Let’s assume for a moment, that the recent article, “Charity Brawl: Nonprofits Aren’t So Generous When A Name’s at Stake” was about a for-profit company.
The article, appearing in the Wall Street Journal this week, outlines the trend toward legal action by large non-profit organizations against other organizations to protect their brand from “…dilution, tarnishment, blurring, destruction, or weakening of its marks.” and gave examples of LIVESTRONG, Susan G. Komen, Wounded Warrior Project and Sunshine Kids Foundation taking varying degrees of legal action against smaller non-profit organizations that used similar names, slogans and/or colors.
You might get a sense for my perspective on this from the post Komen Strives for Market Domination or even A Call For Open-Sourced Cause Marketing. Setting aside the fact that we’re talking about non-profit organizations for a moment, let’s just consider the effectiveness of suing your constituents and trying to squash your competitors by sending out a gaggle of suited lawyers to stake “your” territory, shall we?
Take the music industry. Remember what happened when music started going digital? What did the recording industry do? They sued their best customers, college students living in dorm rooms, and services like Napster. While they may have killed Napster, they didn’t exactly put a stop to music going digital. And what happened to their sales? Take a look.
Hmmmm….
This is a new economy, one based on open collaboration and sharing, not territorialism. The organizations, for-profit and non-profit alike, that will succeed long-term get this and are actively creating ways to embrace this new world instead.
In theory, non-profit organizations should instinctively understand this collaboration mentality. Truth is, we’re all immersed in our own realm to some degree and sometimes forget to lift our heads up to see the rest of the world from a different perspective.
Personally I’d rather see non-profit giants like LIVESTRONG and Komen spend their dollars on developing an amazing new platform to harness collective energy and ideas to address the real issues of their cause than spend the same dollars on lawyers to defend their brand.
What do you think? Should non-profit organizations be held to different standards because they’re cause-based? Does having a well-established brand entitle you to crush the “competition”?
Thanks to Jen Price and Caleb Bushner for bringing the WSJ article to my attention.
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Image credit to This Year’s Love.
Thanks for this awesome piece, Megan; I knew that you’d have great thoughts on the matter!
As a huge believer in the significance of the Networked Information Economy (via Harvard’s brilliant Yochai Benkler: http://benkler.org/), I think you’re spot on regarding the backwards-thinking mentality that some of these organization seem to have applied in these situations.
It’s particularly disappointing to see organizations in such cash-intensive causes (medial research ain’t cheap!) redirecting their precious resources towards litigation. Especially litigation against other cash-sensitive cause-based organization!
These organizations–one would like to think–exist in service to a *cause*, not the perpetuation of their own organizational supremacy. This service-to-a-collective-purpose is, I think, a fundamentally collaborative process and if an organization wants to achieve a goal, you’d think they would welcome the fraternal sentiment. To be sure, it’s important that donors not get confused regarding the relationship between organizations, but there has to be a better (and more ‘charitable’) way to bring about resolution to these issues than spending donor dollars against one another instead of WITH one another.
Thanks for the link to the Benkler website – definitely need to spend some more time there.
Great point about the cash demands of medical research..>Dan Pallotta had a great post today on HBR about rethinking the Fundraising model so it can scale to the level needed (http://ow.ly/2neHj).
Appreciate your thoughts!
Great post, Megan.
I don’t get it. The competition Komen is trying to squash is really not competition. While they may be working to advance a similar mission, their scope and impact is much different. Every time we see pink in the month of October or a woman wears a pink ribbon, it helps Komen. Regardless of where the ribbon came from and who it may have benefited, it is fighting breast cancer. They (and we all) are one step closer to a cure. And quite frankly, when you are the largest player in the breast cancer arena, a majority of the populations is going to give you credit for it. See, the “little guys” actually help.
What disturbs me most about organizations trying to go after one another for use of universal words like cure or the colors we fly on our nonprofit flags: it is against everything we stand for as nonprofits. We are about community. We are about embracing a problem and working our butts off to solve it. Let’s work together. Let’s partner and share resources. We expect our donors and volunteers to do it – why can’t we?
- Jen (@PhilanthropyInk)
So true, Jen. From a marketing perspective, while it could be argued that smaller NPOs ride the coattails of “Pink” “Yellow” or “The Cure”, it could also be convincingly argued that the smaller NPOs are confusing their own target audiences (my point: seriously? What does LIVESTRONG need to stress about?).
And, yes, more “community”, less “competition”, please!