If you have not been out all day laying in the sun trying to change your skin tone, you may have heard that the indoor version may be just as if not more bad for you. But as evidence demonstrates, just telling consumers about the ill-effects of a product, like thousands of nonprofits do throughout the country, is at minimum, not enough and at worse, not effective. Take for instance, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol.
However, there is one method that appears to have a more effective impact: taxation. Take for instance, cigarettes. I understand that steadily climbing state and federal taxes has reduced cigarette consumption. And, toward this end, the IRS has recently begun levying an Excise Tax on indoor tanning services.
I must say though, that indoor tanning as a "big threat" seems to have come a bit out of the blue. Yes, there has always been some chatter about the sun and the ill-effects of too much, but tanning salons have been kind-of under the radar. So why now? My understanding: some folks, at the legislative level, got "religion" and decided that all the reports meant something and someone had to help people not do harm to themselves.
There is a lesson for me and one I think nonprofit boards and staff should consider more deeply. Public policy advocacy, looking for legislative solutions to problems, can be effective. Yes, nonprofits must still do all the education and awareness work as well as the support work but if we really want folks to make a major life-changing consumer decision, taxes and regulation may be more effective.
And this goes to boards and staff. When thinking of strategies for having long-range affects on the people who are the focus of your mission, every nonprofit should make sure there's a public policy advocacy component. As cigarettes, drugs, alcohol and now indoor tanning and maybe soda next, show us, sometimes a little, and maybe a lot of impact can be affected.