Resource guide to create powerful campaigns

Nonprofits use campaigns to reach a particular audience to take a specific action. Campaigns can help celebrate accomplishments, shift narratives, inspire donors to give, and encourage people to access resources or get involved. Whatever your nonprofit is campaigning for, you must communicate well with your community. This means having an intentional strategy, clear messages, strong visuals, and being inclusive. Here is a list of resources to help guide your next campaign. 

Craft and execute a strong theme or concept

• Align around why you’re investing in this work right now. Before starting a branding or capital campaign journey for your nonprofit, consider these two questions about your organization’s vision.
• Make sure your campaign is guided by a clear strategy. Take a step back and plan it out from a bigger-picture perspective with this checklist to help organizations create and run successful fundraising, recruitment, and awareness campaigns in-house.
• Tell your story, reflect on your impact, and inspire action as you reach significant milestones with these four insights and examples to engage audiences and draw them into your anniversary celebration.
• Discover how unifying and strengthening your next campaign is possible with the process of finding, testing, and executing a clear “big idea”. Learn how to identify, experiment with, and implement a concept for your next campaign.
• Uncover techniques for creating a distinctive theme, visuals, and messaging that add individuality to your campaign. Check out this webinar to find out how to make your year-end fundraising campaign stand out while remaining consistent with your organization’s brand.
• Strike the right balance between channeling the organization’s brand and differentiating from the every day when planning your next capital campaign with these tips to help make it feel appropriately connected and distinctly powerful.

Generate engagement, build mindshare, and foster inclusion

• Crafting powerful campaigns requires a deep understanding of your audience. Knowing who they are and what motivates them is crucial for creating messaging that resonates with them. Take another look at developing campaigns that prioritize specific audiences and motivate them to take action, weaving messages across various communication channels. (adapted from our founder, Sarah Durham’s book The Nonprofit Communications Engine: A Leader’s Guide to Managing Mission-driven.
• Approach Giving Tuesday with an abundance mindset. Consider making room for others in your story by embodying a spirit of generosity, and take a broader view of how you leverage this global movement to amplify other causes.
• Discover the benefits of Community-Centric Fundraising, a model that prioritizes equity and social justice. Learn how to effectively connect with donors by understanding their values, while avoiding an excessive focus on them.
• Embrace discomfort and question “best practices”. Incorporating DEI into capital campaign communications requires introspection, open conversations, and a willingness to change how you tell stories. Read up on a few simple steps to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into a nonprofit capital campaign, and watch this webinar to examine how case statements frequently perpetuate inequality and suggest ways to push ourselves to create them in a new light.

Campaigns are an opportunity to encourage active participation, cultivate a common understanding, and integrate DEI. We hope these resources will help as you begin to plan your next fundraising, outreach, recruitment, advocacy, or anniversary campaign. 

Need help? Big Duck can assist in creating campaigns that inspire audiences to take actions that drive your mission forward. Drop us a line if you want to learn more.