Teaming up with a worthy not-for-profit or even launching one of your own can add value to your prospects and cachet your brand.

By: Linda Formichelli

Every March, April and May, all 22 million Money Mailer coupon envelopes will carry free advertising for Children’s Miracle Network, a non-profit organization that raises money for children’s hospitals. Money Mailer, a leading national direct marketing company, also donates inserts in their shared mailings to promote the nonprofit’s fundraising events. In the past two years, Money Mailer has given Children’s Miracle Network $1.4 million in ad value and almost $800,000 in donations.

Co-marketing your business with a charity, called “cause marketing,” helps not only the cause, but also your business’s brand image. According to the Cone Millennial Cause Study, 87 percent of Americans ages 13 to 25 would switch brands if one brand were associated with a good cause, assuming that the brands were otherwise comparable. It’s difficult to quantify how much of a profit boost comes from cause marketing, but really, it’s more about brand enhancement than tallying up dollars and cents. “Our local and national advertisers and franchisees are saying it’s making a difference in their business to provide this sponsorship,” says Beth Swade Thomas, director of marketing communications for Money Mailer.

Want to help out a cause while upping your brand recognition? “Think about your values and culture, your business objectives and your stakeholders’ needs,” says Julia Hobbs Kivistik, executive vice president at Cone, a strategy and communications agency that specializes in cause branding and corporate responsibility. “By exploring where these areas intersect, you can answer the question, What do we stand for?’”

For example, the apparel company Arrow dubs itself an “authentic American brand,” so it made sense for the company to create the “We Are Ellis Island” campaign, which is raising money to restore dilapidated buildings on the south side of Ellis Island. Arrow launched a Web site at which visitors can post their family stories and donate money to the cause; the company is also donating 1 percent of its 2008 wholesale sales to the project. The site now has thousands of registered users, and according to Mike Kelly, executive vice president of Phillips-Van Heusen, which owns the Arrow brand, “The result for us is an elevated brand awareness that’s been unbelievable. We brought a lot of awareness to a brand that was dark.”

Even if your business and your cause are perfectly aligned, it takes more than a clever cause marketing campaign to woo consumers to both. “The public is getting more sophisticated,” says Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com, an information resource on how to align environmental responsibility with business success. “A cause-marketing campaign can seem out of context if the company itself doesn’t have basic environmental and social policies and programs in place,” he says. “A good cause-marketing campaign isn’t enough to render a company as good.’”

A business also has to practice its rhetoric. In other words, a business has to walk the talk. For example, if you’re supporting a nonprofit that plants trees to offset carbon emissions, says Makower, you also need to reduce your own energy use or increase your use of renewable energy.

Cynics might maintain that cause marketers are thinking more about their brand than about the cause, but in reality, both get a boost. “If a company is in business to do business and, in addition, they help provide funding for and awareness of a cause, that’s great,” says Hobbs Kivistik. “It’s a win for the cause, the company, the community and the consumer.”