CEO SleepOut demonstrates media support for reality fund-raising

"The results were completely surprising," says Oresti Patricios, CEO of Ornico Group, a Friend within the Champions Partner and Sponsor line-up to The CEO SleepOut, responsible for tracking all media from 1 April 2015 to 18 July 2015, precisely one month after the inaugural event. "I have never seen media figures like this for any fundraising activity that was tracked, nor for a brand that was officially launched at the media launch."

In producing the Ornico Report documenting the media impact of the project, Patricios says, "It is little wonder The CEO SleepOut has earned the enviable title, 'South Africa's most successful single fund-raising event ever'. It seems astounding that in just seven months, The CEO SleepOut IP was already valued at R60m."

Creating a 'luxury brand'

Ali Gregg, CEO of The CEO SleepOut, explains: "While reality fund-raising was an entirely new concept to South Africa - and should not be confused with cause marketing - it requires taking decision makers, leaders and influencers out of their comfort zones.

The CEO SleepOut Trust believes the essence of the success of a luxury brand is to affect human beings in a way that they have not experienced before. "Our event did this, putting 'reality fundraising' on the South African CSI map.

"The efficacy of this depends upon the efficacy of the brand; so The CEO SleepOut was created for the event and became the primary attraction for South African business leaders. Using their influence, companies that may not have collaborated before did so for The CEO SleepOut and its defined common cause, homelessness and vulnerable youth."

The luxury brand, underpinned by an integrated marketing drive, was the engine that saw the C-Suite of many of South Africa's top companies reach out to like-minded brands and others in their business orbit to collaborate for a cause they knew existed, but had not experienced first-hand. The established luxury brand also resulted in The Project attracting/ securing almost 50 brands as partners, sponsors and friends, within the champions' line-up.

NGOs need brand professionalism

"In 2013, NGO Pulse estimated that the NGO sector in South Africa boasted 'roughly 100,000 registered non-profit organisations (NPOs) and an estimated 50,000 unregistered ones,' according to a then-unpublished Master's Thesis by Jankelowitz, L., 2007. These are massive numbers, and one can't help but feel that if they were strategically managed as brands, their success may be greater."

To ensure greater success, Gregg says seeing the NGO as a business and running it within the parameters of strategic corporate principles would ensure sustainable success for NGOs and non-profit sectors and enable them to reduce their dependence on funding from outside sources. "Sound commercial management, responsibility and effective measurement of ROI are vital in the business eco-system, if brands are to be taken seriously."

Stephen Smith, Executive: Sustainability and Impact Measurement at IQ Business, concurs, "With R8.2bn being spent on CSI in 2014 (Ref: Trialogue.co.za), it is critical that the effect of this spend be assessed for impact."

To see the figure in context, according to Herbst, Jeffrey & Mills, Greg (2015), 'How South Africa Works: And Must Do Better' (Pan Macmillan South Africa. ISBN 978-1-77010-408-2), South Africa's Gross Domestic Product has almost tripled to US $400bn since 1996. "The CSI spend a huge sum that isn't always managed effectively. The same management approach could easily be adapted to the parastatals in South Africa, which are often beset by a litany of troubles," Gregg suggests.

"The creation of a desirable brand which raises consumer expectations and delivers on them by providing a profitable service, in the best interest of serving the community at large - noting particularly that the vast majority are impoverished - can be a stepping stone in moving our country forward."

She highlights the possibility and benefits of doing away with the 'public sector mentality' and the opportunities to empower South Africans with tangible ownership in parastatals by creating listed organisation that are governed by legal accountability and corporate controls that encourage sustainability.

Charities suffer from scalability

Branding on all its levels should not only be kept exclusively to the for-profit and commercial sectors, as shown in US activist and fund-raiser extraordinaire Dan Pallotta's 2013 TED talk, "The way we think about charity is dead wrong."

Pallotta asks, "Why have our breast cancer charities not come close to finding a cure for breast cancer, or our homeless charities not come close to ending homelessness in any major city? Why has poverty remained stuck at 12% of the US population for 40 years?

"The answer is, these social problems are massive in scale, our organisations are tiny up against them - and we have a belief system that keeps them tiny. We have two rulebooks: We have one for the non-profit sector, and one for the rest of the economic world. It's apartheid and it discriminates against the non-profit sector."

"So in the for-profit sector, the more value you produce, the more money you can make. However, we do not like non-profits to use money to incentivise people to produce more in social service. We have a visceral reaction to the idea that anyone would make very much money helping other people.

"Interestingly, we don't have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money not helping other people. You know, you want to make 50 million dollars selling violent video games to kids, go for it. We will put you on the cover of Wired magazine. But you want to make half a million dollars trying to cure kids of malaria and you're considered a parasite yourself."

Brand management at NGO level

Gregg says CEO SleepOut Trust determined from the start that all staff working for CEO SleepOut would be paid a market-related salary to ensure the kind of excellence they would give any other company they were employed by. They would also understand social innovation and social entrepreneurship, and the need for complete professionalism in their work.

"One of the reasons NGOs often miss their targets is that they expect professionals to give their services free, or for very little financial return. If they were running their NGO as a real business, they would attract only the people who feel they are worth very little compensation for their work. It doesn't make business sense."

To create a brand with an IP value of R60m in just seven months is unheard of in most countries, let alone South Africa. Gregg is aware of this, but continues to believe that sound business principles, as implemented by the world's leading brands, coupled with dedicated staff on liveable wages, can create a brand that the affluent are attracted to. "And they are the ones in a position to make the greatest and most positive changes."

Bigger impact in 2016

Armed with the statistics gleaned from the media, Ornico and IQ Business, as well as subsequent interviews with CEOs, Gregg says her team is working on The CEO SleepOut 2016, knowing we have a sustainable, socially innovative way to make an even bigger impact than before. "Keep 28 July 2016 free in your diary for an experience not only under the stars, but the galaxy," concludes Gregg.