Late­ly, a num­ber of brands have announced part­ner­ships with char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions and it’s no won­der: Research abounds (e.g., this study) demon­strat­ing that social good is impor­tant to con­sumers in gen­er­al and mil­len­ni­als in par­tic­u­lar.

In press releas­es, brands wax lyri­cal about the con­nec­tion between their cor­po­rate ethos and the caus­es in ques­tion, whether it’s con­ser­va­tion, ani­mal rights, or spir­i­tu­al enlight­en­ment. How­ev­er, not every effort has been met with unbri­dled fan enthu­si­asm.

So, as cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty becomes more of a must-have for brands, what can mar­keters do to ensure their char­i­ta­ble efforts ring true?

Per research from Cone Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, a pub­lic rela­tions and mar­ket­ing agency with focus on cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty, con­sumers have a nat­ur­al propen­si­ty to switch brands to those asso­ci­at­ed with good caus­es – and inter­est in this area has only risen over the past 20 years. Fur­ther, Cone has found only 7 per­cent of Amer­i­cans believe busi­ness­es exist to make mon­ey for share­hold­ers and are not respon­si­ble for sup­port­ing social or envi­ron­men­tal caus­es.

Not only do con­sumers expect com­pa­nies to address these issues, they have more pos­i­tive images of these com­pa­nies and are more like­ly to trust them and be loy­al to them, said Whit­ney Dai­ley, super­vi­sor of CSR Insights and Intel at Cone.

In addi­tion, mil­len­ni­als are even more like­ly to switch to brands tied to good caus­es and are more will­ing to do research and to take to social to learn about and engage around these brands as well, Dai­ley added.

“Mil­len­ni­als have grown up with cause mar­ket­ing,” she said. “It’s almost a cost of doing busi­ness.”

Anne Fajon, a Boston-based cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty pro­fes­sion­al, agrees.

“I think the pri­ma­ry rea­son for this is that mil­len­ni­als grew up in the infor­ma­tion age, where the Inter­net and social media forced trans­paren­cy – for bet­ter and for worse – for com­pa­nies. Mil­len­ni­als came of age dur­ing the Enron scan­dal, and they now expect more from com­pa­nies – they want to work for com­pa­nies with a strong sense of ethics, that oper­ate trans­par­ent­ly and respon­si­bly, act as a pos­i­tive agent of change in their com­mu­ni­ties, and give back,” Fajon said. “They also real­ize that com­pa­nies today have more tools at their dis­pos­al than ever to make a dif­fer­ence – they’re more glob­al than ever, with few­er lan­guage bar­ri­ers, more tech­nol­o­gy, and greater access to NGO and pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ships.”

Brands Doing Social Good

Accord­ing to Cone, about 80 per­cent of For­tune 250 com­pa­nies have a brand­ed cause pro­gram and an aver­age of three cause pro­gram announce­ments are made each day.

In oth­er words, you real­ly don’t have to look far for exam­ples of brands doing char­i­ta­ble work.

The North Face

Take out­door prod­uct com­pa­ny The North Face, for exam­ple. It recent­ly announced a part­ner­ship to “pro­tect, pre­serve and cel­e­brate pub­lic lands” in sup­port of the 21st Cen­tu­ry Con­ser­va­tion Ser­vice Corps, or 21CSC, an orga­ni­za­tion that describes itself as “a bold nation­al effort to put young Amer­i­cans and vet­er­ans to work pro­tect­ing, restor­ing and enhanc­ing America’s great out­doors.”

The North Face says it is mak­ing a dona­tion of $250,000 and launched a new cam­paign, fea­tur­ing a record­ing of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” by My Morn­ing Jack­et, which is avail­able to down­load from iTunes. Accord­ing to a release, My Morn­ing Jack­et will donate its por­tion of the pro­ceeds as well.

The spot debuted on YouTube on Octo­ber 27 and has about 54,000 views as of Novem­ber 11.

Based on a very unsci­en­tif­ic review of the com­ments, most view­ers seem hap­py with the effort and the ad itself, although there are some detrac­tors that take issue with the brand­ed aspect, such as the com­menter that writes, “I doubt Woody him­self would enjoy see­ing one of his best works being used to sling over­priced gear to week­end war­riors.”

“The North Face exists to inspire peo­ple to explore,” Pres­i­dent Todd Spalet­to said in a pre­pared state­ment. “If you can inspire peo­ple to love the out­doors, they will grow to care about their nat­ur­al world, pro­tect­ing and con­serv­ing the places that many of us know as our play­grounds. We are extreme­ly proud to raise aware­ness, sup­port the 21CSC and moti­vate peo­ple to reimag­ine explo­ration in their own lives.”

Harley-Davidson

And then there’s motor­cy­cle man­u­fac­tur­er Harley-David­son, which announced it was team­ing up with envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion The Nature Con­ser­van­cy and “mobi­liz­ing its glob­al com­mu­ni­ty of rid­ers to raise funds to plant 50 mil­lion trees world­wide by 2025 as part of its Renew the Ride  ini­tia­tive.”

Per a release, Renew the Ride is “ded­i­cat­ed to the goal of pre­serv­ing the open road for future gen­er­a­tions of rid­ers.”

The brand says it has com­mit­ted to “con­tribut­ing a series of annu­al grants total­ing $550,000 in sup­port of The Nature Conservancy’s glob­al Plant a Bil­lion Trees pro­gram,” a for­est restora­tion ini­tia­tive that has refor­est­ed more than 14,000 acres of land and plant­ed and restored more than 14 mil­lion trees in Brazil’s Atlantic Rain­for­est since 2008. The focus has been to restore the world’s most crit­i­cal forests with spe­cial focus in Brazil, the Yun­nan and Sichuan provinces in Chi­na and through­out the U.S., the brand adds.

In addi­tion, Harley said it plant­ed 1,000 lon­gleaf pine trees in South Quay, Vir­ginia in Octo­ber and the brand has com­mit­ted to sup­port the plant­i­ng of an esti­mat­ed 200 acres or 110,000 trees over the next few months.

Harley notes this is a good fit because approx­i­mate­ly one-third of U.S. Harley own­ers already belong to or sup­port a con­ser­va­tion orga­ni­za­tion.

“A cen­tral part of motor­cy­cling is expe­ri­enc­ing the great out­doors; to see the world from behind the han­dle­bars is unlike any­thing else,” said Mark-Hans Rich­er, Harley’s chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer, in a release.

American Eagle Outfitters

What’s more, cloth­ing and acces­sories retail­er Amer­i­can Eagle Out­fit­ters launched a cloth­ing line for dogs and their own­ers, Amer­i­can Bea­gle Out­fit­ters, which includes “an assort­ment of coor­di­nat­ing looks for the AEO guy, girl and now their dog,” in an effort that start­ed out as a “fun April Fools’ Day prank dreamed up in the spir­it of fundrais­ing for the Amer­i­can Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to Ani­mals,” per a press release.

Fol­low­ing the announce­ment of Amer­i­can Bea­gle Out­fit­ters on March 24, 2014, the brand says it donat­ed $100,000 to the ASPCA. How­ev­er, it wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly clear if Amer­i­can Eagle plans to make an addi­tion­al dona­tion as a result of actu­al sales from the dog cloth­ing line.

A video announc­ing the line has more than 300,000 views as of Novem­ber 11, but the blog post has no com­ments, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to gauge con­sumer sen­ti­ment.

Lululemon Athletica

Also note­wor­thy is yoga cloth­ing brand lul­ule­mon ath­let­i­ca inc., which part­nered with the Dalai Lama Cen­ter for Peace + Edu­ca­tion, say­ing it will work on “a vari­ety of ini­tia­tives includ­ing research­ing the con­nec­tion between mind-body-heart, shar­ing the work glob­al­ly, and expand­ing the reach of the Cen­ter’s Heart-Mind edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tives.”

In addi­tion, lul­ule­mon said it will con­tribute CAD $250,000 (or about USD $220,000) annu­al­ly over the next three years to sup­port the Dalai Lama Cen­ter’s work.

Accord­ing to a press release, both orga­ni­za­tions “share a com­mon vision for devel­op­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of com­pas­sion­ate lead­ers in the world and are com­mit­ted to engag­ing and empow­er­ing healthy com­mu­ni­ties” and the part­ner­ship will enable the brand and Cen­ter to “build the capac­i­ty for com­mu­ni­ties to pro­mote mind­ful­ness, or a non-judg­men­tal aware­ness on the present moment, to fos­ter heart-mind well­be­ing in chil­dren and youth.”

But reac­tion was mixed on the Lul­ule­mon blog, with some fans voic­ing sup­port of the part­ner­ship and oth­ers not­ing, “There are some things in this world which should remain non-bran­de­able [sic],” and, “While I do respect his beliefs and val­ues, I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think they match yours. As he believes that lux­u­ries are not neces­si­ties, you believe in $100 yoga pants.”

How Can Brands Support Good Causes?

So, giv­en the research and hand­ful of real-life exam­ples, what lessons can brands glean about cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty cam­paigns?

1. There Has To Be A Legit Tie Between The Brand And The Cause

Cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty efforts can back­fire when they’re mis­aligned with the brand and its busi­ness, or when a com­pa­ny is try­ing to make a big splash with a social impact cam­paign with­out address­ing under­ly­ing rep­u­ta­tion­al issues, Fajon said. That includes fur­ther exam­ples like oil­field ser­vices com­pa­ny Bak­er Hugh­es and its pink drill bits ben­e­fit­ing Susan G. Komen, she said.

“We always stress with our clients that it’s a good thing to have an align­ment between the brand and the impact effort,” Dai­ley adds. “I think specif­i­cal­ly, on a super­fi­cial lev­el, the align­ment with the Dalai Lama Cen­ter makes sense giv­en the fact that Lul­ule­mon sells yoga cloth­ing, but there may have been an oppor­tu­ni­ty to address some crit­i­cism with their choice of part­ners.”

In oth­er words, Dai­ly sug­gests a “more strate­gic approach to phil­an­thropy could have been help­ful,” and that the brand might have been bet­ter served in align­ing itself with a cause that sup­ports women’s issues like self-esteem and empow­er­ment.

Anoth­er exam­ple of a brand­ed effort that back­fired – coin­ci­den­tal­ly for breast can­cer — is KFC’s Buck­ets for the Cure, which the quick-ser­vice chain launched dur­ing Breast Can­cer Aware­ness Month in 2010.

“Con­sumers are sophis­ti­cat­ed and kind of want to know what impact it will have on the issue and how the issue relates back to the brand,” Dai­ley adds.

2. Clearly Communicate The Details

Anoth­er thing Cone stress­es is help­ing con­sumers under­stand their per­son­al impact and the impact of the cam­paign as a whole, Dai­ley said.

“Mak­ing a dona­tion is impor­tant, but being able to report back on how [the brand] moved the nee­dle is extreme­ly impor­tant,” Dai­ley adds, point­ing to Target’s Feed cam­paign, which Dai­ley said was very clear on how many meals would be pro­vid­ed as a result of con­sumers buy­ing cer­tain prod­ucts.

“That helps con­sumers under­stand, ‘If I pur­chase this prod­uct, this is the impact,’” Dai­ley said. “Con­sumers, again, as they become more sophis­ti­cat­ed are look­ing for cues at point of pur­chase.”

In addi­tion, she said the New York Attor­ney Gen­er­al came out with cause mar­ket­ing guide­lines, which are good best prac­tices in terms of how brands can be trans­par­ent with their cause mar­ket­ing efforts.

“Mak­ing it real­ly clear how much mon­ey goes to the cause and how that mon­ey is used is very impor­tant,” Dai­ley said. “Say­ing, ‘We sup­port X,’ isn’t going to cut it. They want to know, ‘If I buy this, how much am I con­tribut­ing?’”

3. Report Back To Consumers What Exactly Was Achieved

Dai­ley points to Star­bucks’ Cre­ate Jobs for USA cam­paign, which was very easy for con­sumers to under­stand as 100 per­cent of the pur­chase of a bracelet went to the Oppor­tu­ni­ty Finance Net­work, which helps pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties that ben­e­fit low-income, low-wealth, and oth­er dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties across Amer­i­ca.

At the campaign’s con­clu­sion, Star­bucks worked with the non­prof­it to cre­ate a 20-page report that looked at its suc­cess­es and fail­ures and “how they moved the nee­dle with pub­lic inter­est aware­ness and how many jobs were cre­at­ed,” Dai­ley said. “So that was a land­mark moment in a com­pa­ny work­ing with a non­prof­it part­ner to cre­ate a feed­back loop and report back on suc­cess.”

Oth­er brands can sim­ply com­mu­ni­cate with con­sumers in oth­er ways, such as a real-time tick­er on a web­site or a col­lage with images of those impact­ed by the effort in ques­tion.

Do you have any addi­tion­al tips on how brands can ace cause mar­ket­ing cam­paigns?