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USA Basketball Foundation

Year-End Fundraising Campaign for a National Basketball Nonprofit

USABF grew new donors by 26% and surpassed its year-end goal, raising 36% more than the year before.

The Challenge

The USA Basketball Foundation (USABF) uses the game to improve the physical and mental well-being of youth, women, and people from underserved communities.
Besides camps, clinics, and open gyms, Colorado-based USABF also offers mentoring and event scholarships to young women and individuals from underserved communities who are interested in pursuing sports careers.

With a development team of one, USABF faced a serious capacity hurdle when it came to year-end fundraising. Not only did they need to develop a campaign strategy and execute it. They needed to coordinate with stakeholders at USA Basketball to acquire marketing assets including impact stories, photos, and video content. In short, they needed time and resources they just didn’t have.

a woman holding a microphone in a conference

When USABF engaged CauseMic, they had three questions for us:

  • What can we develop as a year-end theme to carry us into 2024, which also happens to be an Olympic year?
  • How can we gather the right stories while “right-sizing” our campaign, especially with such a lean team?
  • How can we find new donors to support our ongoing efforts?

Our Solutions

CauseMic has been a trusted fundraising partner of USABF since 2019. Operating as an extension of their development team, we helped them build the strategy, messaging, and tactics to launch a successful year-end campaign.

Campaign Strategy & Core Messaging

  • In partnership with USABF, we produced the “Developing Champions” campaign theme, compiling a library of supporting content to use during the campaign and heading into the Paris Olympics.
  • We developed USABF’s year-end strategy brief and communications calendar, including new channels like website banner ad appeals.
  • To find new donors, we partnered with USA Basketball staff to tap into various email lists already accessible within their organization.

Content Production & Project Management

  • We gathered stories, photos, interviews, and other assets from internal stakeholders and beneficiaries, compiling content that communicates their impact.
  • Our team wrote and designed emails and a direct mail piece leveraging USABF’s “Developing Champions” messaging, tailored by audience and by channel.

The Results

  • USABF experienced a 26% increase in new donors in the final two months of the year.
  • Total year-end goal surpassed within the same week as Giving Tuesday (a 36% increase year-over-year).

Year-end fundraising can be completely unpredictable and challenging for many nonprofits, but for the USA Basketball Foundation this was our best year to date, and that had a lot to do with the support, collaboration, and insight received from the CauseMic Crew.

I am extremely thankful for our partnership and look forward to generating more revenue so that the USAB Foundation can continue to positively impact the lives of the communities we serve.

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