Case Study: A Breakthrough On Giving Tuesday
How a Food Bank achieved a 10:1 ROI with a coordinated digital fundraising campaign
The Challenge
Giving Tuesday is an important day of giving for nonprofits. However, it presents a challenge to organizations of how to stand out among all the worthy causes raising money that day.
When faced with this challenge, a Food Bank turned to longtime partner, DaVinci.
Our Strategy
In order to stand out among the many Giving Tuesday appeals the audience would see, we knew we needed to reach out well ahead of the day of giving with multiple touches, across channels, and increasing urgency, encouraging the audience to make an early gift.
Our focus was on developing emotional and coordinated creative for all available digital channels.
The Digital Campaigns
The Giving Tuesday campaign included:
• $25,000 matching gift
• 4-part E-Appeal Series sent before and on Giving Tuesday, segmented by audience. Included a countdown clock on the emails sent the day of Giving Tuesday.
• 2 different homepage lightboxes (before and day-of)
• 2 different Facebook ads (before and day-of)
• 2 different remarketing ads targeted to web site visitors (before and day-of)
• Unique online giving forms to track the success of each tactic and provide a seamless user experience for donors
Childhood hunger is a significant problem in Rhode Island. The cost of living in the region is historically high and rising which makes it particularly challenging. So, the creative featured images of children and families.
The message was straightforward and focused on the core mission, the match, and Giving Tuesday.
The Results
The e-appeals saw strong open and click-through rates, and an average gift of $191, compared to the US average of $120.
Our first email on Giving Tuesday saw a transaction-to-click rate of 74%—indicating donors were primed and excited to give.
The homepage lightbox drew $15,600 in gifts on Giving Tuesday alone (30% of total online giving that day).
Overall, the email series generated 10:1 ROI!