Craft Your Recipe: How to Write Your Campaign Plan
Welcome back to the spring fundraising series. From Scratch has a multi-week series for you to help you prep, implement, and follow up on your spring campaign. If you have one in the works—or even if you don’t—you can follow along. If you do the homework each week, you should be well on your way to an excellent campaign.
If you’re coming in late, here’s a recap: First, we talked about what goals to aim for. Next, we discussed how to draft a donor persona to guide your campaign.
Today, we’re looking at how to craft your campaign plan.
Here’s how I figure out my campaign plan:
STEP 1: Looking at your donor persona, pick the channels that will most effectively reach the audience. I always recommend email (assuming you have emails for your donor targets), but some people think they need to be on every social media channel ever…but you just need to pick the ones your donor persona demographic would be on.
STEP 2: How long do you want to run your campaign? I usually recommend a 2-week warm-up (or gratitude) campaign. Then a quiet week, then a 3-4 week fundraising campaign.
STEP 3: Now take that timeline and map out what you’ll publish to which channels and when.
STEP 4: Pick a theme, if you want. Sometimes having a specific theme to your campaign is helpful from a writing inspiration standpoint. But you by no means have to have a theme.
STEP 5: Draft all the content.
STEP 6: Program all the content.
STEP 7: LAUNCH!
So what do these campaign pieces actually look like? I’ll give you some examples below. (And, hey, I’m not going to stop you if you want to just customize these for your nonprofit and use them for your campaign!)
Launch a Gratitude Campaign
Draft three emails to send out to your current donors. Select a story or accomplishment you are particularly proud of (for this example, we’re going to invent a nonprofit called “School Solutions”).
If you don’t have a big (or any) fundraising or marketing team to help you on social media, let’s keep the rest simple. You can take snippets of each email to post to whatever platforms your nonprofit is on. Make sure to use pictures!
Email 1:
We’re going to send a first email to our donors to say thank you. That’s it! Nothing else. Introduce the story, and let the donors know that they were a part of your success (or more importantly, your client’s success).
Dear [first name] -
I want you to meet Samantha. Samantha’s family has struggled with homelessness for her entire school career, and she’s changed schools multiple times as her family has sought affordable and sustainable housing options.
When Samantha came to School Solutions her freshman year of high school, she was behind grade level. Worse, she was starting to lose interest in school and was thinking about dropping out. Thanks to generous donors like you, we paired Samantha with a peer mentor and got her into our after-school tutoring program. With a community of support, she got back on track. As she started to succeed, she began to enjoy her studies. She fell in love with math and science, and set her sights on North Carolina State University to study engineering.
[first name], you helped make Samantha’s dream come true. In January, she received early acceptance to NCSU’s engineering program—with a full scholarship! Without the support from generous donors like you, we can’t meet the needs of students like Samantha.
Thank you for making a difference for Samantha and the other 200 students we serve annually.
Regards,
Jane Doe
Executive Director
Email 2:
The first email should tell a single story. Next, pivot that story to paint a bigger picture. Show that the first email was just one story of many.
Dear [first name] -
I wrote to you a few days ago about Samantha, and I want to tell you a little bit more.
Samantha just completed her first semester as a freshman in NCSU’s engineering program. She is thriving, loves her studies, and is already thinking ahead to summer internship programs (which we are helping her to secure).
But there are so many other young people out there like Samantha who need our support. Samantha’s family fell on hard times, and Samantha’s entire future was crumbling. That shouldn’t be allowed to happen. When a family falls on hard times, we need to be there to rally around them and give them support.
Here at School Solutions, we give that support to high school students that need extra support to get their grades back on track. We pair them with peer mentors who give them moral support as they face the tough world of high school. We provide tutoring services in the subjects they may be struggling with to get their grades up. We have trained college counselors that help our clients—many of whom will be the first in their family to even apply to college—navigate the admissions and financial aid process. And we support them through our alumni program as they go through college; we help pair them with paid internships, so they don’t have to choose between their future dreams and supporting their families, and other services to ensure college success.
You are a critical part of the community that surrounds these students. We’re so grateful for your past support. As we near the end of the school year and see another batch of students reaching graduation, I want you to know how much we value your partnership.
With Gratitude,
Jane Doe
Executive Director
You laid the groundwork. What next?
Pick a theme or a story that you want to dive into with your donors. It might be another success story. It might be multiple success stories. It might be an overview of each of your programs. They should be short, but involve a story. They should have an EXPLICIT ask (“Will you donate now?”), and should have a really compelling subject line and opening line.
Here’s an example:
Dear [first name] -
I think we agree on something important: kids from families that have fallen on tough times should be supported and surrounded by a loving community that gives them a chance to thrive despite their circumstances.
Yes? Great. If you believe that young people deserve every chance to thrive, you belong in the School Solutions community.
Just this year, we worked with a client named Daniel. His father had recently died of cancer, and he struggled mightily with depression. He stopped seeing the point of going to school. His mother came to us after receiving a notice that he was at risk of failing his senior year.
With the accountability and encouragement of his peer mentor, he made the return to school. One of our counselors began working with him to think about how to create meaning for his future, and he decided to pursue a degree in urban planning—a way to feel connected to his father who had been a city manager. He recently was accepted to Georgetown University to pursue this goal, and we’ve helped Daniel and his mother navigate the scholarship and financial aid landscape so he can attend.
A young person like Daniel shouldn’t be left alone to struggle. A gift of $500 can ensure a high school student has access to a semester’s worth of our tutoring services. A gift of $250 can cover the cost of our college counseling for a semester, and a gift of $100 allows peer mentors to meet their mentees needs for a semester.
You are a vital part of these young people’s support system. How many students can you help today? Will you make a donation of $100 right now?
Let’s surround every young person with love, and meet their needs with enthusiasm. Can you do that today?
Many thanks,
Jane Doe
Executive Director
Draft one email like this for every week of your campaign.
Again, it needs to be short and high-impact.
For the final week, one challenge I like to give myself is to make it as short as I possibly can while making the final pitch for the organization.
One of my favorites I’ve ever seen was three sentences, from a nonprofit working with terminally ill kids: “Cancer is relentless. So are we. Donate today.” With a lovely picture of a family they served and a big donate button. It got me in the feels…I donated.
If you’ve had a tough year and haven’t had the results you’ve wanted or don’t have a success story you can share, that’s actually okay too. I think donors are more understanding today than ever before that unforeseen circumstances can hinder a nonprofit’s success. Check out my post on how to talk to your donors when times are tough and you’re not reporting the results you wish you were.
Your Homework Assignment
Okay, I’m cheating a little here…I’m just copying and pasting most of the to-do list from the top of this blog. But do these steps this week, and stay tuned for next week.
STEP 1: Looking at your donor persona, pick the channels that will most effectively reach the audience. I always recommend email (assuming you have emails for your donor targets), but some people think they need to be on every social media channel ever…but you just need to pick the ones your donor persona demographic would be on.
STEP 2: How long do you want to run your campaign? I usually recommend a 2-week warm-up (or gratitude) campaign. Then a quiet week, then a 3-4 week fundraising campaign.
STEP 3: Now take that timeline and map out what you’ll publish to which channels and when.
STEP 4: Pick a theme, if you want. Sometimes having a specific theme to your campaign is helpful from a writing inspiration standpoint. But you by no means have to have a theme.
STEP 5: Draft all the content.
Have a question? Shoot me an email and ask away! I’m here to help you succeed.
