The Cause Ecosystem: A New Model
The #1 Thing You Need to Learn from this Post:
Your success in the cause ecosystem will come by engaging four groups of cause-oriented individuals, one pair that will take direct action for your cause and another pair that will help amplify it.
A More Detailed Exploration:
As the growing number of campaigns demonstrates, cause marketing is a viable way to reach wider audiences and create meaningful relationships. For charities and companies alike, cause marketing represents an opportunity to remain relevant and rise above the noise of this Interconnected Age.
Whether you are dipping your toes in the pool or diving in head first, you can achieve greater success by taking a few moments to understand the people and dynamics of the cause ecosystem.
What is a Cause?
A cause is rooted in passion. It grows from people wanting to fill a need not served by the market or a governmental body. This need might be local, on the other side of the world, or all around.
Each person takes up a cause for a different reason. It might be personal values, guilt, wanting to right a wrong, personal standing, public recognition, currying favor, or some other form of selfish altruism.
No matter the specific reason, each person takes action because they care. And it is this passionate commitment that fuels the cause through dark hours and against seemingly impossible obstacles.
Before you get overly romantic about passion, just remind yourself that it comes from the Greek word meaning “to suffer” and is inherently volatile. But, so is rocket fuel. Just be careful when you decide to spark a flame.
A Charity is Not a Cause
I use “charity” to refer to a non-profit organization. It’s less clinical and used more frequently in everyday language.
Whatever you call it, let’s be clear, the charity and the cause are different creatures. While charities are created to fill a need, they are still human enterprises full of human genius and fallibility.
The importance of not confusing the two is that sometimes the charity’s interests come in direct conflict with the cause’s. Charities create paychecks, foster professional reputations, and define personal identities. Those human needs can and do shape decisions.
Ideally, each charity should strive to put itself out of business by filling the need that sparked it. Simply put, a charity needs to do more than just serve the cause, it needs to solve it.
The Role of Organizations
As social creatures, humans band together to meet personal and shared needs. While it is easy to make these organizations into monolithic entities in our minds, they are still a bunch of men and women working in groups to help a cause.
Three types of organizations are relevant to the cause ecosystem: charities, companies, and government. None of them has a monopoly on causes. Nor should they, since each brings different strengths and motivations.
The arrival of more companies in the cause ecosystem, along with the current political trend of more governmental actions, will lead to some interesting alliances in the coming months and years. It promises to be a time of innovation (read: a few game-changing ideas, a fair share of ho-hums, and some spectacular failures.)
While charities have grown accustomed to setting the agenda and being the recipients of oversized checks, that era is fading.
Despite some claiming this trend is new, it has actually been building as more individual donors have taken the tact of “venture philanthropy” over the past decade. This breed of donors desires to be more hands-on and expects to influence solutions.
The same can be said of more companies and foundations (charities that grant monies to other charities), which have been raising their expectations for results and taking more direct leadership roles. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is cited often as a model for this. More recently, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation have embarked on a similar approach to the cause of hunger in America.
Focus on the Individuals First
While organizations do play a role, you do not want to fixate on them. To truly understand the cause ecosystem, you need to look past the organizations and focus first on the individuals.
That’s because of two reasons:
1. Most organizations are inadequately prepared for the Interconnected Age
2. Individuals drive all organizations and they are far easier to reach now
Historically, reaching large numbers of individuals wasn’t easy. It required working through existing organizations or using broadcast communications.
With 1.5 billion people online, almost 4 billion having mobile devices, and easy-to-use media creation tools, the fundamental rules have changed.
Organizational change comes slowly. The incumbent organizations are successful because of layers of habits adopted over the years. This led to processes, systems, and departments, each vested with reinforcing these habits. What took time to build will take time to change.
Yes, the sleeping giants are waking up, but the leading ones have just started their first cup of morning coffee. Even if they were able to make a quick shift, it would be to focus on new ways to reach the same individuals you need to reach.
Four Types of Cause-Oriented Individuals
The individuals in the cause ecosystem can be sorted into two pairs of categories. The first pair is tied to level of engagement with the cause, while the second pair indicates how they help amplify it.
Cause Consumers
The people supporting causes are consumers, especially when it comes to spending their limited attention (time, energy, and money). Sure, you can call them donors, volunteers, staff, clients, and customers, but in the end they are all consumers.
Those who do invest their attention in causes fall into two categories:
Supportive – These individuals are inclined to support causes when asked, especially if it is made easy and convenient to them. While they will talk about and take intermittent actions for their causes, they will have limited direct involvement.
Committed – Having a deeper commitment, these individuals will devote their time and organize other people’s efforts. They maintain an ongoing, active dedication to helping the cause.
The main difference between the two Cause Consumer groups is the level of on-going engagement. It is akin to the old joke about commitment – the chicken is involved in the laying of eggs, while the hog is committed to making the bacon.
Experience has shown Pareto’s Principle applies here, with Cause Supportive representing 80% of engaged individuals and Cause Committed rounding out the remaining 20%. Important to note, the Cause Committed can and do influence the Cause Supportive. How much depends upon the individual, but social bonds are often in play.
Cause Amplifiers
Traditionally, organizations have been responsible for amplifying a cause mostly using broadcast means. In the Interconnected Age, individuals are armed with ever-increasing amount of tools to create, modify, and disseminate the message, frequently on their own initiative.
You can account for this new pair by recognizing two more categories:
Connected – As proud members of the Interconnected Age, they maintain an active online presence, building and reinforcing a network of strong and weak ties. They amplify causes through dynamic signals they transmit via Twitter, Facebook, blog posts, and other social media platforms.
Creative – These individuals go beyond dynamic signals and lead the creation of websites, online campaigns, new alliances, or other innovations. Often, they have no formal ties to organizations normally associated with the cause and bring new, innovative solutions to amplifying the message.
Like the first pair, the difference between these two comes down to the intensity of their efforts. The Cause Connected rely on dynamic signals thru existing platforms, while Cause Creative generate new ways to amplify the cause.
Again, like the first pair, Pareto’s Principle has shown to be a good rule thumb. The Cause Connected greatly outnumber the Cause Creative, but the latter can and does influence the former.
How the Two Pairs Relate to Each Other
As the model illustrates, Cause Amplifiers overlap with the Cause Consumers. Further, the Cause Creative are an outgrowth of the Cause Committed, while the Cause Connected can fall into either Cause Consumer group.
If you were to rotate the model on its Y-axis and slice cross-sections, you would find that Cause Amplifiers were outgrowths of the existing Cause Consumers base. Because Cause Creative and Cause Connected are new roles, they draw some of their members from the existing Cause Consumer groups and help attract new individuals not previously engaged in the cause.
While we do not have reliable statistics yet, it is reasonable to portray the Cause Amplifiers as much smaller than the Cause Consumers. But as time marches on, the Cause Amplifiers will grow in proportion and influence.
Your Opportunities
- Whether you are a charity or company, you can benefit from realizing that this model applies to your team and stakeholders, too. Start by figuring out who fits where and then ask how can you better help each of the four.
- You can resist the temptation to put most of your resources on the Cause Supportive. Although, they are largest of the four, you will find better results by working through the Cause Committed, Cause Creative, and Cause Connected to engage them.
- Embrace the Cause Amplifiers and connect with them on a human level. They are individuals, after all, and respond better to relationship building efforts than to press releases.
Help Me Improve This Model
What do you like about this? Where are the holes? How am I dead wrong? Are there more opportunities?
Well done Scott. We’ve linked this up over at http://www.whatgives.com and added you to the Blogroll.
There’s a reason you’re the King of the Cause Prom!
Have a great holiday.
J-
It would be interesting to understand how you identify the cause committed so you can connect with them. Where does this species of cause animal lurk? What attracts them…or, I suppose…how do you credibly get into THEIR habitat? And once there, how to you sidle up to them so they assist your mutually beneficial cause activities?
I’m glad you both liked it enough to comment.
nedwater – your question recognizes something that some overlook. Just because you have to access to someone doesn’t meant they want you to have a connection with you. To your first question – they are all around us. The key is to be remarkable (as Seth Godin says), so that cause-oriented who do interact with you will feel compelled to share with their fellow cause friends.