I visited Estonia in the mid-1990s. Back then, I said it would be fascinating to return in 20 years and see what changed.
Designing Elections
We have elections all over the place: within companies, nonprofits, homeowner’s associations, kid’s sports league. Civic elections are a social good. As with all social goods, marketing principles apply to elections.
Urban Trees–And The Rest Of Nature–Are Critical Public Infrastructure
Urbanization continues, but urban can’t mean completely paved and mechanized. For protection, sustainability, and happiness, we must align our cities with the natural systems where we build. We need to be consciously designing, funding, and distributing nature in our cities. Urban trees, and nature more broadly, need to be treated as critical infrastructure for cities.
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Case Study in Nonprofit Healthcare: Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative
For social goods like health care, the buyer and the end consumer are often two different parties. In much of health care, an insurance company or a government agency is the buyer, while the individual patient is the end consumer. At least in the United States, for-profit medicine companies exploit this split. They charge large organizations much higher prices than an individual consumer could afford. At the same time, they obscure the price of urgent treatments from patients. One way to avoid this exploitation is using nonprofit healthcare models.
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Distributing Help to the Homeless
How do you deliver help to homeless people with no fixed address and little to no money?
Measuring The Fair Distribution of Social Goods
When human communities subsisted as hunter-gatherers, we recognized the evolutionary benefit of fairness. As our social nature evolved to living in settled communities, some people started having more than others. We accepted a certain level of inequality–as long as everyone had enough. But that begs the question: what is the fair distribution of social goods? In other words, what levels of inequality are people willing to live with?
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Government Should Serve Citizens Not Customers
Government, along with public and social sector marketers, should serve citizens not customers.
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Using Social ROI for Market Entry Decisions
If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you are looking for ways to increase your impact. Social return on investment, or social ROI, lets you objectively define and measure your impact. Once you can define and measure impact, use that ability to identify communities to serve. Decisions about who and where you choose to serve–what the private sector calls market entry decisions–have a huge influence on the impact that you have.
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Turning Bright Spots Into Products and Services
Look for bright spots of success and hope among your market audience, and you may find your next big idea. Here are lessons from a story about how one underfunded aid worker used turning bright spots into products and services to change a nation.
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Reach and Frequency Are Fundamental Marketing Metrics
Reach and frequency are marketing metrics for planning and evaluating promotional activities. Is your message reaching who you want to reach, as often as you want to reach them? Here are ways to plan for and increase reach and frequency.
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