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NOT-FOR-PROFIT is a “bullshit term” for charities because good fundraising should be all about getting the most money possible for your cause.
Adam Garone, one of the founders of the Movember movement, said the not-for-profit idea gave some charities the sense they “didn’t have to worry about profit”.
“It’s not a term we use at Movember because we’re all about profit – we are about minimising our cost base to a certain degree and maximising profit, the only difference is instead of our profits going to the shareholders of the organisation, in our case the profit goes to funding programs,” he said.
“The more profit we can make the more research that we can fund the sooner we can get to the point where we’ve cured these diseases.”
Movember started in 2003 after Garone and some friends came up with the concept of growing the then-deeply uncool mustaches over Sunday beers at a Melbourne pub.
It now runs in 21 countries and has garnered €409 million for research into prostate and testicular cancer, the biggest single fundraiser for the diseases in the world.
Feel the fun, not the fear
Garone, who appeared at the Dublin Web Summit today, said Movember’s success had come from focusing on the “fun aspects” which made men want to participate.
adam garone / TwitterMo Sistas love #Movember - Post a pic of your Mo, tag it #Misstache & ask 4 girlfriends to do it pic.twitter.com/tXMhwrqiVV
— adam garone (@adamgarone) October 30, 2014
“We don’t use fear-based tactics – a lot of charities will use statistics around how prevalent a disease is and then draw people in using that sort of fear-based marketing,” he said.
We don’t do that. We try to have inspirational marketing messages and really draw on the fun aspects of Movember. We have a whole heap of gamification and ways for the community to unite globally around this cause.”
Garone said his advice to others looking to kickstart a fundraising drive was to never underestimate the power of a room full of people.
“That’s literally how it started – with the four of us inspiring a room full of 30 people, then that 30 people went on to inspire 450 people the next year and then a state and then a nation and then 21 nations now.”
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“Chicks Dig Mo’s”! Very Australian or like something Mo himself would say. And why the bloody apostrophe in Mo’s???
He is deliberately misundering the term to make a point. He points out that the “profit” of a charity is the money that gets directed entirely towards the cause.
For profit companies often opt to take no profits out of the company, instead reinvesting with the goal of achieving the greatest profit in the long term. And their goals are clear.
For a charity this might mean reinvesting in marketing or research or admin cost or whatever so that they can grow to the scale necessary to meet the need they hope to address. But the notion of charities reinvesting their proceeds is so taboo that it can prevent many well intetioned charities from achieve the scale they need to be effective.
That seems like a pretty good turnover to me.
If it was a ‘for-profit’ business, that would be a sweet profit margin
Reply supposed to be to Declan O’Malley.
***to Eamon O’Malley…
Not with it today.
Again is it a charity if the people running it our lining their own pockets
Hardly a surprising attitude when almost 25% of the total raised last year went to “running costs”. Only 60% raised went to irish cancer services
Where did you see this? Checked the site today….
91.7% Allocated to Men’s Health Programs.
1.8% Administration Costs.
6.5% Fundraising Costs.
http://ie.movember.com/about
Hi I got those figures from Sunday Business Post June 8th article “movembers irish costs are twice those of other markets”. I’d link to the article but it is behind a paywall. The breakdown for 2012 is 63% to irish cancer services, 10% Movember global action plan Ireland, 4%Movember global action plan research international, 23% campaign costs. The article mentions that 2013 campaign costs were almost 25% in Ireland – almost twice the international spend of 11.2. So there’s a big difference there between what they are saying in the website and those figures
100% of the money should go to cancer remember the website just takes a cut out of the donation movember is an idea not a way for the people who run the website to profit . I did it a while back did not use the website and gave all the money I raised to an actual charity
Just curious – and I really know I’m inviting opprobrium – but why the red thumbs to the previous posting? All I did was transcribe from a published article about Movember funding. No editorialising.
Isn’t the woman in the photo that actress that Tony Stark porked in Iron man 1?
have your say