November marks “Movember,” a charitable awareness month from the Movember Foundation in which men are encouraged to grow and groom moustaches to raise awareness and funds for the biggest health issues faced by men, including prostate cancer, testicular cancer and mental health and suicide prevention.
One of the charity’s key goals is to reduce the number of men dying prematurely in the UK by 25 percent, by 2030. This is an impressive aim, but the Movember movement started small, with just 30 “Mo Bros” in Australia in 2003. And, like a good, healthy moustache, it has grown incredibly since then!
Movember has become a truly global movement, inspiring more than 5 million Mo Bros and Mo Sistas around the world to participate, including places such as the UK, USA, Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, and Sweden, among others. To date, 1,200 men’s health projects have received funding from the Movember Foundation. [According to financials], Movember raised £10 million in 2018 in the UK and more than 70 percent of funds raised went to men’s health projects.
Charities of all types can learn a lot from the tremendous success of the Movember Foundation. A lot of the charity’s wins come from its ability to engage the broader public and to encourage collaboration with the right partners. In this post, we share three fundraising lessons from Movember that you can consider for your own charity campaigns this November and beyond.
Mastering Moustachery with L’Oreal
The first lesson from Movember is all about smart partnerships. The Movember Foundation collaborates with L’Oreal Men Expert on a special line of beard and moustache grooming products to help educate and raise awareness around men’s health. L’Oréal Men is a top grooming brand for men and the company recognised a duty to participate in Movember to mobilise its “Men Expert” community.
Most notably the company created a “Barber Club” line of products and donates 20 pence of every pack sold in November to the Movember Foundation. In this way, the company is able to market a line of beard and moustache grooming products and engage new customers while doing good.
The lesson here is to seek out partners with a common goal or reach. Does a company serve the same demographic or customer you are trying to engage? Could their products and services be a logical component of your campaign? Think about how a corporate’s participation in your fundraiser could also financially benefit the company. When both parties benefit, the partnership is more likely to be successful and long lasting.
As your campaign grows, you may be able to partner with larger brands and companies. With all partnerships, consider customised merchandise to help your collaborators promote their goodwill and raise additional funds for the cause, like this badge from L’Oreal Men Expert.
Creating Life-saving Mo-ments
A second lesson from Movember is about location, location, location. The foundation engaged a global community of barbers and barber shop owners to participate in the campaign because so many conversations between men happen in the barber’s chair. A barbershop is a natural place to proactively encourage conversations around men’s physical and mental health. Barbers are trusted professionals and can play a critical role in encouraging men to open up about their health.
Through its “Movember Rated Barbers” platform, barbers and barbershop owners can easily register to participate in the campaign, which brings even more people into the fold to raise even more money for critical causes.
If you have the time and budget, seek help from experts to identify the best spaces for your campaign. For example, the Movember Foundation reached out to Robertson Cooper, a business psychology company in the UK, to help develop the Movember Rated Barbers program.
Revving Up Awareness
The third lesson is all about raising awareness with the right merchandise. As an example, the Movember Foundation partners with the Royal Automobile Club to raise funds and awareness, including the Veteran Car Run, an annual charitable event to help tackle men’s health issues. The club organises a well-known London to Brighton run and uses the popularity of the event (during which participants dress in period clothing and drive vintage cars for a pilgrimage from Hyde Park to the Sussex coast!) to raise money for the Movember Foundation.
Participants in the run can show support by purchasing a range of creative merchandise from their shop, including a “Carstache”, souvenir programmes and posters, safety kits, personalised pens, and car-inspired pin badge design in colours and finishes like nickel, rotunda blue (see example below), and emancipation red. The Veteran Car Run sells these well-designed badges for £5.00 with all funds raised going to the Movember Foundation.
This November, take some tips from Movember, one of the most impactful awareness campaigns in the world. Lessons to help your own fundraising efforts include choosing the right partner, finding the right place for your campaign, and offering a range of customised and creative merchandise.
Will you be participating in Movember this year? We’d love to hear more about your role and how we can help. (And yes, we’d also love to see your fabulous beard or moustache!) Please get in touch with us today to share your thoughts and pictures.