DESIGNER NEEDED: VolunteerMatch iPhone app

The applications have been received and reviewed. The projects have been scoped. Now the Weekend of Love needs you! For the next week or so, I’ll be featuring the participating nonprofits and the roles needed to deliver each project. Here’s today’s:

THE ORG: Welcoming millions of visitors a year and now the preferred internet recruiting tool for more than 72,000 nonprofit organizations, VolunteerMatch strengthens communities by making it easier for good people and good causes to connect.

THE PROJECT: imc² will further their mission by developing an iPhone application that will allow users to find and connect with volunteer opportunities on the go.

THE NEED: Already underway with the help of Scott Clemmons, David Dean, and Vincent Guerin, the project still needs a designer to bring the application’s functionality to life through a visually appealing and user-friendly interface. Experience working with iPhone application preferred. Please contact Scott or me if interested.

3 reasons why the Weekend of Love is NOT altruistic

In yesterday's post, I shared some of the reasons I see for our agency to partner with nonprofits. There is probably one reason that needs greater explanation:

"These engagements offer our agency different kinds of challenges, ones that may help us innovate and uncover our potential to transform the world of marketing."

Allow me to clarify. One of the unique ways that imc2 intends to transform the world of marketing is by working to create more sustainable relationships between brands and people, relationships that are marked as much by trust as by transaction.

At the core of the approach is the belief that marketing has essentially entered a new era, one in which merely expounding product benefits or attempting to manipulate the emotions of consumers will no longer fly. With technology breeding radical transparency and consumer connectivity, brands have lost a certain degree of control. In other words, they are now in a fundamentally different relationship with people, a relationship that is closer to a real, interpersonal one. To thrive in this kind of relationship, brands must reach clarity on who they are in order to communicate and engage authentically. We call this purpose discovery, whereby brands seriously undertake to answer the question: Why are we here?

So, what does any of this have to do with the Weekend of Love? What can engagement with nonprofits possibly teach us as an agency?

First, unlike most for-profit companies, nonprofits typically begin at the opposite end of the spectrum. They begin with purpose. Collaboration and experience working with explicitly purpose-driven organizations seems like a no-brainer if we hope to bring similar thinking to for-profit clients.

Relatedly, while established nonprofits can certainly lose clarity of purpose, their goals are explicitly non-financial. One of our objectives is to deliver superior results - both financial and non-financial. We know how to move the needle on transactions, but do we really know what it takes to impact non-financial objectives? Nonprofits want to engage more volunteers, feed more of the hungry, house more of the homeless, heal more of the sick. If our agency wants to transform the world of marketing, we'll need to get familiar with these kinds of goals and start learning how to drive results.

Finally, nonprofits offer the unique challenge of driving transactions without selling a tangible product. Think about it: nonprofits typically depend on donor giving from those whose only reward is their feeling of involvement, of fulfillment, of living out personal values such as generosity, compassion, and community. This, in essence, is what we call "congruency" - alignment of values - a key driver of trust.

In closing, I realize that many might view this weekend of pro bono work to be charitable and purely altruistic. I'm not sure it has to be. In fact, I think these engagements are critical opportunities to fulfill our vision of transforming the world of marketing.

Why AWOL (A Weekend of Love)?

First, congratulations for visiting. Something drove you to read this blog. Aside from Twitter, Facebook, or an email, hopefully you were driven by something else: curiosity, confusion, a desire to help, or some combination thereof. Regardless, you're here ... and that matters.

Quickly, I should introduce myself. My name is Jonathan Feinstein. I'm lucky enough to have a job as imc2's CSR (corporate social responsibility)/sustainability coordinator. Simply put, I have a job because imc2 has a guiding principle that states: "Acknowledging a deep sense of purpose, we choose to serve others, promote sustainability, and lead the way." So, part of my responsibility is to create opportunities for our business to really discover and live what these words mean.

The Weekend of Love will hopefully serve as one of those opportunities. Let me bring you up to speed. Over its 15 years in existence, imc2 has had great people at all levels of the company step up to lead volunteer and fundraising efforts. But, as far as I know, we've never come together on a large, organized scale to volunteer our professional talents and expertise in service of our communities.

I want to change that for several reasons:

1. If we want to prove to our industry and the world that it is possible and profitable to be a force for good, we better walk that talk.
2. Coming together to deliver our professional skills and knowledge will generate more positive impact than we'll ever have through philanthropic giving or nonprofessional volunteering.
3. These engagements offer our agency different kinds of challenges, ones that may help us innovate and uncover our potential to transform the world of marketing.
4. Because our people will get to work within teams other than their everyday ones, we will have the chance to grow professionally and spread learning across the company.

On November 14th and 15th, we'll begin to test these hypotheses.