UNICEF taps into power of women
‘Soccer Saves Lives’: Agency uses World Cup as opportunity to get female philanthropists to raise $6 million
In the trudge toward equality, the 2015 version of the World Cup is a seminal event that’s bringing new fans and sponsors to women’s soccer.
UNICEF Canada also hopes to use the biggest and mostwatched women’s event as a springboard to tap into a potentially rich pool of female philanthropists with Team Canada goalkeeper Karina LeBlanc — a UNICEF ambassador — helping to make the big ask.
Its goal is to get 60 Canadian women to commit to donating $100,000 each over four years and use that $6 million to support maternal and child health care programs in five countries.
For those who aren’t soccer fans, sports and charity might seem like an odd alignment. However, the professional men’s team in Barcelona has had the UNICEF logo on its jersey since September 2006.
For the past decade, FC Barcelona has also made substantial donations to the United Nations Children’s Fund of close to $2 million a year for sporting programs that act as a catalyst to the development and protection of children.
Now there’s synchronicity in using the World Cup to raise money for women and children by targeting female philanthropists because as in sports, women traditionally have lagged men in the big leagues of philanthropy. They lag even though women have traditionally given in larger numbers than men.
In Canada, 57 per cent of all charitable donations are made by women, although Statistics Canada data notes that their average donations are smaller than men’s.
But StatsCan also pointed out that the big donors matter more than all those thousands of small ones. The top 10 per cent of donors gave $8.4 billion, or twothirds of the value of all donations made.
Put that together with the fact that there are now more professional women than ever and there is a “very large untapped opportunity among female potential charitable donors,” according to a recent report on women and philanthropy by the TD Bank.
The bank report went on to say, “Philanthropy among women, while not in its infancy by any means, is not yet firmly established in all parts of the country.”
But where women differ from men when it comes to giving is that women are more likely to view charities as essential to the development of civil societies, are more likely motivated to give to organizations that act as change agents and are more often interested in seeing close up how the charity functions before committing to supporting it.
Because of that, the report says, female philanthropists want more than just a copy of a favourable balance sheet and letter asking for support.
In seeking its 60 female philanthropists, UNICEF Canada has taken a cue from all of that and from soccer.
The program is called The 25th Team and it’s being pitched to potential donors under the headline Soccer Saves Lives, asking them to sign on during the World Cup in order to impact the lives of 3.3 million women and children.
The name itself plays on the fact that there are 24 teams in the World Cup and that the boisterous support of fans — a.k.a. the “extra man ”in sports speak — bolsters a team.
And while the fundraising goal is $6 million, UNICEF’s Sharon Avery says nurturing a generation of female philanthropists is perhaps more important.
The team members will receive quarterly briefings on global development. They’ll attend the two-day United Nations General Assembly meetings every year and, every two years, they will visit one of the five countries where their $6 million is being invested.
So far, 43 have signed up. Nine are from Vancouver.
Plan Canada (and its international parent organization) went a completely different direction to raise money for educating and empowering girls worldwide by tapping into the pool of willing and increasingly able female donors.
Instead of focusing on big donors, Plan’s Because I Am A Girl campaign that was started in 2007 aims to mobilize grassroots awareness-raisers and fundraisers.
Its website (becauseiamagirl.ca) provides how-to guides, such as one for kids to help them organize a Pink LemonAid Stand, which points out that “small actions drive big change.”
The campaign has resulted in the United Nations and many other countries declaring Oct. 11 International Day of the Girl Child.
It’s been so successful that the brand is almost as well known as the charity’s name.
It’s a measure of just how far women have come that female athletes can fill stadiums with 54,000 fans and that soon enough powerful, well-paid and compassionate women working together might be able to make a world of difference.