Peace Community Center
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.
Peace Community Center | Event Cancellation + 5-Touch Email Campaign
In this video, Steven from Bloomerang sits down (virtually) with Miranda from Peace Community Center to talk about how they transformed an in-person event into a multi-touch email campaign that raised over $118k.
Campaign At-A-Glance
PCC converted a canceled in-person event into a multi-touch email sequence. Rather than hosting the event “virtually” at a set date and time, the content of the event was rolled out over a two-week period, with an ask and campaign progress communicated in each email.
The COVID crisis seemed to come at an interesting time for us, as we were getting ready for our annual benefit dinner on March 27th and had to cancel it. We didn’t do an appeal specifically about COVID-19, but used the impacts of the virus to fuel our appeal that we would have done around this time anyway. Our organization is an education-based nonprofit supporting historically underrepresented students, so with schools closed across Washington State, our programs had to quickly adapt to meet the needs of our students in the moment. We used this, along with stating the fact that we had to cancel our only main fundraising event of the year and that our organization relies on funding from that event. Our donors received the messaging really well, and were looking for ways to help out in this time of crisis.
Email #1 – Event Cancelation
Following a statewide shutdown, PCC was forced to cancel an in-person event scheduled about two weeks away. Rather than “canceling” the event, Miranda communicated that it would be moving to an online format with an unchanged fundraising goal.
43% open rate, 3.4% click-through-rate
Subject: Important Update: Learners to Leaders 2020
Appeal Email 3 of 5 – Service Recipient Story
Between the event “cancellation” email and the scheduled date of the event, Miranda sent five emails, each featuring someone who was going to speak at the event.
Here is one of those emails, featuring a former service recipient:
23% open rate, 3.4% click-through-rate
Subject: IT’S THE LAST DAY to stand with Hilltop students!
Email #3 – Thank You / Campaign Success Email
Following a successful campaign, Miranda sent a “thank you” email from the ED, which also included a video.
42% open rate, 4.7% click-through-rate
Subject: WOW! Thanks to YOU Peace Did It!
