Why nonprofits should not do TVCs

Tung Wah Group of Hospitals launched a TVC recently, which is the first ever similar campaign in its 142 years history of serving the Hong Kong community in an effort to give its brand a facelift to attract younger supporters and divert from the perception of being an old and clumsy organization.

Regardless of the concept and visual, quite a number of comments that I heard or came across suggested that nonprofits should not use their donors’ money on advertising. In their opinions, donations should go directly into supporting the causes that the organizations are commissioned to support. I wonder if nonprofit advertisement is really implying they are spending unethically of donors’ money.

No matter a nonprofit having to pay for the production and airtime of their TVC, the consideration I have is what the underlying purpose of the advertisement is, as far as I am concern. Like any commercial entities, nonprofits also have to do marketing in a professional manner to help uplifting its brand equity and along with the awareness of the social causes that they are supposing to support and serve to help in increasing the financial support that they receive from the public ultimately.

Of course, I do agree that nonprofit ought to put as much as possible on the cause. So it is somewhat a chicken and egg situation.

One puts up advertisement to help generate additional donations or get extra funds from streams other than their typical sources. Or allocate most, if not all; of its income for supporting the causes while sticking to its traditional funding supply.

One could easily argue that organizations could stick to typical fundraising platforms, like flag days, walkathrons, carnivals, charitable premiere and alike in raising funds but don’t forget that these activities also have cost incur and I’m afraid no one would disagree TVC is still a popular while effective marketing tool in branding building and message delivery.

Instead of criticizing on airing an advertisement for the sake of placing an advertisement, the underlying question should be, one like we post on any commercial marketing campaigns, on how nonprofits measure the effectiveness of having TVC s and how it could justify the cost incurred.

There are still a lot of people believing the nonprofit is running by a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers or being less business-minded. In fact, if organizations do not run professionally but professionals, it won’t able to sustain regardless how wonderful their social missions are.

So when measuring or judging a nonprofit, one should apply the same measurements and parameters that we used to assess a business or investment opportunity rather than purely based on passion.