Charities should select celebrity patrons carefully as being associated with a public figure who turns out to have a dark side can damage the charity's reputation, warns Cathy Pharoah.
Association with celebrities is increasingly cheapening the charity brand. It carries a toxic risk which the sector can no longer afford to take.
There has never been a higher premium on public trust than now, when faith in public and private sectors is at an all-time low. It is impossible to put a market value on the charity sector’s reputation, but it motivates people and companies to give private donations worth around £18bn a year in the UK, and potentially $1tn globally.
Recent charity celebrity scandals and attempts to hijack the sector, however, are devaluing the charity brand.
No one understands the importance of publicity and reputation better than the media itself. It is our fastest-growing industry, and has grown by 16 per cent since the beginning of the recession. If the aim of celebrity association is to enable good causes to participate in the success and brand awareness of the media, is this really happening? And are charities setting the price of celebrity association too low?
A stream of high-profile figures have let down the charity sector. The Lance Armstrong doping scandal drew worldwide attention to charitable donations to his Livestrong Foundation for health, resulting in a dramatic drop in support. Tax-effective giving in the UK received a blow when it emerged that Katie Melua, Christian Aid’s chosen giving champion, invested in a tax avoidance scheme, as have other celebrities such as Gary Barlow.
Ordinary donors constantly get overshadowed by celebrity givers, and become cynical when major high-profile gifts, which often lead to an OBE for the donor, are basically underwritten by tax-avoidance. Charities will be forgiven for mistakes once, but not over the longer term.
The problems are global. No country is more susceptible to celebrity influence than China, with its growing private wealth and interest in private philanthropy. This was seriously undermined recently by the image of young celebrity and high-profile Red Cross supporter, Guo Meimei, in handcuffs, after confessing to gambling and prostitution charges. Chinese giving fell in 2012, partly due to public distrust in the charity sector. When the foundation set up by Wyclef Jean (Haitian founder of band the Fugees) to help the earthquake-stricken Haiti was found to be misusing funds, support melted away.
One of the big risk factors is that it can be years before celebrities’ darker sides come out. Early-days naïveté around ‘celebrity culture’ gave Jimmy Savile his power over public institutions and charities, allowing us to discount media appearances which were often disturbing and bullying. Children’s charities have had to cut links with the UK’s best-known PR guru Max Clifford, whose smooth public face masked a history of sexual abuse.
But while recent European research claims that celebrities increasingly influence consumer marketing and choice, the sector should also look at the findings of a recent UK study showing that public awareness of the celebrity links of seven major internationally-known organisations was very low. Research in the US found charities which used celebrity endorsements gained an average 1.4 per cent extra in donations. This is quite a small gain, and it barely justifies the long-term fallout to the charity sector from the involvement of celebrities whose influence becomes toxic.
The ALS Association claims a massive rise in donations from the #icebucketchallenge, which went viral as celebrities rushed to throw buckets of iced water over themselves to raise money. But the publicity value to these A-listers is considerably greater than the amount raised for the cause. And celebrity band-wagons reduce gifts to other causes, because no one gives more than they would have done anyway.
Disgraced public figures Jonathan Aitken and Vicky Pryce turned to charity to help with their battered reputations and lifestyles, and Rolf Harris and Andy Coulson have been recommended to follow this route as they begin their prison sentences. Damian McBride, the political lobbyist, tried to give ‘tainted’ earnings to Cafod. Charity should be a route to redemption, but not be a soft option for celebrities needing to rehabilitate or launder their public image. If celebrities are really a risk worth taking, then charities should become the most valuable and exclusive club they can join.
