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World Bicycle Relief

Actionable Fundraising Strategy for a Global Aid Organization

World Bicycle Relief replaced seven competing marketing plans with one global fundraising strategy and a clear project backlog.

The Challenge

World Bicycle Relief (WBR) provides mobility in rural regions around the world with their game-changing Buffalo Bicycle. Their one-of-a-kind bike is built to carry riders and heavy cargo over long distances and rugged terrain.

WBR’s vision is “to inspire all sectors to address the transportation needs for nearly one billion people who need to get to school, work or healthcare.”

With an entrepreneurial spirit and approach, WBR expanded across multiple countries, introducing a new challenge: too many competing priorities.

Fundraising in seven countries required different messaging, campaign timing, and technologies for each region. The U.S.-based marketing team was fielding requests from every direction, making it difficult to prioritize work or find the capacity to meet it.

The team was working hard. What they needed was a coordinated way to decide what mattered most and an actionable plan to move those projects forward.

Girls on bikes with safety vests and orange helmets

World Bicycle Relief was seeking answers to questions like:

  • How can we transition from seven competing marketing plans to one holistic World Bicycle Relief plan?
  • How do we prioritize work requests when we have limited capacity?
  • How do we identify, evaluate, and maximize the highest-ROI opportunities for World Bicycle Relief?
  • How do we determine appropriate decision makers for various situations?

Our Solutions

We addressed World Bicycle Relief’s challenges in three key steps.

Getting Everyone on the Same Page

  • We conducted inclusive, structured exercises across multiple offsites to identify what was working well and what wasn’t.
  • Our team created an open, productive environment where teams could tackle their biggest challenges and determine appropriate decision makers.

Turning Discussions into Actionable Plans

  • In partnership with WBR’s marketing and philanthropy leaders, we developed a one-page strategic plan, project backlog of actionable tasks, and KPI tracker to measure progress and flag needed course corrections.

Building the Capacity to Execute

  • We established workflows, meeting structures, and evaluation tools to make the most of WBR’s capacity and coordinate communications across markets.

  • Our team provided technical capability and capacity to help internal teams meet their required timelines and tackle fundraising backlog items. 

The Results

Clear Roles and Priorities

  • With more clarity around roles and responsibilities, WBR now experiences greater efficiency in day-to-day management and operations.
  • The WBR team is aligned around clear priorities centered on World Bicycle Relief’s strengths, including their major gift portfolio, mass market campaigns, and corporate partner support.

Coordination Across Markets

  • WBR now leverages best practices and approaches for coordinating across diverse fundraising markets.
  • New support functions now bolster WBR’s limited capacity so they can achieve their most important priorities.

A few excerpts from attendee surveys that completed the following statement—What I found most valuable about the leadership workshop was:

Facilitation from CauseMic and their exceptional, uncanny ability to address difficult topics.

Having CauseMic as ‘neutral’ facilitators who understand the pain points was invaluable.

We got what we needed to get done, because we had CauseMic to move us along in a framework.

It was good to learn new tools and processes from CauseMic.

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