As the Junior League of St. Petersburg quickly learned after running a stellar peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, amazing fundraising results don’t always mean you have a phenomenal fundraising experience. When a fundraising website isn’t laid out properly or isn’t user-friendly, both your fundraisers and donors suffer.
When it was time to run their 2017 Little Black Dress Initiative (LBDI), the Junior League of St. Petersburg’s 2017 LBDI Chair Rachael Younger knew she needed to find an online fundraising platform that helped her organization raise money and rally supporters in an easy, effective, user-friendly way.
Thankfully, committee organizers from St. Pete spoke with our good friends at the Junior League of Atlanta and they decided to power their own campaign using CauseVox. Check out this quick campaign snapshot.
2017 Little Black Dress Initiative Campaign Snapshot
Location: St. Petersburg, Florida
Amount Raised: $21,831.65
Committee Members: 2
# of Personal Fundraisers: 65 active participants
We were pleased to see the Junior League of St. Petersburg meet their fundraising goals and appease both their personal fundraisers and donors at the same time. Here are some of the reasons the Junior League of St. Petersburg’s past Little Black Dress Initiative was the best one yet.
Merging Function and Form
Just like hundreds of Junior Leagues across the country, the Junior League of St. Petersburg fundraises one week per year to raise awareness and money to address the impacts of generational poverty. According to Rachael, “Advocates wear one black dress (or outfit) for five consecutive days to illustrate the effects poverty can have on a woman’s access to resources, her confidence, and professional opportunities.”
The dress serves as a way to invite conversation and hopefully, donations to support the cause. “Donations to this event will be used for projects and services which directly address the heart of the League’s community outreach focus: school success – literacy and health/nutrition – all of which is affected by childhood poverty,” Rachael explained.
But when you have a fundraising website that isn’t user-friendly, it’s hard to capture those much-needed donations. After a look at CauseVox’s website and key features like an aesthetically-pleasing interface and smart layout, Rachael determined it would be “the best option for our campaign.”
Elements Of A Successful Campaign
As we all know, it takes a lot to run a successful peer-to-peer fundraising campaign. Naturally, there’s a bunch of prep work involved, including creating a calendar, work plans, and a marketing strategy. When you incorporate personal fundraisers into the picture, it broadens the scope and potential reach of the campaign, but someone still needs to manage it all.
Cue Rachael and her co-chairperson. Together they rallied their troops and met their goals. But we wondered, what were some of the factors that helped this LBDI campaign succeed? Rachael seemed to have a good grasp on that answer.
- Member participation: An impressive 65 active personal fundraisers participated in this campaign. This means that those 65 people were able to connect their friends and family with the story of their commitment to this cause. When you’re working with this number of advocates, it’s easy to have your message amplified.
- Ease of Use: CauseVox was designed to be user-friendly. Thankfully, Rachael found this to be the case. Donors found the website easy to navigate, while personal fundraisers were able to set up their websites and fundraise in a matter of minutes.
- Organized Plan: When you plan ahead, you’re more likely to have a seamless fundraising experience—and that’s exactly what the Junior League of St. Petersburg experienced. By creating and following an “extremely organized social media plan,” they were able to reach prospective donors and inspire them to become supporters.
CauseVox customer support also played an important role in the campaign’s success. “CauseVox’s customer service was impeccable. Their team members were readily available via email or phone to answer any questions we had or address any issues. The campaign ran as smooth as I could have hoped” Rachael told us.
Looking Forward
After their week-long fundraising campaign, the Junior League of St. Petersburg exceeded their fundraising goal and ended feeling like they accomplished something big.
Per Rachael, “The LBDI campaign is a great way to not only raise funds to support our community efforts, but also a great tool to connect with our community and raise awareness about issues in our community and what our league is doing to eradicate these issues.”
With so much success in 2017, it’s only natural that Rachael is optimistic for next year. “We will move forward with using CauseVox next year, and we look forward to exceeding our goals in 2018.”
That’s music to our ears.
Congratulations to the Junior League of St. Petersburg. By following best practices, you’ve proved the power of community-driven fundraising.
