Campaign seeks to boost charitable giving through surveys

Pause to Support a Cause is an initiative of the CMO Council, a member body of 4,500 senior marketers, which boasts the support of insurance group Farmers, Ford Motor Company, chocolate manufacturer Hershey’s and research group Ipsos.

Hershey’s global head of insight Ed Martin is credited with developing the campaign which invites people to help raise funds for their preferred charities by taking part in online surveys.

The recruitment process will be aided by charities who are being urged to encourage their supporters to participate. Through this approach Martin believes companies will gain unprecedented reach among people who are not typically swayed to take part in market research projects. “It’s really the [charities] that we work with that are doing the recruiting and keeping them engaged,” said Martin.

To join the campaign people have to opt in to the Pause to Support a Cause panel, which is managed by Peanut Labs. On signing up, they are asked to pick from a range of charities to support and each time they complete a survey an amount in dollars is distributed to their choice of charity through a payment system managed by Network for Good.

“What we want to be able to do is send millions of dollars to charities who are losing upwards of 2% of their charitable donations each year, especially in a tough economy,” said the CMO Council’s Liz Miller. “Our goal is that within the next five years we are taking upwards of 10% of the $18bn that is going through this industry and we are pushing that through to some of the most impressive, worthwhile, impactful charities globally.”

If such an ambition were to be achieved, the Pause to Support a Cause panel would command a big share of the market. Miller acknowledges this may raise concerns among established panel companies and research agencies, but she says competition is not the agenda.

“What we want to do is offer up the opportunity for those research panels and companies to have another alternative to augment their research. I’m not looking to take over that research.”

Martin explains: “They can pull incremental sample if they like from this panel, they can create a Pause to Support a Cause incentive within their own panel if they like. The goal here is to bring in a whole bunch more people [into the research process] and keep them engaged.”

More information is available at surveyforgood.com. Click here for an in-depth interview with Ed Martin and Liz Miller about the Pause to Support a Cause campaign.