Challenge
Bridge to Home “helps individuals and families in the Santa Clarita Valley move from homelessness to housing.” In two months, I directed and launched social media campaigns to raise funds for the organization through the Virtual Cowboy Chili Cookout. The proceeds of this event went towards Bridge to Home’s mission of providing support services – including an emergency shelter, case management, housing navigation, and referrals for health, mental health, and substance use treatment – to help individuals and families in the Santa Clarita Valley transition out of homelessness.
Approach
At the start of the campaign, I created a social media strategy. I established editorial content, content editorial guideline with a style guide for design artifacts, and maintained Bridge to Home's social media editorial calendar. Furthermore, I integrated data analytics to inform decisions on what communications were effective or were not among the Chili Cookout’s potential donors. A behavioral science approach was critical to my practice in iterating on social media posts with key cognitive biases such as the endowment effect and crowd-out effect. I wrote posts on Facebook, Instagram, and the website to include client stories, inspirational achievements, donor spotlights, compelling facts and figures, service updates, news, events, and promotion with sponsors. I developed a content calendar with call-to-action appropriate for the primary demographics and presented the strategy to the Fundraising team and Board of Directors. Key to the campaign is the partnerships I coordinated to cross-pollinate posts among sponsors and partners to increase reach.
Results
Bridge to Home raised almost $20,000 for the Chili cookout event (excluding sponsorships), with $2,800 (14%) from social media traffic alone. The campaign also increased awareness among new members and redirected new followers to donate to the Capital Campaign to raise $1M for a new shelter. Published content and design on Bridge to Home's Facebook, Instagram, and Website. A sample of the content is listed below.
