HEY! YOU! MEDIA!

Fundraising and Inspiration Porn: How Does Your Messaging Rate on the Jerry Scale?

/ Ingrid Tischer / 2 Comments
Screenshot from a Shriners' commercial of a young white boy in a manual chair.

The only disability in life is a bad attitude…until you factor in #inspirationporn like, “Love is…walking,” that Leo Burnett and Shriners’ thought was a super-appropriate slogan for a kid in a wheelchair to say. For Shriners’ fundraising stragedy campaign. For $$.

Sure, I’ve been critical of the charity fundraising model. Sure, I’ve had some harsh things to say about inspiration porn.  And, yes, I’ve argued that children with disabilities can be valuable comestibles.  None of that precludes me from providing a valuable Professional Fundraiser’s Assessment of the Shriners’ commercial above:

The problem with this ad for Shriners’ Hospital is that it doesn’t go far enough. It goes right up to the edge and hesitates.

Bottom line: If you’re not inspiring AND terrifying your audience, they’re not hearing why they should give to you to make you stop talking.

My 3-Point Pointers for Insperrifying™ Medical-Model Messaging (3M™)

  1. Love = Cure. You’ve laid the groundwork, now close the deal. You’ve got the kids believing love is about walking. Now have them say what you really mean: “My parents will hate me if I can’t walk!”
  2. Kids ♥ Begging. Whether it’s for a puppy or surgery, kids are world-class chin-tremblers. Yet you haven’t even given them the tools they need.  What, Shriners’ can’t afford a couple of tin cups?
  3. Follow Your Non-Bliss. On-camera talent should appear in naturalistic settings that echo your message of disability = despair. A seclusion room in a badly run public school.  Waiting at a stop where the bus rolls by them. Watching fundraising commercials for people “like that.”

Remember: Real World Fundraising™ measures itself on the Jerry Scale. On the Jerry Scale you have to scare to score!

Wishing you all a very happy #GivingTuesday on December 1st!

When It Comes to Inspiration Porn, “Role Model” Is My Most Effective Anti-Inspirant*

/ Ingrid Tischer / 9 Comments

Meme that uses a Ban anti-perspirant photo with the words: Role Model Anti-Inspirant Prevents Inspiration Porn Odor

“I’ve found that being inspirational is a lonely business and
unconnected to true efforts or achievements. Being a role model has the pleasure of an honor that’s earned.”

I was asked a few years ago about how I felt being called an “inspiration” based on my identity as a woman with a disability. This was my response, based on events over three decades in the workforce, the majority spent in progressive, community-based nonprofits in the Bay Area where the cross-disability community still remained invisible and therefore marginalized:

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This Labor Day, Let’s Commit to Wiping Out the Charity Model for All People With Disabilities in Our Lifetime

/ Ingrid Tischer / 7 Comments

Photo of Jerry Lewis with his infamous quote about how muscular dystrophy would make him half a person.

When your organization’s fundraising tactics undermine your mission – as dehumanizing your own people does – your fundraiser efforts can only be judged a failure. No matter how much money you raise.

This Labor Day weekend has me feeling celebratory because there’s no Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Telethon on the air for the first time in 49 years.
This is great. If you’ve got that particular diagnosis. If you don’t, you may still have a problem. If, say, you’re diagnosed with autism. People with autism are still dealing with the same dynamic of destructive messages in the fundraising that purports to help them.
Criticizing how funds are raised generates a whole lot of anger if the critics are among those who are said to benefit from the efforts.  That’s why cross-disability solidarity, disability history, and telling our own stories are so important. The medical model of disability would keep us separated by diagnoses — different and disconnected — but the social model can bring us together — unique and united — through common concerns for our rights.
I’ve said it before and it’s still true: “I look at fundraising as a means of not just supporting social change but in promoting it as well. How we raise money says a lot about our attitudes toward the cause we want to fund.”

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NotPeople Magazine Presents: Star Trek: The Next Intervention

/ Ingrid Tischer / 7 Comments
NotPeople Magazine cover with a picture of a pleading Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Top reads: "The Assisted Suicide Policy Intervention Issue!" Side-by-side with photos text: "Captain Picard Intervenes & It's Patrick Stewart HOT!"Captain’s Log: Stardate 20150808.naptime. The Enterprise is en route after refueling at Carnitas in the Al-Pastor system, but before reaching the Reflux Cluster, we’ve picked up a warning call from the Federation ship Ventilator. The decoded message tells us that a pro-assisted suicide ship, The Good Death, is in the vicinity. We’ve sent them the standard response, U-1st, but The Good Death remains as quiet as a tomb. Then it suddenly appeared on the Bridge’s screen.
Captain Picard on the bridge looking toward the screen.“Tell me what I’m looking at on the screen and how that man can STILL be so damnably handsome.”

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The NotPeople Magazine Rationalest Man Alive Interview: Peter Singer Gets Notpersonal With A Respironics Bi-Pap S/T

/ Ingrid Tischer / 6 Comments

Parody People magazine cover announcing NotPeople's Rationalest Man Alive! Peter SingerAs part of Tales From the Crip’s new series, Imaginary Interviews With People Who We Wish Were Imaginary, our own Respironics Bi-Pap S/T sat down with philosopher Dr. Peter Singer, Princeton’s Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, whose anti-crip, pro-swine agenda argues that infanticide of babies with disabilities should be legal up until the 28th day after birth, that health care for people with disabilities should be rationed, and that the consciousness of some pigs doesn’t get enough respect. These fascis — fascinating ideas are just the tip of the iceberg of why Peter Singer is gracing the cover of NotPeople magazine as the Rationalest Man Alive! 

RBPS/T:  Welcome to the United States, Dr. Peter Singer, and all Bruces from Australia.

PS: G’day.

RBPS/T: We’re going to have a rational discussion!

PS: Rational.

RBPS/T:  Rational.

PS: Rational.

RBPS/T:  You’ve been named NotPeople’s Rationalest Man Alive 2015. How does this make you feel?

PS: Rational.

RBPS/T:  Any plans for keeping the title in 2016?

PS: I don’t make plans more than 28 days ahead.

Coming Up in the Interview! 

Peter Singer as you’ve never heard him!  

“Your bizarre stereotypes about Australian people are getting in the way of me explaining why infanticide is the rational choice for parents of disabled infants!”

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