Okay Marketers. So your client or brand has charged you with doing something socially responsible…do a promotion to raise money for a foundation, for instance. You can raise funds for just about anyone across the economic, age. ethnic or social spectrum.
Here are the results, in black and white–in fact, every color but one. Packages go pink, dresses go red, banners and wrist bands go every shade of the rainbow. Only one color rarely gets used, and anti-ageism activist Kathy Sporre provides us with the statistics that reveal that this forgotten color is gray.
Kathy writes in her blog Refined by Age tm that the Minnesota Council on Foundations just released its statistics on 2011 “and the picture on funding for older adults at our state level is bleak. Charitable giving to older adults was 1.8% of the entire charitable giving pot. Children and youth received 23.3%, adults 11.3% and all other beneficiary groups 63.6%. This is appalling at a time when 10,000 people are turning 65 every day.”
Giving on the national level is just about as bad. Go to the website: http://data.foundationcenter.org/#%2Ffc1000%2Fpopulation_group%3Aaging%2Fall%2Ftotal%2Flist%2F2011. Click on all population groups, “and you will see older adults fared almost as poorly at the national level as they did in MN in 2011 at a scant 2%.”
