People don't trust your CEO any more

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23 February 2012

People don't trust your CEO any more

The Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual study of who's trusted, has some interesting findings about the credibility of the CEOs of companies as spokespeople:

CEOs were trusted by 50% of respondents in 2011. That dropped to 38% in 2012. The biggest decline in history of the study.
"A person like yourself" jumped from trusted by 43% last year to 65% this year.
A "regular employee" was trusted by only 34% in 2011, but by 50% in 2012

What does this mean for fundraising? I doubt it's a huge, game-changing shift. But I'd look at having people other than your CEO or president be your main fundraising spokesperson.

I don't think nonprofit CEOs have done as much to squander their collective reputation as corporate CEOs have. But maybe some of the dirt has rubbed off on our leaders.

Thanks to Church of the Customer Blog for the tip.

Posted by Jeff Brooks on 23 February 2012 at 08:16 | Permalink

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The future of fundraising is not about social media, online video, or SEM. It's not about any technology, medium, or technique. It's about donors. If you need to raise funds from donors, you need to study them, respect them, and build everything you do around them. And the future? It's already here. More.

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Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 30 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you'll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com. More.

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