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Year End Donations Fund Running Water

Case Study

Fundraising for Small-Scale Disasters 

Team Rubicon

A veteran-led humanitarian organization, built to serve global communities before, during, and after disasters.

The Challenge

One of the nation’s foremost disaster relief organizations, Team Rubicon is composed of more than 160,000 volunteers, primarily military veterans and first responders.
 
These “Greyshirts” step up to assist global locales suffering a disaster. They get right to work, mucking out flooded basements, removing debris, repairing structures, and helping with both WASH services (water, sanitation, and hygiene) and EMT-type medical assistance.
 
Fundraising specific to each large scale disaster works well to field such relief services. However, Team Rubicon required unrestricted donations for the smaller, more frequent but still urgent disasters, like inclement weather downing power lines and trees in a community.  

Team Rubicon’s challenge reflected two main questions we needed to address:

  • How do we build a predictable, scalable revenue stream for localized disasters?
  • How do we increase the average monthly amount donated to Team Rubicon to maximize the revenue stream’s impact?

Our Solution

To generate ongoing funding for lesser known yet vital operations: 

  • We utilized audience segmentation, personalized communications, and multi-channel marketing to attract monthly donors to a community branded the Support Squad.
  • We featured Support Squad members on the website and in messaging to demonstrate the critical role that monthly donors play in the organization’s impact; they were also rewarded with exclusive access to Team Rubicon’s leadership to reinforce their importance.
  • We introduced a time-based campaign with an incentive match to quickly add donors.
  • We tied giving levels to tangible outcomes they would achieve (for example, $100 provided protective gear for one volunteer).

The Results

1,576

New monthly donors, up from 40

$72,000

New, predictable monthly income, on top of one-time donations

42%

Increase in average gift amount, from $19 to $27

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