Madera Group

Animal Legal Defense Fund

Posted by Erik Johnson, Creative Director on May 8, 2009

When Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) approached the Madera Group, it had a steady base of supporters and donors built over the past 30 years. ALDF asked Madera to design and implement a fundraising program that would grow and engage its donors across multiple fundraising channels.

After going through a discovery process with their leadership team and analyzing past performance and operations, the Madera Group developed an approach for ALDF that combined web upgrades with a strategy for increasing online and high donor giving.

Over the course of this two-year engagement, Madera has:

•    Redesigned and updated the ALDF website, incorporating key web 2.0 capabilities, blogging, and search engine optimization features.
•    Managed the migration of online messaging materials to a new online messaging vendor.
•    Established a coaching relationship with ALDF’s executive director.
•    Organized online grassroots fundraisers online through web-based social networks.
•    Created a year-end online fundraising campaign.
•    Developed an approach to cultivate high donors.
•    Moved long-term direct mail donors into higher giving brackets.
•    Created new internal process to improved ALDF’s tracking of high interest potential donors.

The Results:

Over 12 months, the Madera-ALDF collaboration led to:
•    A doubling of website page views.
•    A tripling of the email fundraising response rate.
•    A tripling of the size of the active email list.
•    A 24 percent increase in online major gifts.
•    A significant increase in donations from individual donors.
•    Significant growth of their Facebook presence.
•    Well-attended donor events in regional markets.
•    Cultivation of significant number of high donors.

ALDF executive director, Stephen Wells: “Hiring the Madera Group to evaluate our fundraising and communications strategies and then to recommend and implement fundamental changes was one of the best decisions I’ve made. Madera has helped us make procedural and infrastructure changes that have increased our income, our impact and our capacity to protect the lives of animals. As a result of our work with Madera, we have also changed the way we incorporate development and communications goals into our program work—changes that will continue to pay dividends for ALDF for years to come.”