The pro bono movement in advertising didn’t really start in the Mad Men creative ’60s. It began in the ’80s actually as a first-floor initiative. Executives on the second and third floors went to Addy shows and saw that the efforts of their first floor staff to Help Dogs Find Homes or Save The Battlefield rendered work often more interesting and moving than the work for their roster clients. A nice confluence of agendas followed: edgier creative and helping others.
The second reason is more compelling: 30 million Americans live below the poverty level. One in six Americans has no health insurance. One in four Americans is one medical emergency away from bankruptcy and thanks to Congress even THAT won’t help them. Iraq veterans are living in the streets. 300,000 to 400,000 mentally ill people are housed in jails and prisons. 43,000 Americans die on our highways annually. Violent crime is on the rise all over. Three children a day are murdered in America and young people experience the highest rate of violent crime. Thousands of old and infirm and poor die in the heat or the cold. Our children score about 24th in educational testing against peers in the top 30 industrialized nations. The U.S. infant mortality rates behind Cuba. There are millions of refugees in our own country still waiting for a chance to return to New Orleans. There are young people with no job skills and no jobs. There are geriatric convalescent homes where elders are being abused and neglected. Voter lists are being illegally scrubbed. Unwanted pregnancies proliferate in U.S. high schools. One in ten kids drop out. Once a kid drops out of high school, he or she begins a spiral into chronic joblessness, crime and failure, yet our dropout rate continues to climb. Malnutrition is one of the biggest problems of poor children in the richest country in the world. Dozens of rare diseases get little attention from pharmaceutical companies because the medicines make no profit. Stigmas char people’s souls and crush families because of a flaw in their genetic code that renders them psychotic, prone to alcoholism or burdened by a depression so great that they will tell you that Hell exists and they live in it everyday.
We could go on. But you see it’s because someone needs you.
As bad as it gets out there, as cynical as I tend to get, the fact is I see more and more agencies in our much maligned industry are glomming onto a school or a global charity and giving them something they would otherwise never have: the support of a professional organization–and they are not just bringing creative but integrated ideas replete with planning and smart media and online applications.
So the next time you don’t get your upgrade, the next time your salary seems lacking, the next time you have a bad day, walk into a foundation and ask if you can do something to help get their message across. Then watch their faces light up. Imagine having a client that’s actually glad to see you. It’ll make you feel better. I swear to God it works every time.
Daniel Clay Russ is the founder of Peacecouncil, a non-profit that does free advertising for causes. He is also the executive creative director of R&R Partners, a Las Vegas-headquartered ad agency that donates millions annually in marketing to charities big and small.
