By: Marly Leighton
Marly serves as Chief of Staff at DoSomething.org, the global not-for-profit that empowers young people to take action around causes they are passionate about. With over 5MM active members worldwide, DoSomething.org is the largest member organization for young people and social change. Marly manages corporate partnerships and fundraising events and has secured cause marketing partnerships with CVS, Dollar General Literacy Foundation, Garnier, and other top youth brands.
Prior to her role with DoSomething.org, Marly served as a publicist at Polk & Co. representing a portfolio of Broadway productions and performing arts projects. Previously she worked on the fundraising and special events team at Second Stage Theatre, one of NYC's leading nonprofit Off-Broadway theaters.
Marly champions a culture of giving and has volunteered with Big Brothers Big Sisters NYC, Bike New York, and New York Cares.
Bio courtesy of charities.org
To start, can you tell us a little about Do Something?
DoSomething.org is a 25-year old tech org for young people and social change. We mobilize our 6 million members to take action on the causes they care about - education, climate change, poverty, health, and everything in between. Young people have the power and passion to create an immense amount of positive impact, and we give them the tools and campaigns to get it done.
Why do you specifically target young people? What makes this particular generation different?
Our work is created for 13-25 year olds because these are the most formative years in a person’s life. The habits our members are forming now are the ones they’ll hold onto forever, and it’s our mission to create the most socially active generation ever. This generation is more connected and informed than ever. They use their social capital online and off, purchasing power, and personal brands to support the things they care about and speak out against the things they don’t. The majority are volunteering at least once a year, and they’re doing it because they want to feel like they’re part of a movement for good bigger than themselves.
Tell us a bit about how your team’s approach to campaign development.
There are two main components we consider when creating campaigns: impact and marketing. When identifying a problem, we want to make sure we can provide a solution for young people that has a tangible impact on the cause. Once we identify a clear, actionable problem and solution, we think about the framing and marketing of the campaign. We create calls to action at scale and always make sure our campaigns follow our three brand tenets: 1. inspiring; 2. relevant; 3. never just ‘meh’. Then we think about strategic marketing partners and influencers who can help us spread the word.
What campaign really stands out as exemplary from the Do Something library?
My favorite campaign in recent memory is “Sincerely, Us” - we had 41,000 young people create and send Happy Ramadan cards to every single mosque in the United States after the Muslim Ban. It was a low barrier action, our members love to be creative and the cards were gorgeous, and the impact was huge. We even got letters back from many of the mosques thanking our members for their support.
What strategies do you find most effective for moving someone from aware to engaged and volunteering?
First and foremost, do your research. See how your target audience is participating in other moments and meet them where they are. Are they college students? Talk about your work on college campuses. Are they mommy bloggers? Get an interview with a mommy blogger. Once you’ve reached them, make sure you’re giving them a clear and simple call to action. The more complicated the work ahead, the less likely someone is to take action. Lastly, make them understand that they’re part of a larger movement. Show other people in the community taking collective action, and how all that work ladders up to have a real impact on the problem at hand.
Some of the campaigns you’ve worked on could be seen as potentially controversial. Have you seen any backlash, and if so, how did you deal with it?
We don’t actually see much backlash because we’re so careful about being a voice for our entire membership. One of our mantras is “Fight for the user.” Our users are on both sides of the political aisle, represent all ethnicities and races, financial backgrounds, geography, etc. And we create campaigns that reflect that diversity and are inclusive. So even when we’re talking about a controversial topic like gun violence prevention, we survey our members and do something around an aspect of the issue the majority of young people agree on (like how 80% of our membership agreed they don’t want to see open carry policies on college campuses).
What has been the most rewarding about working in advocacy?
Hard question! There are so many rewards. One that stands out is that our members report back to us when they take action, so I have files and files of photos and testimonials from incredible young people that I can go through and actually watch social change happening.
What has been the most challenging about working in advocacy in today’s climate?
Burnout. There’s so much I want to be doing all the time outside of the strategic work of DoSomething, but it’s impossible. I got some incredibly helpful advice though: choose 1-2 tentpole causes for yourself that mean the most and really invest in helping those spaces instead of trying to keep up with every single social problem. Those will be someone else’s tentpole causes and together we can change it all!
What advice to you have for students wanting to get involved with or lead advocacy efforts?
I mean, shameless plug - be a DoSomething member! Start a club, do campaigns and projects with friends, and invite the people in your community to help. Ask for help when you need it, and have fun while you do it.
Before we close up, could you tell us a bit about DoSomething’s Fail Fest?
Yes we love Fail Fest! Every 6 months or so we host an in-office Fail Fest where project leaders have the opportunity to come discuss a big ol’ failure that we can learn from. Presenters wear a pink feather boa and talk about what happened, what we learned, and what we’ll do differently in the future. We’re all about failing forward.