but I always say, ‘You’re not the person sitting in that house’.

Going online to extend your reach

Everyone clings to the things that worked before. But I think Australians are more hesitant than Americans to market to people. It’s kind of a Catch-22: there’s this concept of, ‘if customers want me, they’ll come to me; if they don’t, they won’t’. So you sometimes have to push people towards marketing to new audiences.

The not-for-profit sector especially tends to market to people who already know about their cause in some way. Not-for-profits have a strong desire to be cost effective. This is not surprising, given the burden of accountability and stewardship the public places on them. As a result, it’s difficult to move into areas that have not been tested. Especially in Australia, where people think if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, or that the population is too small to sustain something.

For example, Australian not-for-profits have been slow to adopt email. Obviously you can’t abandon your whole direct mail program for email or expect email campaigns to bring in the same kind of revenue as direct mailing. But email gives you an easy way to keep top of mind without annoying people with junk mail. You can also reach people who don’t look at advertising and only do things over the net. Once you build an audience that way you can start moving them towards using the web.

My argument is, if you’re big enough to feel like you have a cause, then you have an audience on the internet. The majority of affluent people are on the internet. I think 75% of people who make more than $1000 a week are on the internet. So a lot of the people with disposable income you want to talk to are there, it’s just a matter of getting them to take notice of you. In other words, the internet can augment what you already do. That’s why our multimedia campaigns are always integrated with the internet.

Knowledge is power

Working with these organisations made me realise they were all silos of information. I thought, ‘If only there was a way people could conveniently share information or network better’. So I decided to create a website that could do the job. That’s what do-goodr is.

I like to think of it as somewhere between MySpace and LinkedIn. It’s not a place you go to share hugs, send people drinks or just try and get a job. It’s where people who work at not-for-profits can network over the net.

We’re just starting out, but already people have been joining from all over the world. It’s growing sporadically through word of mouth. If people feel there’s value in it, then they build a community.

Share the wealth

Do-goodr doesn’t really make money right now. At first I wanted to make it free and I didn’t think of building in a subscription function. But people in the industry said if you don’t charge anything, nobody’s going to see any value in it. So I charge $20 a year for people in the industry and $100 a year for people who are working in for-profit businesses.

The money we collect goes towards sustaining the site. Any profit left over will go into an awards fund. When it reaches a certain amount, people in the community can put forward projects and the one that gets the most votes will be awarded the money.

The whole philosophy of my organisation is to give back to not-for-profits because they do so much good. That’s why Why Not This + Associates works for them at reduced prices and this was another tool to give to them, to say thank you for what you’re doing.

Give back

I would really urge people, regardless of the size of their business, to set aside money to give back to society. The ideal is to form a long-term partnership with a charity. People sometimes don’t realise how little they can give to make a big difference. If they commit just $100 a month, that’s $1200 a year. In some cases, that could help hundreds of people.

Find something you’re passionate about because you’re more likely to stay committed. Even if it’s just one day a week, charities depend on people to be there.

A lot of people who own businesses should really start thinking about having a social good component to their mission. I let my associates use 5% of their time to work for a charitable organisation. It may sometimes be only two hours a week, somebody benefits and they still get paid. It works. It’s a small thing, but it doesn’t cost much and in the end we don’t know whose lives we’ll touch.

Get educated

Constant self-education is vital if you’re running a business. One of the saddest things I see is people who sit on a mountain thinking they don’t need to learn anything new. The world moves and I constantly learn: I read books; I go to seminars given by not-for-profits. You never know, it may touch me, it may inspire me.

It doesn’t have to be not-for-profits, it may be within your own field, you may not have really looked at your industry in five to 10 years.

Be an inspiration. We can’t be perfect, but we can inspire people. It doesn’t have to be an outward inspiration; it can just be showing integrity.