Greater Twin Cities United Way with Padilla Speer Beardsley

The American workplace is shrinking – a troublesome trend for United Ways across the country. Economic, technological and cultural changes are reducing the number of full-time workers at large corporations, replacing them with contractors and virtual employees working outside the reach of traditional workplace charitable giving campaigns.

Overview

Greater Twin Cities United Way – traditionally collecting more than 90 percent of its annual contributions from employer-sponsored drives – recognized it needed to forge connections with potential donors through social media to reach this category of workers. Leadership at GTCUW asked Padilla Speer Beardsley to take this challenge on pro bono. We developed the “Join My Dream Team” social networking contest, which leveraged cutting-edge social engagement technology to create a platform to track and reward participation. Participants joined a cause team and recruited people from their networks. Socially-connected media personalities became team leaders, produced viral videos, and tapped their traditional and social networks in a no-holds-barred battle to build the largest social network.

The six-week campaign was a huge success, growing United Way’s email prospect list by 16 percent – the fastest growth ever experienced by a United Way chapter in the country – and dramatically increasing the organization’s social media presence. The campaign received attention from United Way’s headquarters and chapters considering replicating the program.

objectives

The campaign had three objectives:

  • Increase the number of people outside the traditional workforce who connect with United Way by 10 percent.
  • Build excitement about United Way prior to its annual workplace contribution drive by increasing media mentions of United Way by 50 percent over the previous year.
  • Build awareness of the Join My Dream Team contest, and strengthen United Way’s overall online and social media presence and interaction with potential donors by increasing the organization’s volume of social media participation by 50 percent over the previous year.

Primary and secondary research confirmed that (1) money raised through traditional workplace giving campaigns had steadily declined in recent years, and (2) social networks were “stuck” in one-way mode as nonprofits routinely pushed  messages out to potential donors, but struggled to effectively interact with them and drive additional donations.

Strategy

That needed to change if our campaign was to succeed. To do that, we:

  • Developed a social networking contest that combines the power of traditional and social media
  • Developed a contest concept built upon four teams, each aligned with a United Way key cause – hunger, shelter, wellness and literacy
  • Recruited four social-media savvy broadcast personalities and eight professional athletes to lead teams, produce promotional team videos and promote the contest to their networks
  • Recruited four major corporations to sponsor teams and promote contest via social channels; each pledged $1 for each person who joined a team
  • Designed and developed web site adapting a new platform based on social mobilization technology to track, facilitate and measure social connectedness
  • Raised awareness of United Way outside the traditional workplace by partnering with the Twin Cities Social Media Breakfast group, the metro area’s largest gathering of social media users
  • Developed site-specific content and enabled one-click sharing of content via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and email
  • Held launch program at Twin Cities Social Media Breakfast monthly meeting focused on social media for small businesses, and communicated with organization’s membership via Twitter, Facebook and email
  • Leveraged United Way’s existing social media channels, which were in place but under-utilized.
  • Interacted daily with participants on GTC United Way Twitter and Facebook sites
  • Shared daily updates on contest progress on Twitter and Facebook

Results

The program exceeded all three objectives:

The campaign increased United Way’s email prospect pool by 8,800 new subscribers – a 16 percent increase in list volume (vs. goal of 10 percent). Contest messaging reached 3,700,000 people via social network advertisements, including 3.7 million Facebook ad impressions and 300,000 Google Adwords impressions

62 percent of people who visited the contest page signed up to continue receiving information from United Way, and positive coverage of GTCUW was up 75 percent over previous year (vs. goal of 50 percent).

Increased volume of social media activity by an astonishing 1,000 percent over previous year (vs. goal of 50 percent). Nearly 100 percent of survey respondents were “very interested” or “interested” in the challenge. Of the top 25 most influential social media professionals in the Twin Cities identified in a recent study of Twitter influence, 12 actively engaged in the contest, and a post-campaign survey of GTCUW’s newly engaged potential donors indicated a near-100 percent satisfaction with the contest.