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Year End Donations Fund Running Water

Case Study

Fundraising for Forever Families

Selamta Family Project

Bringing hope and healing to orphaned and abandoned children by recreating and empowering families.

The Challenge

In Ethiopia, children come to the Selamta Family Project from government orphanages and unsafe living conditions. If biological reunification or domestic adoption isn’t feasible, Selamta creates “forever families” by pairing Selamta-trained moms with eight to ten orphaned children.
 
Selamta then provides lifetime support for these lasting families in areas of education, health and wellness, and spiritual development.
 
Given that almost 10 percent of Ethiopian children are orphans, the ongoing need for Selamta’s services is undeniable.
 
But while they have an emotionally compelling story to tell, Selamta’s resources were too limited to expand their reach and boost their donor base.
 
Moreover, while their annual Lead the Way 5K peer-to-peer event (P2P) raised much-needed funds, it had the potential to do much more.

The Selamta Family Project needed answers to questions like:

  • How can we bolster our annual fundraising event and strengthen our revenue stream?
  • How do we inspire loyalty and trust among a new audience of donors?
  • How do we expand our brand awareness online?

Our Solution

To help Selamta Family Project overcome their challenges and achieve their objectives:

  • We utilized technology, storytelling, and design to optimize their fundraising and donation pages, promote two matching challenges, and equip fundraisers with P2P best practices.
  • We sent two CauseMic crew members to Ethiopia to volunteer with Selamta as a part of Travelocity’s #TravelforGood media campaign. Capturing Selamta’s incredible story, our trip resulted in reaching a much larger audience after securing an impactful corporate sponsorship from Travelocity.
  • We leveraged increased brand awareness from the Travelocity campaign to rebrand and elevate Selamta’s monthly giving program:
    • Newly entitled Heart and Home⁠, the program’s giving levels now corresponded to the outcomes they would achieve
    • We implemented a time-based campaign to quickly add new monthly donors
    • In conjunction with prioritizing outreach to major donors, we optimized Selamta’s website to prominently feature monthly giving year-round

The Results

70%

Increased participation in Selamta’s peer-to-peer annual fundraiser

61%

Increased amount of funds raised in peer-to-peer event

$76

Increased average monthly gift amount (46% higher than national average)

“Working with the CauseMic team has been a total gift. Their expertise has provided manpower, tools, and resources we just don’t have and can’t afford internally right now.

They are thorough, talented, and an absolute joy to work with. Most of all, they seem to love our organization as much as we do."

Selamta Family Project

Marisa Stam
Executive Director

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