Look through this website and you will notice something missing. You will not find a photograph of a young adult standing outside a shelter. You will not find a first responder’s widow telling her story to a camera. That is not an oversight. It is a decision we made on purpose, and we intend to keep it.
Dignity is not a marketing strategy
Charities raise more money when they show you a face. That is simply true, and every nonprofit knows it. A photograph of someone at their lowest moment moves people to give in a way that a statistic never will.
But the person in that photograph pays for it. They pay in privacy. They pay when a future employer runs a search on their name. They pay when a classmate or a coworker recognizes them. They pay in the quiet knowledge that the help they received came with a camera attached.
We are not willing to charge people that price for their own assistance. Someone asking for help with rent or groceries or a doctor’s visit is already having a hard enough week. They should not also have to become our fundraising material.
OUR PRINCIPLE
No one should have to trade their privacy for our help.
What We Do Instead
We show our own people
Riders, volunteers, sponsors, and officers. Our community signed up to be visible. The people we serve did not.
We report numbers, not names
What we raised, what it covered, and which of the six needs it went to — without attaching a face to it.
We name our partners
The organizations and agencies we work alongside can speak about the need in their communities without exposing individuals.
We ask, and we accept no
If someone genuinely wants to share their story, that is their call to make. We never treat it as the cost of receiving help.
It costs us something
We will be honest about the tradeoff. This approach almost certainly leaves money on the table. A stranger’s photograph would probably outperform anything on this page.
We think that is the right trade. An organization that was founded because someone was being treated unfairly should not build its fundraising on treating people as material. If you give to Peace*Love*Happiness, you are trusting us with the numbers instead of the faces — and we take that seriously enough to publish what we raise and where it goes.
Twenty-four years in, that is still the deal.