Creator / originator

Leonard Coyne.

Summary / objectives

To substantially increase The Soi Dog Foundation's number of regular donors and to add to their supporter base.

Background

The Soi Dog Foundation is based in Phuket, Thailand and aims to reduce unnecessary pain and suffering of street dogs and cats in Thailand.

In order to increase their level of predictable funding Soi Dog embarked upon a social media campaign to attract regular donors and additional supporters through a social media strategy primarily by creating a strong organisational presence on Facebook.

Special characteristics

The Soi Dog Foundation really thought about how best to engage Facebook users with their cause. Their focus was on making the content of their pages rich and plentiful: more interesting, involving and inspirational for the users; and being sure that applications were donor/beneficiary centric instead of a generic 'donate today' button. They keep applications relevant and current so users know the impact they are having on the work of the charity and, importantly, ensure that the core objectives of the charity are always kept visible.

Influence / impact

Part of the Soi Dog Foundation's success lies in using Facebook for targeted advertising and they made the choice to target only women. By pinning down the charity's ideal donor profile and marketing directly to people who fitted that profile, then testing the response by age, gender, relationship status, location, education, workplace and any other relevant categories they were able to hone the success of the response. They were clear in their aim to target recurring gifts to ensure that all the work done in recruiting these donors was not lost after a single gift. More than that, they took care to work out how much a meaningful monthly gift would be to secure the charity's activities and packaged it in a way that best appealed to their target audience. The results from these efforts speak for themselves.

Results

Over the initial nine-month period from February 2010 to November 2010 the Soi Dog Foundation saw a 350 per cent increase in recurring donors.

Additional benefits of the campaign included increased engagement with relevant audiences, regional and online volunteers, significantly increased one-off donations, supporter-driven appeals and five legacy gifts.

Merits

This exhibit shows that social media can be utilised to secure regular donations and generate enough income to be regarded as a sustainable source of funding. Even better, the interactive nature of social media means that donor cultivation occurs organically through all users.