The Long Run September Challenge
P2P Community Fundraising Product
The national charity for prostate cancer, The Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia (PCFA) asked us to help launch a new community fundraising campaign to target the Australian public to help raise awareness and vital funds for their cause.
Since launching the event on July 20, the campaign has become the most significant digital community fundraising event for PCFA, raising over $1.5 million. It has also inspired over 3,500 people to conquer the challenge of running, walking or rolling 72 km in September to support men and their families impacted by prostate cancer.
Beyond the simple metrics of achievement, the event has also transformed PCFA’s engagement with their community and connected with an untapped supporter base to harness the organisation’s mission and has had a positive impact on PCFA’s organisational culture.
Problem
Create and launch brand new peer to peer community fundraising campaign during the pandemic.
Solution
A brand new peer to peer community fundraising campaign, the Long Run that exceeded all KPIs.
Results
The campaign has become the most significant digital fundraising event for PCFA, raising over $1.5 million & transformed the charity’s engagement with the community.
The Challenge
The project was commissioned by the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia at a time where they have struggled to keep up with the rapidly shifting landscape of online fundraising and community engagement. The launch of this new campaign also coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic – an uncertain environment for fundraising in general.
The peer-to-peer community fundraising campaign that PCFA wanted us to help develop had to spark conversations, inspire actions and raise funds to help support research and PCFA nurses change the lives of Aussie men with prostate cancer.
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in Australian men though awareness and community support lagged behind similarly common cancers.
The Solution
Creating a challenge for PCFA
We started with a compelling proposition:
“Protect your dads and lads from the terror and trauma of prostate cancer. Register for our challenge and make sure the ones you love are here for the long run. Together, we can reduce the impact of prostate cancer.”
The Long Run challenge was created to ask PCFA’s supporters and the Australian public to run, walk or roll 72km in September to fight prostate cancer.
This challenge tugs at the heart-strings, inspires belief in true love, and elevates a physical challenge into something with deeper meaning.
It connects the supporter to the cause… Because all we want for our relationships and the people we love is that they’re here for the long run.
Language that connects the challenge with the cause
The challenge, to run 72kms in September, needed language that tapped into deeper emotions about why someone would take part in the event.
All we want for our relationships and the people we love is that they’re there for the long run.
We developed the challenge name, ‘The Long Run’, and the tagline, ‘help love go the distance’ to effectively frame this idea. A suite of messaging and digital assets were also created and used from acquisition to activation and acknowledgement for different social media platforms and supporter journey communications.
An agile social media campaign
We implemented a digital marketing strategy to acquire new supporters and reactivate PCFA’s existing community to register and fundraise for The Long Run.
At the beginning of their 10-week social media campaign, we leveraged pre-registration and brand awareness campaigns on social media to build a remarketing audience for future conversion.
As The Long Run challenge kicked off, we tested different audiences to refine imagery, copy and call to actions throughout the campaign and scaled the best performing ad sets to achieve optimal results.
An engaging journey
The campaign was created on the Funraisin platform which enabled us to build the site with content, resources and functionality all geared towards providing a quick and easy registration experience followed by an engaging and supported fundraiser dashboard.
Automated email journeys enabled us to provide a personalised onboarding experience and reconnect with people who had fallen off in the flow with incomplete registrations. The use of timed-based activation and engagement emails and SMS messages provided fundraisers with opportunities to meet survivors and nurses as well as understand the impact of the funds they raised for the prostate cancer community.
We also strategically used incentives, competitions and a dollar match day throughout the campaign to activate users who had not yet started fundraising and to reinvigorate those whose fundraising had slowed down.
A data-ful learning experience
For every digital interaction, from the pre-registration and registration pages we built to the search and social campaigns we managed, we considered tracking, reporting and attribution. As a result, the campaign was optimised earlier on and provided the best possible results for PCFA.
We presented the data we collected from every digital interaction in an easy-to-understand visual dashboard.
The team at PCFA now has access to a wealth of learnings about their supporters from this brand new community fundraising event that they can take forward into other programs and future community fundraising campaigns.
The Results
PCFA’s The Long Run has been a standout peer to peer community fundraising campaign in 2020. To date, it has raised over eight times its target in its inaugural year, and inspired over 3,500 people to support men and their families impacted by prostate cancer.
The success included:
- Over $1.5M raised
- 67% fundraiser activation rate
- Average donation of $67
- Average funds raised of $555
- $100k+ in direct donations
In addition to exceeding its fundraising milestones and metrics, the new peer to peer community fundraising event has helped revitalise the cultural pride in fundraising at PCFA and reinvigorate the passion for the brand amongst its community of beneficiaries and supporters.
Wrapping up
Creating a peer to peer community fundraising is challenging and launching a brand new one during a pandemic is even more difficult.
Understanding the basics of what drives a strong community fundraising challenge is essential: concept, community, investment and strategy.
Once the basics are met, communicating the right messages to the right audience at the right time will help you create a successful event during uncertain times.
If you need assistance with launching a new event or refreshing an old community fundraising event in an uncertain environment, please get in touch.
“I am awestruck by what you have all achieved. Beyond the fundraising milestones and metrics, you’ve just helped bring our brand and reputation back to life. The words ‘thank you’ seem woefully inadequate, but I offer them with absolute respect.”
Anne SavageHead of Advocacy and Strategy at PCFA
