Together we make progress
Our vast network of partners includes the brightest minds and biggest hearts across media, tech, marketing, advertising, government, and nonprofits. Through the power of purpose-driven marketing, we create real, lasting change.
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Events
We love bringing the industry together to share best practices and celebrate social impact. We also love partnering with leaders in our industry to shine a spotlight on purpose marketing at major conferences and convenings. Click through to learn more about some of our recent and upcoming events.
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Check out the latest job opportunities at the Ad Council.
Good questions (and some answers!)
- What is the Ad Council? What’s your mission?
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Our mission is to convene the best storytellers to educate, unite and uplift—by opening hearts, inspiring action and accelerating change. We won’t stop until we live in a society where every single person can thrive.
We build powerful, one-of-a-kind coalitions across the advertising, tech, media, marketing and philanthropy sectors to create innovative, life-changing communications campaigns that drive impact at scale.
We leverage our unique network, donated media and pro-bono resources to amplify our collective reach exponentially. At the same time, we’re building hyperlocal partnerships at the community level, working directly with the people in those communities to ensure our work is authentic and impactful. In other words, we deploy a big, broad air game and a deep, rich ground game.
Our network of top experts, analysts and government agencies ensures we’re getting the best information available to inform our campaigns, while collaborating with the best storytellers ensures that we’re sharing messages with inspiring and effective calls to action.
We believe in innovating, collaborating, testing and refining to ensure our work is truly impactful. And we know that finding common ground means finding the place where we can open hearts, inspire action and drive change.
Read the Ad Council's story - Is the Ad Council a nonprofit? How are you funded?
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The Ad Council is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We raise funds from a variety of sources—including our campaign sponsors, our annual fundraising events, including our Public Service Award Dinner, and our Board of Directors. See our Board of Directors.
Almost all Ad Council campaigns are sponsored by a national nonprofit organization or a federal government agency. They provide the funding to underwrite a lot of the hard costs needed to produce and distribute their multi-platform campaign. See our campaign sponsors here.
Outside of sponsoring an individual campaign, we do not receive government funding and we are not a government entity. - Who creates the Ad Council’s ad campaigns?
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Ad Council campaigns are produced pro bono by the country’s leading creative agencies, who donate their services on a volunteer basis.
The Ad Council works closely with the creative agency and sponsoring organization throughout the process to develop a campaign. Typically this follows 6 major stages: 1) research and planning; 2) strategic development; 3) creative development; 4) production; 5) distribution/media outreach; and 6) monitoring and evaluation.
Click here to learn more about our pro bono agencies. - Where do your ads run? Do you purchase media?
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All Ad Council campaigns run in space and time entirely donated by the media. We have deep relationships that span print, TV, radio, outdoor, social, digital and more that help us ensure that each piece of campaign creative is reaching the right, targeted audience at the right time.
We also work with leading media and marketing companies across the industry to develop custom, integrated social good partnerships on behalf of our campaigns. Learn more about our media and marketing partners here.
Want to help distribute an Ad Council campaign? Click here to visit our campaigns where you can download media-quality assets. - How do you pick what campaigns to work on? How do I submit a campaign idea?
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We receive many inquiries from nonprofits, brands or other issue experts about potential campaigns. We also identify possible campaigns through our Advisory Committee on Public Issues. Established in 1947, this “think tank”, comprised of prestigious leaders from the non-profit, business, research, academic, philanthropic, medical and public policy professions, advises the Ad Council on the nation’s most pressing social issues on a pro bono basis.
If you are interested in partnering with the Ad Council on a campaign, please review the ways to work with us here and fill out our Partner With Us form and we will be in touch shortly. - What criteria do you use to evaluate a campaign idea?
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Before campaign is accepted to the Ad Council docket it must meet the following criteria, among others:
- The issue should impact a significant portion of the population and be of serious public importance
- The issue must offer a solution through an individual action
- The issue must include resources available nationwide
- The effort must be national in scope so that the message has relevance to media audiences in communities throughout the nation
- The effort should be such that advertising can help achieve its objectives and those objectives can be measured
- The issue must be non-commercial, non-denominational, non-partisan, and not be designated to influence legislation.
- Where can I access older Ad Council campaigns?
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The Ad Council has been creating impactful campaigns since 1942. To learn more about some of our classic campaigns, visit Our History page here.
Can’t find what you’re looking for? For a historical campaign, please email the Ad Council's archives at illiarch@illinois.edu.
For a current campaign, visit Our Work.
CREATIVITY. CAUSES. AND YOU.
We're committed to purpose-driven marketing, and together we can do so much. Let’s talk about how we can partner to help change the world.