ABSTRACT
Fundraising, according to Wilcox (2008: 3), is ‘the art and science of approaching potential donors with the right appeals at the right time’. It involves directly asking for money and other gifts or indirectly raising funds such as through special events or product sales. Sponsors use publicity techniques to attract attention to the fundraising cause or to persuade giving. Alternatively, they may use marketing whereby research has identified an objective shared with target groups and donations are solicited for that mutual cause. Unlike philanthropy, which is a one-way exchange, political fundraising likely involves the donor receiving a benefit, be it material, social or ideological. Little wonder, then, that political fundraising is often equated with ‘prostitution and extor-
tion’ (Steen 1999: 160). The interrelated role of marketing, campaigning and money sparks ethical alarm among academics and journalists who worry about potentially nefarious implications for democracy (O’Shaughnessy 1990, 2002; Smith and Bakvis 2000; Wilcox 2008). This chapter considers the ethics of marketing strategy and tactics in political fundraising. It can be unclear what constitutes a legitimate concern about fundraising marketing. To dis-
cuss this we must first unpack a number of these terms, beginning with ethics, before we can apply theoretical principles of marketing to the recent practice of political fundraising. Humans consider various norms, particularly legal and moral standards within a given society,
to assess their own and others’ behaviour, including that of professional organizations (Audi 2010; Brenkert 2008; Duska 2007; Murphy et al. 2005; O’Shaughnessy 2002; Rosen 2005; Stoker 1992; Wueste 1994). There is no one set of norms, nor an agreed upon morality, and thus there is variation in the judgement of the degree of acceptability of ethical, legal and social behaviours. Ethics, then, involves a philosophical and cultural interpretation of these standards to differentiate between good and bad behaviour. At times, this can be straightforward and normative, as in the case of laws or a written code. Even so, ethics can be controversial and subjective, invoking one’s personal standards of right and wrong. As a result, as O’Shaughnessy (2002: 1092-93) has concluded, ‘no ethical debate is ever final’ since there are no answers, just critiques, and therefore there is ‘no final resting place for the ethical debates on political marketing’. Since all answers to ethical questions are subjective and necessarily biased, we are faced with developing objective questions to help individuals self-adjudicate the ethics of political
marketing applications. In other words, assessing the ethics of utilizing marketing in political fundraising typically involves little more than culture-specific educated guesses. In theory, political actors ought to act on behalf of the collective interests that they represent,
and therefore be of virtuous character. In practice, however, often their self-interests prevail; this is the egoism that is also found in the sphere of business marketing. Moreover, as any fan of Machiavelli will attest, for political actors the conundrum of so-called ‘dirty hands’ emerges whereby morally unpalatable actions are carried out in an effort to achieve a greater moral good (Wueste 1994). Ethical theories such as utilitarianism are used to sort out such ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ dilemmas (Duska 2007: 20; also Audi 2010; Murphy et al. 2005; Rosen 2005). Any such discussion of political ethics, or of fundraising or marketing for that matter, can thus pit idealists against realists (Audi 2010; Duska 2007; Singer 2007; Stoker 1992).
There is no standard model of ethics to test against cases of using political marketing for fundraising purposes. Fundraisers worldwide might simply observe the universal fundraising principles of empathy, honesty, integrity, respect and transparency (European Fundraising Association 2006). However, there are ethics questions in the marketing literature (such as Audi 2010; Brenkert 2008; Murphy et al. 2005) from which we can identify questions for elements of the marketing mix that can be used by a fundraising organization to develop a code of ethics and a decision-making framework. In theory ethical fundraising is likely to build trustworthiness which should lead to future
donations; the opposite is also true (Rosen 2005). In politics, fundraising regulations are intended to uphold democratic ideals by aiming to reduce political corruption, by promoting electoral competition, by upholding freedom of speech and by preventing collusion (Smith and Bakvis 2000). The primary concern about marketing is that it involves manipulation and persuasion, particularly through the communication of falsehoods (Brenkert 2008; Kelly 1991; O’Shaughnessy 2002; Sheth and Sisodia 2006). Marketers are thought to exploit market intelligence for their own purposes rather than for those of consumers. This risks taking advantage of the most vulnerable in society and ranges from pushing the boundaries of good taste to criminal acts. According to Kelly (1991: 157-60), the theoretical ideal of political marketing in fundraising
is unattainable: organizational change is unlikely to result in response to donors’ preferences. Too often financial calculations, rather than positive donor relations, are used to measure fundraising success and, as a two-way exchange relationship, political donors seek gains in return for their gifts whether they do so in their own interests or whether they seek benefits for the public good. There is thus an expectation for political actors to deliver on their pledges which, as the dirty hands dilemma indicates, is frequently impossible given that politics occurs in an environment of daily policy tradeoffs. Moreover, ethical issues for marketing research include data collection that violates privacy, that lacks informed consent, or which involves the covert gathering of competitive intelligence (Brenkert 2008; Murphy et al. 2005). Given such a wide scope of behaviours we must analyse the ethics of political marketing on a case-by-case basis and resist the temptation to dismiss the entire genre (O’Shaughnessy 2002; also O’Cass 2009: 190). There are even ethical dilemmas involved with marketing and marketing communications’
use of audience segmentation. This grouping of like-minded electors through geodemography, behavioural data and/or psychography is used to support product differentiation and to identify promotional efficiencies (Baines et al. 2003), but the resulting favouritism of select audiences can entail an ethical condition such as exclusionary segmentation (Brenkert 2008: 83-87). Thinking of this from a political fundraising perspective, on the grounds of social desirability a marketer
might opt to ignore citizens whose statistical profile indicates that they are likely to want to donate, such as a conservative candidate who wants to avoid receiving funds from church-goers for fear of being labelled beholden to the Christian right. Segmentation also inevitably results in the practice of beneficial targeting. This is described by
Brenkert (2008: 84) as marketers treating members of the most desirable segments better than the members of other segments. The most salient prospective donors may receive additional information, often through direct marketing, which is of benefit to the recipient if the information is wanted, but which presents an ethical harm if privacy is violated. Note that this is different to the practice of benefit segmentation, whereby electors are segmented along the benefits they seek or stand to receive, which speaks to the opportunity for fundraising marketers to hone in on the personal values of potential donors (Baines et al. 2003; Steen 1999). Ethical concerns emerge here if cognitive and emotional levers are employed to motivate donations. Murphy et al. (2005) have signalled that the resulting target marketing is unethical chiefly if it focuses on vulnerable populations, such as people who fear for their physical safety, those who lack the ability to understand information, those who cannot resist enticements and people who face significant pressure to conform. Often this involves people at either end of the age spectrum, but also those occupying the less favourable end of the socio-economic spectrum who may be ignorant of the marketplace, such as some recent immigrants. A communications element of political marketing is the marketing mix. Successful political
fundraising involves ‘repetition, reinforcement, and relentlessness’ (Steen 1999: 171). To that end the marketing mix comprises a strategic combination of marketing communications methods and tactics such that messages are reinforced via different media to which the target audience is likely to be favourably exposed. Components that have particular relevance to fundraising are advertising, direct marketing, endorsements, the internet, media relations, personal sales and pricing. These are briefly described below.
