Using Humiliation to Fundraise

Trend or coincidence? Twice in the past week I've come across online fundraising campaigns in which the fundraiser promises to do something embarrassing when the goal is met. 

Last week, Holly Ross, NTEN's Executive Director, posted a video appeal for her attempt to raise $10,000 for scholarships to the upcoming Nonprofit Technology Conference. If she meets her goal, donors will get to vote on whether she remakes Beyoncé's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" video, eats a "bacon explosion," or plays her college marching band trombone in San Francisco's Union Square (I think she's hoping voters will choose the bacon). You can watch her hilarious video appeal at http://nten.org/scholarship.

Yesterday I read about Rob Gitin, founder of the homeless youth nonprofit At the Crossroads, who is using a similar approach to raise $10,000 for his nonprofit. His tactic is to court Sarah Silverman. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

For $1,000, he has promised to wear, every day for a week, a sweatshirt bearing Silverman's picture and a message begging her for a date. If he gets $2,500 from online advocators, he will write and perform a poetry slam in her honor, to be posted on YouTube for the world to see. Should he hit $10,000, he will fly to Los Angeles and walk in front of her workplace with a sandwich board requesting her company for a night.

Gitin's appeal is part of a larger fundraising campaign called "I Think I Can."  So far, 61 volunteers have signed up to fundraise by promising to meet a variety of goals. But most of their goals (walk to work, run a half-marathon, read Proust), don't involve public humiliation.

So, is this a trend or just coincidence?