Choosing celebrity patrons. Are Ross and Brand the new Barrymore?
Howard Lake | 1 December 2008 | Blogs
Some celebrities become untouchable. For very different reasons. We won’t hear a bad word about Michael Palin or Dame Judi Dench. Some people can’t be put off Jeffrey Archer (‘he’s still a brilliant fundraiser’) or Lester Piggot (‘it was definitely a stitch-up’). But Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand’s names are currently mud. It may not last.
Photo: Iain Farrell
But the recent brouhaha goes to show how selecting charity patrons is a job fraught with difficulties. However there’s plenty of useful information in the public domain that can help you draw up a properly informed list of potential celebrity patrons.
First step may be selection criteria. Say, relevance, trust and respect.
Relevance is the most flexible of these, even within groups of supporters. E.g. what’s relevant to supporters of your challenge events such as sporting prowess may be irrelevant to attendees at your summer reception, where people may prefer to rub shoulders with people whose power rests in wealth rather than hand-to-eye co-ordination.
Ideally you’d find crossover – Lewis Hamilton anyone?
But it’s early days for him so far as Trust is concerned – something on which you can’t compromise. In a Reader’s Digest survey the three most trusted celebrities were Sir David Attenborough, Sir Trevor MacDonald, and Rolf Harris – and what all the celebrities in the top 10 shared was 20 years or more in the public eye, unblemished.
Equally, who people respect will be driven by their own values. So, in a Daily Telegraph/YouGov survey, people said they ‘personally took pride in’
Dame Kelly Holmes
The Queen
Lord (Sebastian) Coe
Sir Trevor McDonald
Paula Radcliffe
JK Rowling.
Notice how each person on the list has clearly been chosen for completely different reasons – otherwise how could The Queen and JK Rowling make the same list? I suspect the Queen’s there because of the manner in which she conducts her reign. For JK, surely it’s the single mother made good, dragged herself up by her bootlaces etc.
Hence if your supporters, or those you wish to attract, are Daily Telegraph Readers, this isn’t a bad place to start. But wherever you start, don’t end up with Michael Barrymore.
Despite criminal convictions, Jeffrey Archer and Lester Piggott may have recovered something of their reputations, but even with only a police caution on file, there’s no way back for Barrymore.
Alastair Irons
Executive Creative Director, www.twcat.co.uk
Chairman of Trustees, www.iprescue.org.uk
Director, www.ourworldoursay.org
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.