Pimp My Cause
Pimp My Cause connects top marketers with charities and social enterprises to whom they can donate their talent and expertise.
About You
Background Information
First Name
Paul
Last Name
Skinner
Twitter URL
The competition is only open to people between 18-34 years-old and resident in UK, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark or the Netherlands. Does this apply to you
Yes.
Country of residence of entrepreneur
UK
Tell us about your personal background. Why are you passionate about this issue? Making an idea a reality takes innovation, dedication and strong leadership. Do you have the necessary entrepreneurial skills to realize your vision?
I began my career in global brand development for L’Oreal, and since moved on to head up marketing and business development for a range of venture backed companies with global interests.
The last couple of these positions led me to learn a great deal about sustainability and corporate citizenship, and since then I have worked as an independent consultant specialising in networked
collaborative approaches to creating social, environmental and business benefit at a national and global scale.
My recent projects have included creating the business development and marketing strategy for a multi-million pound EU funded project to develop sustainable food in Wales; contributing to the creation of a suite of breakthrough new masters level sustainability/ non-profit/ social enterprise management programmes for a UK business school; designing a range of participatory initiatives for the co-operative sector in the context of 2012, United Nations International Year of Co-operatives; and developing a blueprint for future approaches to humanitarian response for the Consortium of British Humanitarian Agencies.
Alongside my consulting work, I’ve always also been involved in contributing my professional skills pro bono to causes that I believe in, in my community and further afield, and it is that experience which led me to want to create Pimp My Cause to see whether a networked, participatory approach could exponentially increase the impact that I could achieve.
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Pimp My Cause Ltd
Organization Website
Organization Country
United Kingdom, LND, London
Country where this project is creating social impact
United Kingdom, XX
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
The information you provide here will be used to fill in any parts of your profile that have been left blank, such as interests, organization information, and website. No contact information will be made public. Please uncheck here if you do not want this to happen..
Innovation
The Need: What problem are you trying to solve?
There is a need for a radical increase in pro bono marketing support for social and environmental causes including charities and social ventures. This is of paramount importance right now because:
1. Causes need good marketing more than ever, as the issues they address are particularly acute just at a time when in many cases they need to readjust their business models in the light of the economic downturn and the shift to digital innovation.
2. Marketers need to build their understanding of sustainable business and good corporate citizenship, and therefore have a lot to learn from social and environmental causes as well as a lot to give.
The Solution: What is your solution? Be specific!
Pimp My Cause is two things:
1. It’s an online matching service connecting professional marketers with charities and social ventures that they can donate their talent and expertise to;
2. And it’s a curated community of enquiry and knowledge-building focussing on how marketing can best serve to create social and environmental value.
We have created a powerful and scalable system for connecting marketers and causes, and for sharing the marketing insights and knowledge that comes from these matches to support the sectors as a whole.
We achieve this by providing a web platform that enables marketers and causes to find their best matches rather as in online dating, and also by developing a knowledge hub.
We also bring in top outside experts like Doug Richard from the Dragon's Den to offer unique ideas to their favourite causes.
And we also provide a facilitated matching service for causes and marketers who would like help in finding their ideal match.
The Model: Walk us through a specific example of how your solution makes a difference; include your primary activities
A social enterprise, CIC, non profit or charity that is in need of marketing support (including marketing strategy, advertising, graphic design, web development, social media marketing, etc), but does not have room in their budget to pay for these services registers for the Pimp My Cause website.
After joining for free they are asked to fill out their profile and create help wanted adverts letting the marketing members know what they need help with.
The marketing members can then send a message to the cause if they are interested in helping or the cause can send a message to marketers that they would like support from. In addition, our Chief Match Maker sends messages to the marketing members recommending causes that would be in line with their interests and are in need of their expertise.
It is then up to the cause and marketer to agree the conditions of the work. We follow up with both parties to hear their accomplishments and write up a case study of the work completed, or if a long term project, the work in progress. We often share the case studies in our blog for all of our readers to enjoy and learn from.
We also send regular newsletters to our members alerting them of media opportunities and sharing the latest expert interviews and news updates.
The Marketplace: Who are your peers and competitors? Identify others also working to address the needs you are and what differentiates you from them. What challenges could these players pose to your success or growth?
Our competitors are the ad hock arrangements that arise between marketing agencies and causes, and the employee volunteering schemes used by corporations.
The pro bono services offered by agencies are extremely helpful to the few causes that are lucky enough to find them, but Pimp My Cause allows any cause that wishes to sign up the opportunity to systematically find the right marketer to support their activities.
Again employee volunteering programmes are available to relatively few marketers and causes. We offer a vastly different opportunity in that our platform is free and allows marketers to find their own best match (or with our help) from the largest selection of pro bono marketing opportunities available anywhere.
Select the stage that best applies to your business
Operating for less than a year
This Entry is about (Issues)
Social Impact
What is the social impact you have had to date and how you measure it?
We have built a matching system capable of rapid scale, developed an interactive knowledge hub, and are beginning to offer innovation workshops for large groups of causes.
We measure our primary impacts carefully. They include:
317 charities and social ventures recruited
450 marketers recruited
250 help wanted ads created
Over 60 pieces of marketing work in progress at any time
Many highly detailed case studies including a complete new digital market strategy for a branch of the RSPCA, a new marketing strategy for UK Youth, and a web make-over for SOS Africa.
Marketing training delivered to 30+ NGOs.
In measuring our secondary impacts we are limited to how our cause members report the impacts the marketing achieves for their beneficiaries in the UK and around the world.
Sustainability
How does your model address financial, social, and environmental sustainability?
The primary goal of Pimp My Cause is to foster an entire eco-system of mutually supportive relationships that engender breakthrough levels of broader sustainability in the UK and beyond.
Our model is born of the observation that sustainability requires charities and social ventures to be successful in their efforts to address major social challenges, and that at the same time professional marketers have a lot to learn from those organisations in terms of how to create social and environmental benefits, so that they can fulfil their own company's aspirations in terms of sustainable business, corporate citizenship and community engagement.
The more we can connect the marketing profession and leverage its talent and insights for the benefit of top charities and social ventures the more financially sustainable the causes will become.
And ultimately, this will also influence the marketers to develop more socially and environmentally sustainable products and services within their own organisations.
We have funded Pimp My Cause through our own resources, through grant funding from UnLtd, through access to skilled volunteers, and through corporate partnerships including with the Triodos Bank.
We are developing options to expand our revenue streams including further corporate partnerships, subscriptions for advanced services, events and sponsorship opportunities.
Awareness & learning
How do you see social entrepreneurship contributing to the improvement of developing countries?
Social entrepreneurship is already one of the most powerful forces for improving life in many developing countries, whether it's micro-finance in Bangladesh, or mobile telephony in Africa.
But perhaps the most universal truth about social entrepreneurship and its contribution to the improvement of developing countries is that it represents their best hope for achieving a true and lasting prosperity while at the same time avoiding many of the social and environmental mistakes that have been made by developed countries.
Our hope is that we can work with our causes to help social entrepreneurs in developing countries leapfrog many of the unsustainable practices common in the developed world and directly develop the kinds of sustainable approach capable of serving their needs now and in the future.
Social entrepreneurship is also the most empowering and self-directed model of development, drawing on people's own talent to help themselves.
What aspects of your stay in Uganda as part of the competition do you think you will find most challenging and rewarding?
The most challenging aspect will be leaving Pimp My Cause behind while I'm away - everything else will be a blessing.
I've had the good fortune to work on a number of major global and international sustainable food projects - but rarely had the opportunity to spend time with growers in the field and understand first hand the rhythm of their life and their daily concerns.
The opportunity to get physically closer to nature, to learn more about life as a farmer in Uganda and to share experiences with other social entrepreneurs would be an unforgettable experience.
My primary goal would be to capture as much insight from the experience as possible to be able to re-transmit that learning to our marketers and causes, thereby multiplying the impact many times over.
In case we are chosen, we have developed a concept for an exciting new initiative on Pimp My Cause in celebration of this opportunity.
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 | 57 weeks ago Paul Skinner updated this Competition Entry. |
| 58 weeks ago Paul Skinner updated this Competition Entry. |
| 58 weeks ago Paul Skinner updated this Competition Entry. |
| 58 weeks ago Paul Skinner updated this Competition Entry. |
| 58 weeks ago Paul Skinner updated this Competition Entry. |
| 58 weeks ago Paul Skinner updated this Competition Entry. |
| 59 weeks ago Paul Skinner updated this Competition Entry. |
| 62 weeks ago Paul Skinner updated this Competition Entry. |
| 62 weeks ago Paul Skinner submitted this idea. |
