Paul Interviewed on The Guardian Best Practice Exchange
"In the past efficiency was all about the more effective use of internal resources that you own, manage and control"
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 May 2013 10.18 EDT
Pimp My Cause has achieved more than £1m of marketing support for good causes.
"In the past efficiency was all about the more effective use of internal resources that you own, manage and control.
At the Agency of the Future, we believe that in our inter-connected world, far more radical efficiency can be achieved by becoming more open and collaborative and creating opportunities for people outside your organisation to get far more involved.
We help our clients put this into practice but also wanted to embody this principle in our own social impact work. We've always given our time and expertise to a select number of good causes, but decided to put our own collaborative thinking into practice to scale this work by creating our spin-off venture Pimp My Cause.
Pimp My Cause has achieved more than £1m pounds of marketing support for good causes, without the need to charge them a penny.
The way we've done this is by creating a matching platform that works rather like online dating, but connecting professional marketers with causes to fall in love with rather than people. This has led to a rapid groundswell of pro bono marketing support generating over 100 case studies along the way.
And this in turn has also led to support and recognition through the Ben & Jerry's Join Our Core European competition for social enterprise, through inclusion in the Big Society Network's Nexters programme and Business in the Community's arc: building better business programme, all of which further support the virtuous cycle of efficiency by driving awareness without the need for ad spend."
- Paul Skinner is the director at Pimp My Cause