Background

France génerosités is a collective created in 1998 by charities and foundations who wanted to appeal to the public for donations. One of the union’s missions is to promote generosity and enhance the appeal of donating to charity in the minds of the public. To do this, the 120 member organisations of the collective decided to join forces and resources to raise awareness among French people, especially younger generations, about giving and mobilising new donors. They saw this as a priority mechanism for the development of their fundraising.

The coronavirus crisis and lockdown in France had an impact on all organisations acting on the ground. The France génerosités campaign, called ‘Vos dons agissent’ (‘Your donations have an impact’) echoed the particular needs that emerged for charities during the crisis, and the essential role played on the front line by the entire non-profit sector at the time.

Summary / objectives

The global crisis changed us all. We questioned our projects, our vision of the world, our work, our relationship to others, our interactions and our exchanges. We now need to connect with each other, to rethink our relationship with daily life, to get back to basics, to aspire together for a future that brings us together!

The world of tomorrow will bring many challenges, whether to the environment, animal protection, medical research, our idea of health, the presence of culture in our daily lives...

We have changed our habits, our vision of the world and our relationships. Why not also rethink our relationship to others as well as our relationship to associations and foundations?

In 2021, The France génerosités campaign wished to convey a forward-looking message. For all those people – and there are more and more of them – wanting to become actors in the world of tomorrow for a more just, egalitarian, and socially minded society. We wanted to tell them that the world of NGOs makes it possible to create a social link and make a difference for all sorts of causes.

The campaign made sense in the context of not yet having emerged from the health crisis, and especially not from its economic and social consequences. However, we wanted to adopt a forward-looking message. 

Our goal was to: 

·      Call on all those who want to act for the future, to do so through their generosity.

·      Transform newly engaged people into donors.

·      Transform new donors into sustainable ones.

The target audience of the #VosDonsAgissent campaign was 25-50 year olds, particularly those mobilised during the crisis, since 53 per cent of donors under 35 made a donation as a response to coronavirus (See here, in French).

Creator / originator

France générosités

Special characteristics

The #VosDonsAgissent campaign was based on the nine social missions of the charities and foundations that are members of our collective: human rights, culture, education, medical and social, the planet, research, health, global solidarity, and solidarity within France.

The campaign was multi-platform and its strength was the way we could mobilise and get the support of our 120 members and partners. The entire non-profit sector communicated on our behalf and generated significant media and social media buzz in early October around a single message: ‘Your donations have an impact.’ (‘Vos dons agissent’). There was a hashtag and even a specific landing page created.

Each organisation, be they a member or a non-member of France générosités, could then respond to this message and take advantage of the media noise to focus the impact of donations on the issues they addressed and convert new audiences to their cause. This campaign was a tribute to the effectiveness of repetition marketing, a classic tool in the mechanisms still used by our sector.

Donor testimonials, engaging adverts, influencer videos, impactful visuals… this campaign drew on a wide variety of content in order to attract the attention of as many people as possible to the positive impact of donations for all causes. Multiple platforms were used, including TV ads, posters, press inserts and, of course, digital. More information on the campaign can be found here: www.vosdonsagissent.fr.

The campaign used seven strategies, from the social networks of member organisations to TV and other adverts, to get the message out to prospective donors.

To attract audiences and to increase their curiosity regarding charitable giving, France générosités created a ‘Back to the Future Gift’ quiz. I’m sure you get the reference!

The quiz tested users’ knowledge of how donations can be made or how they might be in the future and encouraged them to learn more about different ways of giving. It’s a playful and offbeat way to highlight the adaptive and innovative nature of the non-profit sector and how it has and will react to technological, social and behavioural evolutions. Take the quiz, in French, here.

Merits

Another key idea was to keep the momentum going into the high-giving end-of-year period. Indeed, 39 per cent of gifts in France are made in the last term of the year, of which half come through in December (read more, in French, here).

Influence / impact

Beyond this collective communication phase in early October, France générosités runs a platform about donating all year round, www.infodon.fr. The aim is to inform and guide donors throughout their philanthropic journey, with a focus on three questions:

• ‘Why give ?’, which emphasises the power of donations and the actions they fund.
• ‘How to give?’, where we explain all the ways donors can support and engage with a charity or foundation, such as text donations, legacies, etc.  
• ‘Where to give?’ – we connect web users with the organisations that need their money.

Results

The #VosDonsAgissent 2021 campaign was a success with more than 16 million hits across the various platforms, 1.6 million views of the video content, 232,000 sessions and 700,000 page views on the www.infodon.fr site and the campaign landing page www.vosdonsagissent.fr.