Nonprofit Fundraising Solutions Lead to 40% Increase in Individual Giving in Just 3 Months

CHALLENGE:

Founded in 1946, the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria (AWLA) provides animal shelter services and community impact programs throughout Fairfax County and Alexandria City, Virginia. Along with their shelter services, AWLA offers affordable veterinary care, a community food pantry and programs such as educational opportunities, low-cost vaccination clinics and community wellness events. They came to our team in search of more sophisticated, broad-based fundraising strategies and a donor engagement approach that would increase annual net revenue and grow their base of support. 

SOLUTIONS:

Before engaging our services, AWLA’s previous fundraising consultant had been sending generic messaging using only direct mail to all individuals in their donor database. To craft effective direct response strategies, we needed to develop a better understanding of their donor audience. 

We conducted research and discovered untapped potential in their donor database through both low-level and major-donor contacts. We used our research to create a comprehensive, omni-channel direct response marketing strategy, using social media, email and direct mail, to increase audience touchpoints for active, lapsed and prospective donors. We also developed more emotionally engaged messaging that was unique to the donor personas we discovered. 

RESULTS:

These strategies led to dramatic increases in giving revenue:

• Total individual giving revenue increased roughly 200% in only the first three months of working with us.
• The November appeal results increased 200% over their previous year efforts.
• AWLA’s newsletter was totally transformed by our team and generated almost six figures.
• A Giving Tuesday campaign alone raised the highest amount on record for AWLA and exceeded the previous year by more than 200%.
• After just 12 months, AWLA’s individual fundraising results increased by 2.3x over its previous 4-year average.
   

“We were so excited to see how much our individual giving increased over the previous year! We are very happy with the Phoenix Innovate team. They are so responsive to us, and they are very easy to work with. They also know what works in terms of marketing strategy, and that’s what’s most important to us. They also seem to genuinely care about our growth and progress.”

-Gina Hardter; Director of Marketing & Communications