Winners of the 2014 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

Pop-up restaurants: TCC created five impromptu dining experiences in places frequented by millennials. Promotions for the dining experience leveraged the influence of key millennials. Each event featured an informational video about TCC, conversation and food created by local, up-and-coming chefs.
Yellow Coaster Hunt online contest: Several local bars and restaurants agreed to use special yellow coasters during a specific time period, and participants were asked to locate coasters, take photos and post them to their social networks.
Social media: TCC live-tweeted during tours of its campus, then repurposed those tweets throughout its social-media calendar.

No doubt, this campaign is a multichannel masterpiece. But another thing that got the judges’ attention was the organization’s reason for submitting it:

“We entered this competition to share with other nonprofits what has worked for us,” Thompson writes. “To inspire use of their imagination to connect with generational donor audiences in new and relevant ways, beyond the traditional approach. And to say, ‘Think outside the proverbial box. Get creative.’”

Additional Campaign of the Year Winners
SILVER: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia — Building Hope Campaign (Submitted by Schultz & Williams)

The Numbers
Recipients: 5,434
Response rate: 3.42 percent
Total cost: $122,613
Income generated: $487,171
Average gift: $2,619
Cost to raise a dollar: $0.25

Sometimes, it still pays to think inside the box. But it all depends on what’s in there. Our judges were downright giddy to get their hands on this stunning campaign from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to fund its new Buerger Center. The allure of the hefty mailer, in box form, grabbed them right away.

Inside, they found highly personalized elements including personalized blueprints of the building and a handwritten note from CHOP’s executive VP (with his business card and contact info).

This mailing, which went out to low-dollar donors, midlevel donors, major donors and the hospital’s board of trustees during a peak fundraising time (November to December 2013), was a risky one. The hospital had never mailed to both low-dollar donors and major donors at the same time. The package also needed to redirect donor attention from patient stories (the crux of all previous fundraising efforts) to funding a building. There was no choice but to make it genuinely unique.