Mad Men of 2021: Our #GivingTuesday Story

One of the coolest parts about being in the Marketing industry today is the unique ability to generate crowd engagement and response. Marketers before me could do the same, but what makes my era unique are the tools by which we achieve crowd engagement and response. The Mad Men of an older marketing era perfected billboard messaging that got into your psyche - a combination of capturing valuable real estate and dialing in compelling messages. The Mad Men of my era are social media natives who are savvy enough to hit a million views in new networks with a message they think is important - i.e a new version (digital) of valuable real estate and compelling messaging (characters and complex visuals).

Enter Giving Tuesday. In 2019 I was put on my first Giving Tuesday project with Sandals Church. The idea: what if we could crowdfund the launch of a new Sandals Church campus? We liked the idea, so we rolled the dice. 2 years later, we've got 2 successful Giving Tuesday campaigns under our belt - 2 new Sandals Church campuses funded and launched in new communities - and we're aiming at Giving Tuesday 2021 with a bigger project and a bigger fundraising goal. The way we pulled this off was a combination of creative messaging and competing for crowd engagement and responses on a highly competitive day. These Giving Tuesday projects have been some of the most complex and challenging projects I've undertaken in my career - but also the most rewarding.

Recently I joined some colleagues on their podcast, The Church Report Podcast to discuss our Giving Tuesday campaign strategies and our Giving Tuesday 2021 strategy. I hope this inspires marketers to take worthwhile risks and push themselves when it comes to creative messaging. There is new opportunity in this new era.

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Starting in 2019, The ROGO Foundation and Sandals Church have successfully crowdfunded the launch of two Sandals Church campuses through Giving Tuesday - Sandals Church Azusa and Sandals Church Anaheim.?

Transcript is sourced and edited from The Church Report Podcast with Scot Camden, Advancement Director of The ROGO Foundation, Ron McCoy, Executive Director of The ROGO Foundation and Mike Teruel, Marketing Supervisor for Sandals Church.?

Scot Camden, Host:?In this conversation, we’re taking a bit of a departure from our typical Church Report Podcast, and we're going to talk about Giving Tuesday. This is a huge deal for us, and I'll say it’s been transformational for The ROGO Foundation over the last two years - 2019 and 2020. This year we have an audacious goal to say the least - Ron is chuckling and Mike, it looked like you were praying as I said that.?

Ron, how did The ROGO Foundation decide that Giving Tuesday was a good project to participate in in 2019. How did we get there?

Ron McCoy, Executive Director of The ROGO Foundation: Well, the first thing I would say is it was definitely a test. I mean, we didn’t have a tremendous amount of experience with Giving Tuesday, but we felt like we had a compelling reason and vision for people to want to support our organization this way. Giving Tuesday is a global day of philanthropic giving all over the world, and we thought that there were people both connected to Sandals Church and connected to The ROGO Foundation that would want to give above and beyond to something like this - a solution for saving dying churches, which is what we’re passionate about.

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Scot Camden, Host: I think another angle to this project that would be beneficial for the people listening to this conversation is to hear a little bit, Mike, about how you started to build the Giving Tuesday plan in 2019??

Mike, Marketing Supervisor, Sandals Church: I think the key part of the creative process for a project like Giving Tuesday was the messaging. We really had to figure out what a compelling message would be for a project like this - crowdfunding the launch of a new church - that could capture people's hearts and minds. I always think about that with media, and that's what I've always been passionate about with marketing. How can we make or send out compelling messages that capture people's attention and commitment? So that was the biggest challenge for this project.

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An ongoing challenge for any nonprofit participating in Giving Tuesday is figuring out how to get their message and campaign in front of their audience(s) on a uniquely competitive day. Ron McCoy takes a look at what it means to get people on board with your campaign.

Scot Camden, Host: One of the focuses for us on this campaign was how to mobilize others to share about the project with their networks. Why was that a priority for you?

Ron McCoy, Executive Director of The ROGO Foundation: Look, the reality is that our reach is only so far. But if we take our reach and we extend it by reaching out to new networks through our committed audience, we magnify the number of eyes and ears that are seeing and hearing our message. And so I think for us it was the recognition and realization that if we were going to hit these big goals - our first year with Giving Tuesday we tried to raise $50,000 to launch Sandals Church Azusa and the folks that we partnered with told us we were crazy for that - we knew that we couldn't do it alone.

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(Ron McCoy continued) A big part of this effort looked like going out and connecting with our network and their networks. As a faith based nonprofit, we wanted people who understood the importance of the gospel and of reaching people with the gospel. And so we were out looking for people that were passionate about that and passionate about reaching the next generation. So for us, we knew the work was worthy. And to Mike's point, the messaging is so critical in this. You've got to be both compelling and also cast the biggest net you can. You don't want to be so finite with your messaging that you miss a bunch of people that might be compelled to give to a broader picture. So you've got to keep all that in mind and in perspective when you think about going out and casting a vision for what it is that you do.

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Giving Tuesday is a yearly project for most nonprofits, and so we thought it would be valuable to debrief our previous Giving Tuesday campaigns (2019 & 2020) to give listeners a “lessons learned” segment.

Scot Camden, Host: So, it’s 2020 and we’re trying to crowdfund the launch of a new Sandals Church in Anaheim, CA. You were coming off of a win in 2019 - a successful Giving Tuesday campaign that exceeded its $50,000 fundraising goal to relaunch a church. For 2020 did you just unpack your 2019 playbook, tweak just a few things and run it again? What did your strategy for the 2020 Giving Tuesday campaign look like?

Mike, Marketing Supervisor, Sandals Church: I think our recipe in 2019 tapped into something interesting. The formula was basically problem, solution and opportunity. I think that formula worked for us surfacing such a unique project like this - crowdfunding a church launch.

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(Mike Teruel continued) Our 2019 comms strategy for Giving Tuesday was lead with “Be a part of something new”. The interesting thing is that we had to be really dialed back with our communications for our 2019 campaign in Azusa because of some planning issues with the church we were looking to replant. And so this time around [2020], we got the chance to be more direct with our messaging and more clear, which was exciting. I think the first time around [2019] was a really cool idea - the idea of crowdfunding a church on Giving Tuesday. We felt like there was something unique there and regardless of the challenges, we felt like there was a cool opportunity to explore.

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And so as we were planning for our 2020 Giving Tuesday campaign, I knew the right elements were there. It felt exciting like, "oh man, we've got a church! This is going to be Sandals Church Anaheim.” There was also excitement, being out here in Southern California, around having a Sandals Church in Orange County. Orange County's a really influential place in Southern California, so that was a cool opportunity. So with all of that going on in the background, we developed a story. We zoomed out in our communications at the beginning of the campaign and gave our audience thematic teasers of the project opportunity. “Let's make this happen” was kind of our mantra for that campaign. We then moved to statements like, “let's make hope happen”, “let’s make community happen”, “let’s make restoration happen” - things like that. So the pitch for the project started zoomed out and more thematic to get our audience to connect with bigger ideas related to our campaign.

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We also had artwork developed that our incredible design team at Sandals Church worked on. That really made it feel like we were giving you a succinct kind of story from start to finish. It also influenced our webpage - an essential ingredient for driving conversions.?

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With two years of established knowledge on operating a Giving Tuesday campaign, Mike talks about why he’s excited for their 2021 Giving Tuesday Campaign and why it’s important to generate excitement around your campaign, both on your team and within your network.

Scot Camden, Host: Mike, you guys have a great plan this year. We captured some great content for the campaign, and I'm confident God's going to show up. What has the craziness for Giving Tuesday 2021 looked like so far?

Mike, Marketing Supervisor, Sandals Church: It’s been really good. I think you and Ron tapped into two interesting insights in our 2020 campaign: hosting live content on social media on Giving Tuesday and bringing in other teams in your organization to play a part in the campaign. Both of those things created a unique collaborative experience that people rallied around.

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This year what was super exciting to me was sitting down for the first meeting and there being a bunch of people that Ron had recruited to be a part of the 2021 campaign. So, I think that's one of the lessons learned: bringing people in from a variety of disciplines, and for us as a church, bringing in other ministries as well. What the planning basically looked like for this year was figuring out how we create a bigger, more compelling story. The stakes are higher this year with a new, higher fundraising goal and a more challenging task - launching a church in Northern California (we’re located in Riverside, CA). So our story had to be next level.?

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This time around the collaboration was next level. Our Sandals Church Digital Media Team and Story Team and The ROGO Foundation got together and worked really hard (for weeks) through a lot of strenuous meetings and painful whiteboard sessions. Ultimately, what we came up with is a really interesting story for a new context in Northern California and why there's a huge opportunity here. So I'm excited. With where Northern California is at - that's where I'm from as well - we think it’s a place that really needs vibrant local churches, and so that's the story we're playing into. You can check out our initial story question and the key idea we're floating out there for this campaign on our social media accounts - what happens to a community when there are no more churches? So we're really trying to make it a bigger story and a bigger project that you can be a part of. I think to your guy's credit, we’re walking by faith, which also means we have crazy goals and look crazy for having them. At this point, I just think we're crazy.?

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I love it, man… A mixed media campaign is how we're thinking through our 2021 campaign. It's probably some of the best work I think our teams have done in my time here at Sandals Church. So I'm excited about that.

To learn more about our Giving Tuesday 2021 Campaign or to give a gift to the project, visit rogofoundation.com/givingtuesday