I’m a bit late to the party on this but a piece in the Feb 20 edition of the Guardian highlights a controversy about celebrities getting paid to tweet on behalf of charities:

Is there a secret culture of celebrity payments that sustains British charities? And if so, is that a scandal? It’s not a scandal that big charities have to pay their gas bill, after all, or salaries to their staff. When they advertise in the Sun they get no special discount for the kiddies. (I’ve checked. They don’t get one in the Guardian, either.) Many celebrities, including big stars such as Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber, charge companies to promote their products on social media, and they certainly charge to appear in retail campaigns. When saying you like things is your product, is there any special reason, besides being rich already, why you should give it away to charities for free?

We are all free to judge individual celebrities on what they do with their time and how they accumulate their money. As the piece states, there was considerable backlash against one British star who accepted payment for a tweet. [Disastrous follow-up PR did not help.]

As with many other management issues, charities must decide if payment for this sort of thing is worth the return on investment, and the ROI should obviously factor in whatever public backlash might ensue as a result. But the path can be dicey:

At another leading charity, a campaigner who also prefers not to be identified has a few more niggles to share. She is not a celebrity manager, but works with celebrities on a daily basis, and explains by email that even though they are never paid, she finds some of them quite high-maintenance. “They have asked for expenses,” she says. “This can vary, and is certainly more than ‘normal’ people would request – for example, a makeup artist for photo shoots, taxis, hotel rooms. There have been issues with whether they get first-class air tickets, but we have that with UN officials, too. They do need to be pampered more than most – drinks, goodie bags – which is annoying but par for the course.”

Then there’s the always outside-the-box Stephen Fry, who has his own set of rules for how he goes about using social media to promote worth causes:

Stephen Fry sets an excellent example on Twitter, although he doesn’t charge. As his website explains, requests to tweet about a good cause must be supplied to him in plenty of time before an event so he can choose which to support. He also gives valuable advice on how tweets should be composed, and on the importance of charities preparing their websites for a sudden surge in traffic at the agreed tweeting time. It’s a practical rather than a romantic approach, but that’s how charities can do most good.