I enjoyed my lunch today at the Nokia Theater at the opening day kick-off of Advertising Week, hosted by the Advertising Club. The U.S. Fund for UNICEF was honored for its innovative marketing programs including the Tap Project and Pampers’ “One Pack = One Vaccine” cause marketing.

The Tap Project was especially interesting, with David Droga, creative chairman and founder of Droga5 turning tap water into its own brand. It sounded like a truly integrated program that used viral marketing, PR, online, print media and TV — as well as partnerships with restaurants around the country — to bring attention to the fact that thousands of children die every day around the world from water-borne diseases. And Melissa Vasilev, assistant brand manager, Pampers NA Initiatives, at Procter & Gamble talked about the Pampers cause marketing campaign, which resulted in donations of more than 45 million vaccines, used paid search, print, digital and in-store marketing to get its point across.

These two overarching campaigns clearly take nonprofit and cause-related marketing to an entirely new level — something I hope we’ll continue to see more of in the future.

This week’s upheaval in the financial sector could have an impact on non-profit organizations, according to an article in Crain’s New York Business’ daily newsletter.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which filed for bankruptcy on Monday, funded numerous nonprofit organizations to the tune of almost $40 million.

Non-profits in New York City could be among the hardest hit. About 22% of human service organizations, which make up the majority of the city’s nonprofits, rely on foundations and corporations for at least half of their income, according to a study cited in the article.

It was already shaping up to be a less than stellar year for non-profits’ fundraising efforts before this week’s financial news hit, thanks to financially strapped consumers as a result of inflation as well as several distractions, including the presidential election and the Olympics.

The matter was brought to light when a local resident who had received a the direct mail from The Salvation Army decided to deliver her donation in person to Guilford Cares. The Vermont Attorney General’s office is reportedly looking into the case while The Salvation Army is claiming that it didn’t know there was a charity with this name and that the mistake was an honest one.

There’s been a lot of talk that non-profit organizations are facing a double whammy in 2008 of poor economic conditions coupled with the fact that this is a presidential election year. What these factors are supposed to add up to is less giving by donors, but according to new research from Merkle Inc., the election may not be a factor after all.

Merkle examined the similarities and differences between donors who give to presidential campaigns and non-profit organizations and found that political campaign donors are typically younger, more likely to be male and have higher incomes. Nonprofit donors, on the other hand, are typically older, are more likely to be female, and are located throughout the country. Political donors tend to be located in the Northeast.

Merkle also found that political elections have no noticeable impact on charitable contributions and that both political fundraising levels and charitable giving continue to grow.

Merkle reviewed historical direct mail performance data from large national nonprofits from various sectors and compared it with political contribution data obtained from the Federal Election Commission for the report, Measuring the Impact of Political Fundraising on Nonprofit Direct Mail Performance.

The Netroots Nation 2008 convention is being held July 17 to 20 in Austin, TX.

Netroots Nation is a three-year old progressive political organization that uses blogs and other digital media to encourage public debate and political activism.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Vermont ex-governor Howard Dean and congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-MD) are just a few of the national and international experts that will be speaking at the event.

The convention will be using LocaModa’s Wiffiti application to enable simultaneous Web, mobile and in-location conversation at the event. Wiffiti will be running on large projection screens in the convention center and all messages sent by attendees will be posted in real-time on the Netroots Nation Web site and any linked blogs.

-Chantal Todé

Sunday October 14: Day one at the DMNews booth at DMA07.

Our conversations are being accompanied by the strains of the bagpipe music coming from the entrance to the exhibit hall. The mood is definitely reminiscent of a high school reunion, if your high school reunion hosted a few dozen blue-shirted handymen wheeling around carts of technical equipment, cleaning supplies, and duct tape.
There were, of course, plenty of opportunities for people to catch up with one another last night, with the assorted parties that were peppered around Chicago. I was at the DMEF dinner, sitting with the recipient of the corporate leadership award, Draftfcb. Howard Draft accepted the award on behalf of his agency, and spoke compellingly about the responsibility that he and his peers had to support educational initiatives and ensure that the talent pipeline that was flowing into the industry was not going to dry up.
While that was a worthy part of the evening, and the steak was delicious, the best part of the event was when Jon Roska of Roska Direct, kicked off the auction. As Matt Besler from Experian just now pointed out to me, it’s not that often that you’re sitting at an industry dinner and some guy gets onto the mic and starts hitting the attendees up for money. But with fantastic humor and energy, Roska gleefully shamed everyone into raising $500,000.
Of course, the competition was amusing, and while I won’t name names, I did hear a few instances of, “OK, they just pledged $5,000, so we’d better pledge $10,000.”
Just when the action was beginning to dry Knowledgebase Marketing ponied up $20,000, if the room could match it. Roska did so admirably.
There were some touching memorials made too, as well as enough pledges made in the name of Tim Litle’s wife (Litle received the Edward N. Mayer Educational Leadership Award) to make him feel like something of a second fiddle on his own special night. The video celebrating his work redressed that balance, and I think everyone attending felt that they were a little bit blessed to be in his presence. My colleague Chantal wrote more about this, also on our blog.
Foundation president Terri Bartlett rightly earned accolades for the evening, and while I failed quite spectacularly to locate any of the other parties happening afterwards, I turned in feeling like I’d already had as much fun as a person needed for one night.

- Posted by Elly Trickett

Chicago — Tim Litle, chairman and founder of Litle & Co. may have been the man of the evening at the Direct Marketing Education Foundation’s annual awards dinner and auction, held here Saturday, but his wife Joan got her fair share of attention, too.
During the program and scholarship auction, several people pledged donations in the names of their spouses. After one attendee made his donation in the name of Joan Litle, several others followed suit. Not to be outdone, during his acceptance speech for the 2007 DMEF Edward N. Mayer Jr. Award for Educational Leadership, Litle pledged $100,000 to the DMEF’s Litle Fund for a new pilot program and in the name of his wife.
The new program is intended to create a way for the DMEF to tap into donations made by college alumni to their alma maters and influence the direct marketing curriculum offered by schools.
Pledges for the program and scholarship auction exceeded the evening’s goal of $150,000 for a total of $163,000, not counting Litle’s donation.
During the live auction, the bidding was lively as representatives from many leading direct marketing firms competed for a trip to Machu Picchu and a day as a fighter pilot, among other prizes.
Also being honored Saturday night was Draftfcb, which received the 2007 DMEF Corporate Leadership Award.

–Posted by Chantal Todé