2014 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence Campaign of the Year: The Children's Center

Campaign of the Year
(Also Gold Award — Multichannel, $10 million and over)
Heal Children, Heal Detroit 2013 Year-End Multichannel Appeal
The Children’s Center
(Submitted by The Children’s Center)

The Numbers
Recipients: 4,157
Response rate: 4.2 percent
Total cost: $9,932
Income generated: $90,287
Average gift: $520
Cost to raise a dollar: $0.11

I can usually predict the ultimate Campaign of the Year winners by the number of gasps and “wows” I hear as the judges mull over particular entries — as well as the amount of furious note-scribbling going on. When I heard one of our judges say, “This gives me chills,” followed by a round of hearty agreement, I suspected we had a winner. And the final judging bore out my suspicions.

The campaign at hand was The Children’s Center’s Heal Children, Heal Detroit multichannel appeal. Powerful imagery of children that balances their beauty and potential with the seriousness of their situation is just the start of the long line of winning elements in this campaign.

Beyond the numbers is the wonderfully consistent messaging that seamlessly carries through the many touchpoints involved.

In this case, multichannel also meant multigenerational, as one of the stated goals of the campaign was specifically to reach the next generation of donors, while at the same time targeting existing and lapsed donors, and acquiring new donors from the organization’s traditional donor profile (45 years and up).

It was a tall order that took some big thinking.

“Reaching the millennial group is easier said than done,” writes R. Trent Thompson, senior director of brand and strategic communications at The Children’s Center, who submitted the campaign. “The majority are not yet established in their careers and have not accumulated enough wealth to be captured by the many lists and databases available to funders. Reaching this particular segment was indeed the greatest challenge of the campaign.”