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Oregon Humane Society

Overall, Bloomerang customers that sent fundraising appeals raised $1.35MM more during the COVID-19 crisis than they did during the same time period last year! We wanted to highlight some of those success stories here.

Oregon Humane Society | Broad Updates & Segmented Appeals

In this video, Steven from Bloomerang sits down (virtually) with Sara from then Willamette Humane Society to talk about they generated a 227% increase in donor support compared to the same period last year.
Note, Willamette Humane Society merged with Oregon Human Society in March, 2022.This interview was conducted on April 20th, 2020.

Campaign At-A-Glance

Like so many nonprofit organizations, Oregon Humane Society’s challenge was two-fold: communicate programming changes in light of new social distancing and sanitation measures, and communicate their financial need. As a humane society, the care and protection of the animals in their facility was of particular interest to their community. Despite not being in direct human services, Sara and the OHS team did not shy away from fundraising.

Monthly donors are particular important to OHS (as they should be). After broadly updating the entire community on changes at the facility, Sara and her team reached out to monthly donors first before beginning their appeal campaigns. Those appeals were also segmented, allowing contextualized asks for distinct groups of supporters. The results shattered expectations.

Email #1 – Initial COVID-19 Precautions/Update

In Mid-March, OHS began communicating changes at their facility, as well as in-person event cancellations.

62% open rate, 4% click-through-rate

Subject: EVENT UPDATE: This Wednesday’s open forum and other shelter events

Email #2 – Monthly Donor Stewardship

Very early on, OHS got out in front of monthly donors with pure stewardship; thanking them for their past and ongoing support, and reminding them that they are the lifeblood of the organization. This “prime the pump” method prevented monthly donors from being alienated by future appeals. Sara and her team believe that this email made subsequent appeals more successful.

54% open rate, 3.5% click-through-rate

Subject: Monthly Donors, the heroes of non-profits.

Email #3 – Segmented Appeals

Rather than simply sending a blanket appeal to their entire community, OHS was incredibly intentional about who they were asking from, and what they were asking for.

Sara and her team set up a variation of the same email to three distinct segments:

  • Segment 1: active donors
  • Segment 2: monthly donors
  • Segment 3: lapsed donors

While the core of the message was similar across all three, each had a unique intro and call-to-action. For example, the monthly donor segment suggested sustainers increase their commitment.

Subject: Are you looking for a way to help?

These three emails alone generated over $17,000, as well as several upgrades from existing monthly donors.

Email #4 – Second COVID-19 Precautions/Update

As the situation continued to evolve through late-March, OHS continued their updates. Each included multiple, specific calls-to-action for additional support.

24% open rate, 2% click-through-rate

Subject: How we can serve pets and people—together

 

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