Sometimes, stupid happens by accident.
I'm guessing that's how it happened here, but the stupid turned out so severe, I simply can't give it a bye. Take this as a cautionary tale, because it could happen to anyone.
It's a campaign for the Motor Neurone Disease Association in the UK (that's ALS in the US). It features the stories of people with MDA/ALS. This one is about a young man named Michael Smith:
In case you can't read that (after all, it's all-cap text reversed against a photo, which basically the same as invisible ink) here's what it says:
Last summer, I was the only person I knew who didn't do the ice bucket challenge. Five months later I was diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
You can see the problem. It looks more like a threat than a story: Donate, or you'll be stricken with a terrible disease!
You can imagine how this played on Twitter:
Did you fail to do the ice bucket challenge? You too could be at risk!
Unbelievably stupid premise for a campaign. pic.twitter.com/BGWZg9MtMA
— Ben Stanley (@BDStanley) June 1, 2015Clearly, that's not what the people who created this ad had in mind. They couldn't see it.
You can see their anguished "we didn't mean it" in an article at Third Sector:
It was certainly not our intention to cause any offence. As we always do with our campaigns, we put people with MND at the centre of them. In this case it was Michael talking about his story in his own words.
If you go online and read Michael Smith's story, you'll see that it's a powerful account of one person facing a terrifying disease. The bit about not doing the ice bucket challenge is not an important part of the story.
But it unavoidably looks like a bizarre, thuggish threat of instant karma on anyone who doesn't support the organization. Anyone outside of the MNDA can see that in an instant. It wasn't visible to those who created this ad.
This could happen to you or me. When we're too close to see the obvious. Be careful. Get an outside view of things.
More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.
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. 
