Giving DuPage Days Case Study

Introduction

Giving DuPage, a nonprofit volunteering organization for DuPage County annually fundraises through the Human Race with nonprofit organizations, volunteers, and businesses each year. However, in 2020 they decided to transition to a county-wide virtual “day of giving” to try something new. This community fundraiser was for nonprofit organizations to raise funds for their efforts. Midway through planning the social media campaign, a global pandemic rattled our world and our strategy switched gears to a 30-day online community fundraising event. Paul Gregory Media’s (PGM) team turned this around in just one week. The message soon changed from “Give locally” to “Now more than ever, we need your support.”

Goal

We were tasked with reimagining the original campaign, generating awareness and engagement for the first-ever “Giving DuPage Days,” constructing effective paid search on social media, and upholding Giving DuPage’s strong and positive tonality. Our overarching goal was to create a sense of community throughout this 100% virtual community fundraiser. Our goal was to reach $150,000 in donations.

Process

Our team was responsible for the creative strategy and implementation behind the social media campaign, #GivingDuPageDays. We created all graphics, animations, and Facebook ads and engaged in social listening to respond on social media in a timely manner to mentions from followers. We put together several videos to show the impact of giving locally, and generated a report at the conclusion of the campaign. On social media, we focused on creating graphics such as: registration dates, webinar information, FAQ’s, non-for-profit recognition, sponsor recognitions, fundraising teams, prizes, milestones, graphics of benefitting causes, motivational quote graphics, and social media banners. On Facebook, we managed the paid advertisements and boosted posts using best practices and well-defined audience segments, while allocating our advertisement budget funds effectively and intelligently. Throughout the 30-day span, we monitored which ads were gaining mileage and changed them accordingly. This effort was done in collaboration with PGM and Giving DuPage, bringing new ideas to the table each day. Additionally, we shared and curated content that was being posted by the organizations so they could reach more of a wider audience with Giving DuPage’s followers.

Social Image - Community Living Includes Giving (1)

The Result

The Giving DuPage Days community fundraiser surpassed their goal of raising $150,000, with a grand total of $229,776 for DuPage County nonprofits. On social media, in the entire 30-days, we reached 661,878 people on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn combined, meaning Giving DuPage’s posts showed up in that many people’s news feeds. We had a total of 12,539 engagements, meaning that many people liked, commented, reacted, and shared Giving DuPage’s posts. Bringing awareness to social media is key to a successful online community fundraiser. This translated into our analytics in the final days of the campaign with final pushes on May 11th up until May 14th. Video content has skyrocketed on social media and we integrated both videos and animations into this campaign. As you can see, the graph displays 31,856 total views occurred on Facebook throughout Giving DuPage Days. The organic reach wasn’t enough exposure for these important videos so our boost efforts paid off, literally. Giving DuPage’s original goals were exceeded due to our consistent observations of how the ad was performing, and engaging with nonprofit organizations and people online to build this campaign up. The data shows that 94% of visitors were referred to the website from Facebook. Throughout this process, we learned that life is all about give and take; while Covid-19 spared no efforts to take away this opportunity and rattled our original plans, the community still gave back tenfold. Even during a pandemic, we all continued to choose positivity and the results showed.