United Way of Greater Philadelphia & Southern New Jersey Campaign

United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey (UWGPSNJ) created some major momentum when they shook up and downsized the format for their 2016 Campaign, and they wanted to keep the excitement and added appeal going for their 2017 Campaign.

A new aspect to the 2017 campaign was that UWGPSNJ wanted to target individual donors, which is an audience they’d never reached out to before—in previous years, campaigns were done in the workplace or by meetings with major donors. Additionally, United Way Worldwide had made a major shift in their messaging—changing it to convey that United Way was no longer a convener and fundraiser, but instead a cause-focused agency working to end intergenerational poverty.

With this new information in mind, we did some research and came up with some strategy recommendations for the best way for UWGPSNJ to make sure their goals for the campaign were a success. 

(Work done at Untuck with John & Amy Saal)

We decided to create a toolkit and welcome packets specifically designed for each audience so that they could learn about how to start a campaign and create interest around the campaign.

We designed a library of print pieces that included a custom folder, personalized letters, booklets, accordion fold brochures, a fundraiser card for major donors, buttons, stickers, postcards, notepads and custom Sharpies.

We also wanted to be sure that we could tailor the pieces to each of the audience in thoughtful ways.

For example, each of the booklets has a headline that speaks specifically to that audience. Those in the new donor audience received a booklet asking them to “Join the Cause,” versus donor business audience members, whose headline asked them to “Commit to the Cause”—custom copy was used across all print pieces for each audience.

We designed the print pieces to be workhorses and serve multiple functions whenever possible.

For the Employee Campaign Chairs’ (ECCs) accordion fold brochure, we included the same information that the other audiences received—about UWGPSNJ’s mission, recipient stories and goals—but we also added in a section to give them specific tips on running a successful workplace campaign. On the back of the ECCs’ accordion, we included a fundraising graphic, which they could use to set their workplace goals and track progress (with their custom Sharpie, of course) in order to keep everyone engaged and excited about the campaign. Workplace campaign posters were double-sided, calling people to contribute to the campaign while it was happening and thanking then for their support when it was over.

We also worked to create a set of digital assets that could be used by both UWGPSNJ’s communications team as well as ECCs for their workplace campaigns.

Among the assets we created were email templates, social media graphics and Powerpoint templates.