A Swipe at the Big Bucks … Nickels Against Obesity
May 20, 2010
Everyone thinks that good thumb tactics and money transfers from a PayPal of some sort are the real depth of technology’s reach into the future of fundraising. But I disagree. Instead, I believe that with some innovative thinking it will become possible for socially responsible thinkers and doers to tap directly into the lifeline of business—the swipe-activated purchasing power we give businesses to reach daily into our personal bank accounts.
How often now do we swipe our bank or credit cards to buy fast food, gas, groceries, gifts, or anything and everything else? Even both big and very small transactions?
So often, in fact, that we barely think of the phenomenon impact this capability has had on growing the very large corporations we both rely on and find fault with. Arguably, the growth of mega-hundred-million dollar businesses from our past into mega-billion-dollar behemoths might well be directly tied to this seemingly simple cash access and transfer process.
Which is why I developed what I believe is the first fundraising initiative designed to tap directly into this stream of money because of what that capability offers for dramatically and fundamentally enhancing the voice and therefore the power of the typical daily consumer of fast or other unhealthy foods!
This is the essence of the Nickel-a-Meal Campaign Against Obesity, which can be seen at Nickel-a-Meal.info. By simply convincing the fast food and the credit/ATM processing sectors to partner together to allow us all to voluntarily contribute an extra nickel with each “Value” or “Super-sized” meal we buy with a swipe, we would create a massive funding stream of food empowerment donations as big or even bigger than the nation’s weight problem!
Just imagine what might happen if this reach into the $200 billion annual fast food money flow achieved its potential? We could in theory generate 110,000,000 nickels to be used to build proactive local anti-obesity strategies … and that, by the way, is 110,000,000 nickels EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR!
One of the reasons that even the best of collaborative projects fail is because over time their fundraising abilities fall off. Governments cut funding, private philanthropy moves on, people get tired of giving without seeing many results, and definitely without knowing whether their gift accomplishes anything.
For the first time with the Nickel-a-Meal Campaign we can build in a never-ending roll of nickels that keeps getting bigger even as we fix the core problem. The initial nickel amounts would be incredible, but as the food businesses learned that it would be to their bottom line benefit to encourage more selling of better foods, their profits would grow too … and for the first time the attraction of this sector would not be about the damage we are doing to ourselves, our kids, our families or our communities.
We could literally fund everything we needed to do to engage a well developed food revolution, thank you Jamie Oliver!
A recent report to the president of the United States by the Task Force on Childhood Obesity demonstrates that past food marketing initiatives instituted by the fast food companies have done little to meet their standards. It turns out that they promised to stop using carton or other character icons aimed at children, when in fact they nearly doubled these types of promotional activities. (See page 28 of the report, which is downloadable at LetsMove.gov.)
And now Michelle Obama’s efforts are proud of the commitment of other food companies to reduce our calories by 1.5 trillion in a few years … partially by packaging healthier foods and by reducing the size of portions (though there is no indication that we will be charged less!).
Imagine what could happen if with every purchase we make … over and over and over again … we know we are providing five pennies worth of healthy advice to the fast food companies?
There would simply be no way for the food industry to not learn to be responsive … and all because of our desire to swipe our way into a much more convenient future of really large amounts of dollars, dimes and even nickels for all kinds of causes.
The Nickel-a-Meal Campaign is just beginning. And I’m actively advice and suggestions on how to get the food and credit/ATM card businesses to play along voluntarily so we can all progress together. Feel free to email thoughts, ideas, contacts, etc. to Nickel.a.Meal@gmail.com or comment right here.
Guaranteed, your few cents of advice will be heard!
