March 20 marks the International Day of Happiness – a day established, in 2012, by the UN general assembly to recognise the relevance of happiness and wellbeing as universal goals and aspirations in the lives of people around the world. The UN has teamed up with top artists and celebrities to create the world’s happiest playlist. The campaign is fronted by singer-songwriter Cody Simpson. Throughout the week people have been sharing the songs that make them happy using the hashtag #HappySoundsLike. Simpson has chosen five from the nominations to be included in the official playlist, which people can download today for free. In case you were wondering, this was my contribution:
#HappySoundsLike Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want To Have Fun: https://t.co/FXzyDGsU43
— Kirsty Marrins (@LondonKirsty) March 16, 2015
Although I very much enjoyed tweeting my happy song, I couldn’t help but think that this was a missed opportunity. Where was the fundraising ask? Like Band Aid, perhaps people could have paid to download the playlist?
Given that the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, himself said: “On this day we are using the universal language of music to show solidarity with the millions of people around the world suffering from poverty, human rights abuses, humanitarian crises and the effects of environmental degradation and climate change”, surely money raised could have gone to any number of UN charities, such as the UN Refugee Agency?
Music plays a huge part in many people’s lives. According to Techcrunch, Spotify has 60 million total users and 15 million paid subscribers and YouTube has more than one billion users, with people watching “hundreds of millions of hours” every day. With artists such as Ed Sheeran and John Legend, who have a combined Twitter following of 19.4m, contributing to the playlist imagine the fundraising potential this could have had? Solidarity is all well and good but at the end of the day it’s money that will help change the lives of those suffering from poverty, not downloading a free playlist.
With the clear potential of fundraising through music, are charities making the most of this opportunity? This year Teenage Cancer Trust is celebrating the 15-year anniversary of their annual concert series at the Royal Albert Hall in London. So far it’s raised more than £20m for the charity, helping them to support young people with cancer.
BBC Children in Need launched the charity single God Only Knows in October last year, featuring 27 artists including Emeli Sandé, Pharrell Williams, One Direction and Stevie Wonder.
And of course we’re all familiar with Band Aid, even if Sir Bob Geldof could learn a thing or two from fundraisers.
So how can smaller charities tap into people’s love of music as a fundraising tool and, more importantly, should they bother?
Guilty Pledgers is an app, powered by Spotify, that lets people choose a charity on JustGiving to support. They then create a fundraising party whereby their guests can add songs to the playlist by making a donation. So if you really want to dance to Spandau Ballet’s Gold three times in one evening, for a donation, you can. Of course this isn’t likely to generate millions for your charity (unless there is a very rich guest who is willing to pay a hefty sum to listen to their guilty pleasure song). What this app offers is something fun for your fundraisers to take part in that is of minimal effort to your charity. A win-win.
As the London Marathon approaches, runners could use Guilty Pledgers to not only help them reach their fundraising target but also to have a playlist put together by their friends and family to help motivate them along the course. If I were running, I’d donate to myself just to make sure Eye of the Tiger was on my playlist. What song would fire you up when you hit that dreaded wall?
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