Jane Goodall Institute USA: Integrated Fundraising
The Goal
Thanks to the generosity of a group of major donors, the Jane Goodall Institute has been able to launch a matching gift campaign each spring to honor her birthday on April 3. By fully integrating their online and offline fundraising efforts in this campaign since 2021, they set to work to consistently increase response each year leading up to their biggest celebration for Jane’s 90th birthday in 2024.
The Strategy
Traditionally, the Jane Goodall Institute has found that supporters respond strongly to two different kinds of messaging. The first is storytelling around Jane herself, a beloved trailblazer who is still going strong in her visionary work as she turns 90. The second approach centers on the charismatic chimpanzees that Jane made it her life’s mission to save – and the positive impact saving their habitat can have on the planet.
For Jane’s birthday campaign, we leaned into that first approach, with imagery focused on Jane and messaging that highlights the work a donor and Jane can do together. In 2021, we saw an incredible response from a campaign built around a “One Person Can” campaign, emphasizing Jane’s popular quote, “Every individual makes a difference.” Additionally, utilizing match-heavy language across the campaign – from envelope copy to graphics to subject lines – has driven response each year.
With the 2024 campaign culminating in the milestone of Jane’s 90th birthday, we worked with the Jane Goodall Institute to mark the year with added emphasis and new strategies, leveraging a unique logo to honor her 90th, securing a $90K match, and leading with a default donation ask of $90 both in direct mail appeals for qualifying donors and on donation webpages.
An Integrated Approach To Maximize Response
We’ve worked with the Jane Goodall Institute to fully integrate their major campaigns across digital and direct mail since 2020, creating complementary content that told their story across channels with a unified voice and messaging strategy. Since then, we’ve seen that integrated efforts are driving some of the strongest results for their program.
For Jane’s 90th birthday campaign, we set out to build a cohesive, surround-sound experience across channels while leveraging the unique strengths and opportunities of each communication stream.
Direct Mail Strategies: Telling Jane’s Story
In our direct mail packages, the Jane Birthday appeal has been a staple campaign in our program, but over the past four years, we have focused on how to make this effort even stronger and more integrated. We utilized testing and data to inform our strategies and leverage tactics proven to drive response: equivalencies, match-heavy language, and an emphasis on Jane’s birthday wish and her work to protect chimpanzees.
This year, our new direct mail strategies set the tone, aligning seamlessly with the shifts we made in digital – leaning into the excitement of Jane’s 90th birthday, emphasizing the milestone year on the outside envelope and throughout graphics and messaging. Leveraging creative opportunities unique to direct mail as a channel, we told Jane’s story to supporters through a stunning photo spread sharing a timeline of Jane’s work and impact.
Digital Ads: Acquiring New Leads
Over Meta, we’ve traditionally had success driving revenue for this campaign by leveraging match-heavy language in direct-to-donate ads. For Jane’s 90th birthday year, we used lookalike audiences to target new leads, with top-performing creative that focused on driving acquisition: a clear call to action inviting viewers to sign Jane’s birthday card alongside a photo of Jane, a large and click-able button, and a goal meter driving urgency to sign.
This campaign, which we started in February, saw strong results right from the start – totaling more than 4,600 signers and driving an immediate return of 234%.
Email & Innovative Tools: Engagement-Driving Survey Flows
To discover the calls to action that would motivate supporters to click, we’ve tested button copy rigorously over the years leading up to Jane’s 90th birthday, taking learnings from tests that showed higher response rates for invitations to “Make a Birthday Gift” over a more traditional “Donate” button.
This year, before kicking off our fundraising appeals, we took our engagement efforts a step further: To tee up the approaching campaign, we sent out a cultivation message that used our proprietary tool, Sign for Good, to guide supporters through a quiz that tests their knowledge of Jane Goodall’s lifelong journey, with an upsell donation ask at the end. Despite being an email focused on cultivation, this was the second-highest revenue-generating email in the series.
The Results
Setting an ambitious goal to achieve increased growth each year leading up to Jane’s 90th birthday, the Jane Goodall Institute took on a challenge to continue to innovate and build on previous years’ insights, building a fully integrated campaign around the most effective tactics for their unique audience.
With the major landmark of Jane’s 90th birthday recently celebrated, their biggest year yet for the campaign yielded incredible response, capping off her milestone birthday with:
$1.8 million raised*
across channels over four years
*includes major gifts
58% increase
in revenue from 2023 to 2024
Here’s how their revenue grew year-over-year for this campaign since 2021 (this does not include major gifts):
“It’s been exciting to watch this campaign get stronger every year as the MissionWired team has helped us integrate across channels. Their close attention to results helped us tell a cohesive story both online and offline while leveraging the strongest possible strategies for each channel.”
– Sarah C. Festa, Vice President, Development Marketing and Operations, Jane Goodall Institute USA