The Opportunity

After leaving the White House in 2001, President Bill Clinton founded the William J. Clinton Foundation. In the fall of 2007, recognizing the growing importance of online fundraising and social media, the Foundation sought outside expertise to expand its fundraising capacity. The challenge was to reach a broad cross section of donors to support the Clinton Foundation’s programs to fight HIV/AIDS, eliminate childhood obesity, and address climate change. The Foundation needed to build deeper relationships with their supporters and to tap new audiences committed to its mission.

The Madera Group Solution

Between October 2007 and October 2009, The Madera Group worked with the Clinton Foundation to build fundraising campaigns, message about programmatic initiatives, and grow the email list.  Madera also helped retool the back-end and CRM technology, developed forecasting revenue scenarios, produced videos, generated e-cards, and advised staff while internal capacity was being developed. On a day-to-day level, the Madera team worked closely with Foundation staff to develop strategy and content, design dynamic messages, and manage the online donor database. On a monthly basis, Madera provided analytical reports and spreadsheets on fundraising results and list growth. Madera also advocated for the strategic use of social media including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Throughout the engagement, The Madera Group deployed innovative online fundraising strategies in an integrated way to:

• Recruit new subscribers through Care2.com,
• Integrate media opportunities with real-time messaging,
• Produce interactive, media-rich content that encourages viewers to forward the messages to their friends, and
• Raise public awareness about the Foundation through campaigns combining traditional media, online messaging, and high-visibility events.

Madera helped lay the groundwork for the Foundation to build its own internal capacity to design, execute, and analyze ongoing online fundraising and messaging campaigns.

RESULT: Increased online revenue

For the 2008 year-end campaign, Madera developed interactive multimedia promoting the Foundation’s activities throughout the world. The final appeal in the 2008 year-end fundraising campaign featured President Clinton in an online video, Why I Give. Madera integrated rich video footage and photographs with a message from President Clinton about the rewards of charitable giving. The dynamic content spurred viewers to donate and forward the messages to their social networks, expanding the reach of the Foundation’s mission. The Foundation’s year-end campaigns yielded strong open and click-through rates, leading to positive fundraising results during one of the most significant financial downturns in history.

RESULT: Increased email list growth

A critical component of the email messaging and online fundraising strategy was to grow the size of the email list to ensure a growing constituency of supporters and prospective donors. Our efforts to link online messaging to President Clinton’s ongoing media activities and high-visibility events required fast turnaround and yielded positive results for fundraising and list building. Appearances and events included: the Rachael Ray Show, Larry King Live, trips to Africa and Haiti, and the celebrated North Korea diplomatic mission.

RESULT: Developed creative multimedia content

As an example of creative and engaging content, at a special reception that featured Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas for 600 young professionals, Madera’s multimedia team produced a video about the work of the Foundation’s Millennium Network. The network seeks to inspire young people to become the “How Generation” — How can we make individual changes in our lives to make a large difference in the world? Actors Jessica Alba and Adrian Grenier, hosts of the event, shared their goals on video that was produced at the event. As a follow-up to the reception, an email message shared the video with the network’s supporters. If you are interested in learning more about The Madera Group, please contact Kath Delaney, Chief Executive Officer, at (510) 705-1861 or kdelaney@maderagroup.net.

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.”

Adopt-A-Classroom

Organizational Challenge

Adopt-A-Classroom, like many growing nonprofits, is constantly challenged by its organizational capacity and the increased pressures of raising funds to support the operational side of their work. AAC is in demand, with school budgets being cut, and teachers on average spending $1,200 out of their own pockets each year to supplement classroom resources.

Adopt-A-Classroom is determined to reach new levels of increased classroom support. To do this, AAC is cultivating new investments from a wider philanthropic network, broadening its reach to corporate sponsors, generating partnerships with regional school districts, and rebuilding and enhancing the AAC website’s capacity and usefulness as a public education resource.

Strategic Action

The Madera Group is currently working in close collaboration with the AAC staff to assist with strategic planning, organizational growth, media relations, fundraising and website development.

Outcomes

The Madera Group assisted Adopt-A-Classroom in launching the AAC Katrina Fund to support teachers and students who were displaced from southern states affected by the 2005 hurricanes.

The Madera Group worked with James Rosenberg, the Executive Director of AAC and the Board of Directors to grow the organization as well as relaunch the AAC website in the summer of 2006.

Organizational Challenge

The Global Security Institute (GSI) needed to raise funds and increase political understanding of the growing threat of nuclear weapons around the world. The organization works in a political environment influenced by Congress, the UN, Parliamentarians and Middle Power Countries.

Strategic Action

The Madera Group worked in collaboration with the principals of GSI to educate members of Congress, the UN community, philanthropists, the media and concerned citizens about the growing nuclear crisis in high-level meetings, donor events and media opportunities.

Outcomes

• Managed fundraising campaign, with a total of $1.1 million raised over a 2-year period to support GSI’s mission.
• Participated and organized events in conjunction with the Third Preparatory Committee Meeting for the 2005 Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• Produced the Alan Cranston Peace Award honoring the House Democratic Leader, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.
• Increased participation of philanthropists and donors by involving Pierce Brosnan, Michael Douglas, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima, Christie Brinkley and Jane Goodall in Congressional briefings and special events.
• Redesigned the GSI organizational structure and budget to better serve the four program areas of GSI.
• Generated national and international media coverage on issues relating to nuclear weapons and the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• Managed the production of all marketing collateral.
• Oversaw the redesign and relaunch of www.gsinstitute.org.