There is a theory in economics called Conspicuous Consumption. It’s essentially the “Keeping Up With The Jones’” theory. People buy things so that they can signal some sort of status or ideology. When you see your neighbor buy that nice car, you want one as well so you don’t appear less than your neighbor. I think we can all admit that we’ve at least seen this behavior (not in ourselves of course but in our neighbors).

This morning I came across an interesting Freakonomics podcast about Conspicuous Conservation. It profiled two budding economists, Steve and Alison Sexton (twins, and worse, the children of economists). They have an interesting draft of a paper entitled, “Conspicuous Conservation: The Prius Effect and WTP [Willingess to Pay] for environmental bona fides.”

They essentially are saying that because the Prius is known as a hybrid and hybrid only, as opposed to say the hybrid version of another car (the Honda Civic Hybrid for example), it is more easily identified as hybrid and provides a better signal to the world that the driver cares about the environment. This signal however, only matters in areas where others care about the environment, for example in San Francisco rather than Texas.

What they found is that in areas with higher rates of environmentalism not only do you see the sale of all hybrid vehicles increase, sales of Prius’ are a markedly higher proportion of the market. People want others to see them as environmentally friendly.

Now what does this have to do with philanthropy?

What if, philanthropy harnessed this conspicuousness in a new way. For decades people’s names have been added to buildings, benches, etc. But what if we found new ways to allow people to engage in conspicuous philanthropy?

I think we’re already beginning to see this movement take place and it has a lot to do with revenue streams.

People don’t but Toms because they are particularly good shoes, they buy Toms because they want to signal to the world that they care about poor people, that they have given a pair of shoes to someone in need.

What are ways that your organization can help donors engage in conspicuous philanthropy? How can you tap into consumerism to increase support for your organization?