Nestled in between Worcester and Boston rests Framingham, a historical town in Massachusetts known as the gathering spot for members of the abolitionist movement.
Today, the light of social justice still shines in Framingham with Advocates, a nonprofit that has been serving Massachusetts for the last 40 years. They partner with people with mental health needs and disabilities, elders, and those with brain injuries to give them the support they need to live happy, healthy, and productive lives.
In an effort to provide additional programs, Advocates recently launched their #Summeroffun Campaign. Jennifer, Advocates’ Director of Marketing and Communication, explains more about the campaign:
What is the #Summeroffun crowdfunding campaign about?
The #Summeroffun campaign is an effort to provide recreational outings for the people we serve. Many of our other programs are funded by the government – with the exception of recreation. But with our mission to help people have better lives, providing recreation for them is a fundamental need.
The people we serve face barriers to recreation in ways that many people don’t understand: things as simple as transportation, cost, and accessibility often prevent outings. So we thought that while so many people are out enjoying their summers, they can have the opportunity to think of others and provide the resources for someone in need to enjoy theirs, too.
What are the goals of the #Summeroffun crowdfunding campaign?
We want to be able to approve any trip submitted by one of our services. We have estimated that this will cost about $8,000, so that is our goal – we can do a lot with a little. With that, we can cover the costs of transportation, food, and activities.
We have already raised $2,110 which has provided:
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A Trip to the Museum of Science in Boston for a group of adults who have brain injuries.
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A group trip to a Red Sox game.
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A beach outing and dinner at a seafood restaurant.
These are all things these groups would have never had access to without that funding, and we hope we can be able to continue to say yes to all the group requests that come our way.
Other program requests include a trip to the zoo, a day trip to Cape Cod, and a drive-in movie. The next trip we hope to fund is a whale watching trip for a group of people with Prader Willi syndrome, a developmental disability.
How do you plan on meeting your crowdfunding goals?
We’ve developed a fundraising strategy for the campaign that entails:
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Branding. We really like that we could so easily incorporate our own branding we can do that on CauseVox and we really love how our campaign looks. CauseVox’s template is a great fit.
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Sending Out A Series Of Emails that share details about the campaign.
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Social Media. We’ve been utilizing mostly Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to promote the campaign. We’re trying to go beyond the typical, what we usually do. We created the hashtag #Summeroffun, which our members can use to share their experiences while they are on the outings and directly show donors who they’re impacting.
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Storytelling. We are focusing on telling the stories of staff members and people who have benefited from the #summeroffun on multiple platforms and showing the impact it makes on an individual.
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Peer-to-Peer Fundraising. We want engage our regular supporters and ask if they’d be willing to start their own fundraising page for the #summeroffun campaign and expand our network.
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Blogging. We want to take full advantage of the feature on CauseVox and keep our donors updated on our progress and the latest trips funded, showing them what good that is being accomplished with their funds.
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Getting A Matching Grant– Right now, we’re speaking with one of our corporate supporters and seeing if they’ll partner with us for a matching gift. We think that’d make such a big difference for our donors to know that their gift is being doubled and has twice the impact.
What has your experience been with crowdfunding, and what drove you to use CauseVox?
We haven’t really used crowdfunding too much before, we were wary about using another tool – we had previously used another site for peer to peer fundraising and got burnt out.
We have always sent out letters asking for donations, but when we had the idea for the Summer of Fun campaign, we wanted a way to reach more supporters–those who don’t typically give by mail, and others who may be new to Advocates..
So we turned to CauseVox upon someone’s high recommendation and we found it was so easy to use and setup!
Every feature we wanted was there and like I stated before, we were able to incorporate our branding using the Site Editor. We really like the Donation Tiers feature, we’re able to communicate precisely to our donors what their money goes towards.
We found CauseVox offers things we can’t do on our website, and it has been an excellent way to experiment with crowdfunding.
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Thanks, Jennifer! We’re excited to partner with Advocates to make this summer more fun. To support Advocates, check out their campaign page at https://summeroffun.causevox.com/
