PROJECT: UNITED WAY OF KOSCIUSKO COUNTY
United Way of Kosciusko County is a non-profit organization that focuses on community issues in the areas of health, income stability, and education. I joined the organization as the Campaign Coordinator, and my responsibilities included oversight of all marketing and fundraising activities within the organization. United Way of Kosciusko County runs a single campaign in the fall of each year, bringing in around $1.6 million in funds which are later allocated to local non-profits that are working on issues related to United Way’s mission. The fall campaign primarily takes place in local businesses that allow United Way to directly solicit their employees through a combination of events, marketing materials, and direct appeals. Employee donors typically are given the opportunity to donate to United Way directly through payroll deductions, and businesses are asked to contribute corporate gifts as well.
When I began my experience with United Way, I was trained on the techniques that had been used for many years within the organization, but were quickly becoming out-dated. Each year the funds raised were dropping as more businesses stopped running the campaign, and more employees failed to see the value of United Way. After a great deal of in-depth research into donor trends within the organization I determined that part of the problem was that we were doing very little to connect with our donors. We simply came in once a year, asked for money, and they wouldn’t hear from us again until the next campaign season. As a result, I made it my goal to transform the organization from a transactional model of fundraising to a relationship-based model. I began this transformation by proposing a new, aggressive marketing plan that included a community kickoff event, resurrection and revamping of the most recognized United Way icon in our community - the campaign thermometer, quarterly contact with all donors, a thank-a-thon phone bank event following the fall campaign, and small community service events geared at engaging donors in projects related to the United Way mission.
When I began my experience with United Way, I was trained on the techniques that had been used for many years within the organization, but were quickly becoming out-dated. Each year the funds raised were dropping as more businesses stopped running the campaign, and more employees failed to see the value of United Way. After a great deal of in-depth research into donor trends within the organization I determined that part of the problem was that we were doing very little to connect with our donors. We simply came in once a year, asked for money, and they wouldn’t hear from us again until the next campaign season. As a result, I made it my goal to transform the organization from a transactional model of fundraising to a relationship-based model. I began this transformation by proposing a new, aggressive marketing plan that included a community kickoff event, resurrection and revamping of the most recognized United Way icon in our community - the campaign thermometer, quarterly contact with all donors, a thank-a-thon phone bank event following the fall campaign, and small community service events geared at engaging donors in projects related to the United Way mission.
As part of this new marketing plan, I also decided it was time for the organization to embrace social media, which had not been utilized in any significant manner up to that point. I gathered research on social media policies and content calendars to create a formal plan, and set up accounts on Facebook and Twitter for the organization to begin to create an online presence. I later created an internship program for the organization and hired an intern to work on the social media content.
I overhauled several pieces of content for the campaign cabinet to reflect this new model for fundraising. The campaign cabinet is a group of volunteers that I was responsible for recruiting and organizing to help with the initial steps of the fall campaign. I created a new training manual for these volunteers as well as a powerpoint presentation to accompany it. I also created a new flyer to be distributed at campaign events, called “What A Dollar Buys” geared at showing people that even a small donation or increase in their previous donation could make a tremendous difference in our community. This piece won 3rd place in the print media awards for the Indiana Association of United Way’s “GEM Communication Awards”.
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As a first attempt at communicating directly with our donors outside of campaign season, I created our annual report to showcase the amazing work that the organization was able to accomplish with the money we had raised. Historically, the report was paid for by the organization, outsourced to another company, and disseminated to a handful of companies the organization partnered with. I brought production of the report in-house, writing the content and designing the report myself. I also recruited a sponsor to pay for the report to be printed and mailed to each of the companies we had worked with and all of the 5000+ donors who had been a part of the campaign.
The organization hosts an annual meeting each year in February, and I was responsible for planning and organizing the event, as well as finding sponsors. Historically, small gifts were given to all that attended this event. However, in an effort to become more engaged with the organizations we supported and to focus the attention on the work that was being done in the community, we put together a slide-show highlighting our partner organizations and utilized the “gift” money to give an additional donation to one of the partner programs, whose name was drawn in front of the crowd during the presentations.
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As we started to try and increase our marketing efforts, we assembled a Marketing Committee from members of the Board of Directors and community volunteers. I was responsible for overseeing this committee, and one of the first projects we worked on was a newspaper piece intended to give people a behind-the-scenes look at how the funds raised are allocated within the community. Fund allocation is a commonly cited reason that people have severed their support for United Way, so we felt that transparency and inclusion in the process was the best way to address the issue.
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