If you don’t wear one yourself, chances are someone you know wears one of the Lance Armstrong Foundation‘s yellow LIVESTRONG wristbands – after all, 33 million of them have already been distributed by this nonprofit organization dedicated to cancer prevention and survivorship.
But yellow isn’t the only color people – on behalf of their favorite charities – are wearing on their wrists these days.
Indeed, the phenomenal, overwhelming success the Lance Armstrong Foundation has had with yellow wristbands has caused nonprofits everywhere to sit up, take notice and adopt the very same idea, launching fundraising campaigns of their own around colored silicone rubber wristbands that symbolize their respective causes.
For instance, fans of the Boston Celtics can now demonstrate their support of their favorite basketball team by wearing a green, “I am a Celtic” wristband. These new Celtics wristbands cost $2 each, and all proceeds go to the Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation, which supports nonprofit organizations providing healthcare, shelter and vital services for New England children.
This year, the Shamrock Foundation’s community partners are Children’s Hospital Boston, Horizons for Homeless Children and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
And just last week, another example of the popularity of these newfangled wristbands hit even closer to home. My eight-year-old son, Scott, handed me a letter from his principal, Annette Doyle, that said his school, the Peter Noyes Elementary School, was partnering with several others in Sudbury, MA – the Nixon, Haynes and Loring schools – to raise funds to help rebuild another school in the Aceh province of Indonesia, one of the places impacted by the recent tsunami disaster.
“Our goal is to raise funds to benefit Save the Children, an organization that has been working in Indonesia for 30 years,” wrote Principal Doyle. “Save the Children has also agreed to help us establish contact with a ‘sister school,’ so that ongoing connections between our students and the Indonesian school can be realized. We view this as a multiyear commitment and a powerful opportunity for our students to contribute something meaningful to children in need, as well as learn about the culture and heritage of the people of this region.”
“The kickoff fundraiser is a silicone bracelet drive,” continued the principal. “These are similar to the popular Live Strong bracelets. Our bracelet says ‘Kids Helping Kids’ and is a beautiful royal blue, our school color. Other elementary schools have chosen different colors with the same slogan. The bracelets sell for $3 apiece; however, we encourage you to consider donating more if possible.”
The Celtics and these four Sudbury elementary schools deserve kudos not just for their magnanimity and benevolence, but also for how intelligently they’ve gone about the business of fundraising. They realized the success of the Lance Armstrong Foundation’s yellow wristband campaign paved the way for other nonprofits to follow suit, offering colored, private label wristbands to their own constituencies in exchange for charitable donations. They saw it as a win-win proposition:
- Donors get something cool to wear, what’s become a fashion statement among young and old alike.
- And, if all goes as planned, fundraisers get more individual contributors (because the demand for such wristbands is so strong), a higher average gift (because people are willing to give more when they’re getting something extra in return) and a glut of free publicity and promotion (because these wristbands attract so much attention and build such big buzz).
So if you’re a nonprofit organization of any size, shape or form, and you haven’t yet experimented with wristbands as a premium, this is the time. Yes, they’re that hot. In fact, they’re so hot that if you wait much longer, there’s a good chance the market will have become oversaturated with them, and your opportunity to take advantage of them will have come and gone – which is why you should test wristbands now.
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