MWD BLOG

In November 2013, No Kid Hungry and Donordigital collaborated on an interactive online fundraising campaign designed to help donors feel more connected with the impact of their gift. The mission of No Kid Hungry is to end childhood hunger in America, and Thanksgiving is a prescient time of year to spread awareness of their work and inspire people to join “Team No Kid Hungry.”

The campaign was promoted through an email series to No Kid Hungry’s house file of half-a-million usable email addresses, and posts to the No Kid Hungry Facebook and Twitter feeds. The email series was mobile-optimized.

When people clicked through to the landing page, they saw a large, partially obscured image of a child served by No Kid Hungry. The bottom half of the page was a donation form with a two-column-plus-sidebar design that we tested into as a result of 2 rounds of multi-variant optimization testing in 2013.

Upon making a donation on that page, the “tiles” obstructing the image of the child would peel off, revealing an adorable, happy, well-fed kid. We aimed to create an experience for the donor that would be delightful—immediately displaying the impact of their donation.

All the photos used in the campaign were images of children touched by the work of No Kid Hungry. In addition, once the child’s image was revealed, we would share the story of that child and their family, and the No Kid Hungry programs that helped them.

On the “thank-you” or “confirmation” page, the donor saw prominent social sharing buttons in order to share the image and story with their friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and by email. In addition, we sent a message as part of the email series that brought people to a page with images, stories and social sharing opportunities for all the children in the campaign.

This campaign was also bolstered by celebrity support and a challenge match. No Kid Hungry’s national spokesperson Jeff Bridges signed two of the messages in the email series, telling stories of individual children helped by No Kid Hungry and incorporating an image of him with one of No Kid Hungry’s young clients. Additionally, one of the messages that dropped around Thanksgiving included a challenge match from Tork Foods.

Because this campaign was a departure from No Kid Hungry’s usual donation requests, we kept even closer tabs on the campaign metrics. The Thanksgiving campaign converted better than the typical donation form during the month of November. We believe that this is because it was unusual and special (an effect that would wear off if it became typical).

This campaign was a success in part because of No Kid Hungry’s wealth of images of adorable children the organization has helped and stories of those kids and their families. No Kid Hungry conducted several trips to work sites across the country in 2013 to gather these, and it was important to us to share authentic stories from people on the ground who have been touched by their work.

P.S. You can read more about how Donordigital created this innovative fundraising tool in this blog post by Junior Web Developer Nick Robitaille.

Wendy Marinaccio Husman is an Account Director at Donordigital, the online fundraising, marketing, and advertising company.