How These 3 Nonprofits Are Breaking Through the Noise

(originally written for Nonprofit Hub)

How are you supposed to break through the noise when there are millions of nonprofit organizations and hundreds of millions of businesses in existence, competing for your donor’s attention across email, social media and the entire digital space in general? Where do you start? What efforts should you put your resources towards? There’s no magic bullet answer, but the best we can do is pay attention and learn from others. That is why we caught up with 3 very different nonprofit organizations who are rocking it in their own ways.

Hope Project International

• Mission: Helping children around the world in the areas of Nutrition, Education, Shelter, and Spiritual Development.
• Team Size: 7 team members including 2 founders and board members
• Revenue: Last fiscal year reported over $260,000

Growth Challenges

When starting out in 2013, Hope Project International founders Megan and Than Graffam knew that their goal was to help children across six different countries around the world. They got started in Nicaragua and soon found themselves committed to helping a group of about 150 kids, which prevented them from helping other areas immediately because they wanted to keep their commitments and not overextend themselves. They knew that they’d have to grow and expand their financial support at the same pace that they wanted to grow and expand their reach around the world.

Fundraising and Awareness Efforts

They found success by equally focusing their time on their online presence and getting face-to-face with potential partners.

Online Presence

They also put a lot of work into sharing their story online with their strongest efforts poured into their facebook page and the usage of photography. They leveraged Megan’s photography talents to capture stories on the field and show financial supporters a clear return on their investment into Hope Project. In just a short time, they grew their follower count to 5000 people by being very intentional about what they posted and keeping 3 key things in mind:

1. They post photos of people that we serve in their most hopeful and flattering moments. Most  pictures show kids smiling and enjoying life, in spite of their surrounding conditions. We want to represent them with dignity and class rather than exploit them for the next donation.

(A Nicaraguan school supported by Hope Project)

1. hey stick to a posting cycle showcases our vision in different ways -- an ask, an action, our volunteers, our opportunities, our completed projects, and so on.
2. They produce content that draws engagement and interaction out of their online community and their volunteer’s networks. They have seen that their Facebook posts and YouTube videos receive up to 5-10x more viewers if they get more likes and shares on them, usually by posting photos of volunteers.

(That’s me and my husband helping to build a home in Nicaragua!)

Face-to-Face Events

The founders also put a lot of their efforts into securing meetings and speaking engagements where they would be able to share what exactly Hope Project was all about. To date they have  been able to speak publicly about Hope Project to more than 10,000 people mainly through church and school events.

The Outcome

In early 2018, Hope Project raised their one millionth dollar as an organization. With these funds they have been able to build more than 95 homes for families in need, provide more than 150,000 meals for children and families, sponsor more than 450 children to attend school and much more while working with our partners in 5 different countries. To date, they have also had 400 volunteers join them on short-term service trips to complete the work and now many of them make up their 70 Monthly Partners, who support Hope Project financially each month. It has been an incredible journey, but it’s still just the beginning and they’re off to a great start!

Tools recommended by Hope Project International

The team at Hope Project say that the best tools you can use are whatever platforms allow you to tell the real story and show financial partners what their support accomplishes. They have had the greatest success on Facebook and Instagram. They also use Mailchimp for communication with volunteers and supporters and have registered with GreatNonprofits and Guidestar, earning Top-Rated status as well as a Gold Seal of Transparency. If you are open and honest about what you are trying to accomplish and why, do so with integrity, and create spaces where people can join in on the work, you will find success.

Jefferson University

• Mission: Jefferson is committed to research, discovery and creativity across disciplines. We believe that we all learn something when our dreams intersect, and when we work together, we redefine what’s humanly possible.
• Team Size: Thousands of staff members
• Revenue: Last fiscal year reported over $600 million

Growth Challenges

Since 1996, Jefferson University has grown to consist of six colleges and schools including Sidney Kimmel Medical College, one of the largest private medical colleges in the nation. Today the university and its partner Jefferson Health enrolls more than 3,700 students and treats more than 46,000 inpatients and 1,000,000 outpatients annually. Most recently, their greatest growth challenge involved building a toolkit and platform that would meet the needs of a variety of constituents (patients, students, and faculty) looking to fundraise on behalf of a department, or honor of an individual in a meaningful way. While evaluating the latest digital fundraising platforms, David Ritchie, Senior Director of Business Intelligence, Analytics and Data Services for Thomas Jefferson University, said their current provider wasn’t cutting it.“The donation experience was cumbersome, plus the thank you process and data entry was very manual, costing us valuable time.” They also needed the ability to run sophisticated, custom campaigns, which was unavailable with their current system.

Fundraising and Awareness Efforts

After careful due diligence, Jefferson University ended up launching iDonate, which allowed all constituents to create campaigns and fundraise for causes like liver transplants, for orthopedics and fraternities. And within 2 years, over 69 peer to peer pages were created in the first two years, including on peer-to-peer campaign that raised over $160,000.

Some notable campaigns include:

• A new fund, the Paige S. Tibbetts Legacy Fund, was not only established but became an endowed fund raising over $168,000 for cancer patients

• An advocate raised over $26,000 for their new Alumni Center, where he will be able to honor his late father who was a medical college alumnus
• Over 50 runners from a local running group created individual personal fundraising pages to raise money for our Cancer Center as they trained for an upcoming half marathon.

The Outcome

Since finding the right fundraising platform, they were able to increase their average gift size to be 3.5x greater than the national average and increased their conversion rates by 2.5x - 3.5x for several initiatives.

Overall, they experienced a:

• 41% increase in average gift size
• 41% increase in total giving
• 90% increase in recurring gifts
• 35% increase in recurring givers

Tools Recommended by Jefferson University

Even though Jefferson University uses many different technologies and platforms, the one that they recommend the most is the peer-to-peer platform, iDonate, because it has increased their third party fundraising efforts significantly over the past two years both in revenue and the number of donors.

Children’s Alopecia Project

• Mission: To help any child in need who is living with hair loss due to all forms of Alopecia. We change the emphasis from growing hair to growing confidence. Building self-esteem, providing support and raising awareness.
• Team Size: 8 team members including the founder and board members
• Revenue: Last fiscal year reported over $300,000

Growth Challenges

The Children’s Alopecia Project (CAP) grew from 1 support group to 51 support groups in 14 years. They went from one camp called Alopeciapalooza annually to having this camp in different states around the country while adding 5 Cap Kid Camps annually throughout the Pacific Northwest. The founder also started to speak in over 60 schools where kids with Alopecia attend annually. As a one man show with 7 board of directors, just those 3 initiatives alone have kept the sole founder, Jeff Woytovich, extremely busy and financially strapped to maintain the momentum.

Fundraising and Awareness Efforts

CAP has been able to leverage existing relationships to get  traditional TV exposure and corporate sponsorships, including being on the NBC hit show, American Ninja Warrior a total of 7 times in the past 3 years, supporting Kevin Bull, ninja warrior contestant. When asked how they nurtured their relationship with Kevin Bull, Jeff said that he gives all volunteers a role to play and makes sure they experience the the lasting impact on the CAP kids (children with alopecia) that they support. For example, Kevin Bull has also been invited as a motivational speaker at annual CAP events, where he also gets the direct opportunity to spend time with the CAP kids. This massive exposure on American Ninja Warrior snowballed into other media opportunities and invitations from shows like the Dr. Phil Show and the Hallmark Channel.

Jeff was also able to leverage the relationship with one of his long-time corporate donors, NuGo Nutrition, who asked him how else they could help besides just donating. He took a week to think about it and creatively came up with the unique idea of asking for a co-branded car with CAP logos and NuGo Nutrition logos. This car would serve a dual purpose of awareness and also saving the cost of car rentals for Jeff when when traveling to speak at schools. NuGo Nutrition ended up happily providing $28,000 over 4 years for the vehicle.

The Outcome

Over the past 2 years, the NuGo CAP Car allowed Jeff to spread awareness over 140 schools and 35,000+ children. 3500 CAP kids have also been able to attend the annual international camp over the summers, 50 support groups have been developed across the US, and Jeff will be able to consistently speak at 60 schools annually. Funds also go towards the CAP Kid Library Program initiative, through which CAP donates books about alopecia to the school libraries of children in our support group. It also helps run the CAP Kid Connections Program and an interactive website, which brings together parents whose children have been diagnosed with alopecia. Their CAP Outreach Program also sends brochures about CAP and alopecia to dermatologists, schools, and families in an effort to educate the public about alopecia.

Tools recommended by Children’s Alopecia Project

CAP uses Eventzilla to host event registrations and MightyCause (formally Razoo) for families to fundraise. Facebook’s charitable giving generates between $2000 and $3500 monthly with no effort, just supporters starting a fundraising page.

Conclusion

Whether you’re just starting out or have millions of dollars in resources, you just need to focus on your strengths and double down on what works.