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New Fundraising Approach For Boys And Girls Clubs

By Dr. Marciene Mattleman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - When an organization wants people to understand its mission, it reaches out.

The 154-year-old Boys and Girls Clubs of America was fortunate in 2011 that Ron Howard and 21 alumni - including Denzel Washington, Magic Johnson, Jennifer Lopez, and Martin Sheen helped with a commercial.

However, now there's a new approach: kids - not celebrities!

A school door opens at 3pm and a voice-over tells the viewers that 50 million kids will be on their own with nothing to do. You then see two girls walking with a strange-looking man nearby, and boys scaling a fence and playing on railroad tracks.

The picture tries to bring urgency for education in safe, structured, supervised environments, learning guitar, being tutored, building robots. The message is great futures can begin now.

According to an article in The New York Times, at 3pm last week the campaign promoting GreatFutures.org appeared across more than 60 of the most popular websites. The goal was to encourage financial support.

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