Celebrity altruism: the good,the bad and the ugly in relationships with fundraising charities

• Enlisting or retaining the support of celebrity volunteers is a crucial element in the fundraising and communications strategies for many third sector organisations. But whilst there is a plethora of literature on volunteer motivations, there has been little exploration of the relationships between celebrity volunteers and the charities that they support. Furthermore, the limited theory that exists appears to be based on the experiences of fundraisers and other media specialists with little primary research on attitudes of celebrities themselves. This paper therefore considers celebrity/charity relationships on the basis of existing volunteer motivation theory and attitudinal data from a sample of 208 celebrity volunteers associated with a major fundraising charity in the UK. The findings indicate that the motivation of celebrity volunteers may be much closer to those of other charity volunteers than might be expected from other literature on celebrities. In addition, the study found that amongst other factors, celebrity volunteers typically prefer their engagements to be simplistic and expedient in nature, but that where possible, the engagement activity should be fun and rewarding. It also reveals that individual motives for supporting charities are varied in nature and range from purely altruistic tendencies at one end of the continuum to egoistic motives at the other. In addition, the study indicates that factors such as security and trust in the endorsed organisation are a key motivating factor for many.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.