A group of marketing and public relations executives yesterday debuted One Day's Pay, an organization designed to get people to donate their time to charitable causes in honor of Sept. 11.
One Day's Pay will conduct e-mail campaigns to small and medium-sized businesses as well as news media outlets leading up to Sept. 11 to try to get people to pledge their time.
“We want to get people to set aside Sept. 11 or a day right around there and do some kind of charitable service,” said David Paine, director of One Day's Pay. “The organization is not trying to raise any money, and we are not asking for it. We want people to think of this day as one where they should perform some kind of service for others in need.”
The effort is dedicated to the memory of Mark Bingham, a public relations executive who died as a passenger on United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania Sept. 11 after Bingham, Todd Beemer, Jeremy Glick and other passengers confronted the hijackers.
Next week the organization is sending text-based e-mails to a few thousand small and medium-sized business owners. It believes most large companies will have something in place to honor that day.
“It is also easier to get to the right person in a much quicker fashion in a small or mid-size company,” Paine said. “It takes large corporations too long to prepare and coordinate for something like this.”
Once linked to the organization's site, respondents will be asked to make a pledge. If they choose to do so, they will have to provide their name, e-mail address and city as well as the service they intend to do and the charity they will support as a result.
One Day's Pay keeps this information confidential and does not pass it on to charities for follow-up. No one will be called or solicited by any charity as a result of making a pledge.
This week it sent about 500 e-mails to national radio stations and 1,000 more to news media outlets in major markets nationwide. Paine said the e-mails did not ask for free ad time or space, but did ask on-air radio personalities to talk about the organization.
Several hundred pledges have been made at the site, but Paine said it did not have a number on the amount of hits so far.
CEOs from nine PR firms make up the One Day's Pay founding committee. They are Paine, CEO of PainePR in Los Angeles; Cordell Korland, CEO of FIPR in San Francisco; Steve Cody and Ed Moed, principals of Peppercom in New York; Patrice Tanaka, CEO of PT & Company, also in New York; Lee Duffey, CEO of Duffey Communications in Atlanta; Michael Grossman, CEO of Leo Burnett Public Relations in Chicago; Sharon Van Sickle, CEO of KVO/Fleishman Hillard in Portland; Lynn Casey, CEO of Padilla Spear Beardsley in Minneapolis; and Mark Raper, CEO of Carter Ryley Thomas in Richmond, VA.
Also on the founding committee is Joann E. Killeen, president of the Public Relations Society of America.
