In August last year Jasvir Kaur, the Director of Fundraising & Communications at Brooke, got in touch with Rally to ask if we could support them with a campaign they were planning.
Brooke’s goal was to mobilise public support behind a campaign to end the cruel donkey hide trade in Kenya. They wanted help to develop a campaign approach which would have a big and lasting impact - and would create a blueprint for the organisation to run similar campaigns in future.
Brooke’s goal was to mobilise public support behind a campaign to end the cruel donkey hide trade in Kenya.
After a couple of calls with Jasvir and Petra (the then CEO), we realised we all shared a common vision for what Brooke could achieve with the campaign: that this was the ideal opportunity to fuse fundraising and campaigning objectives together and test a digital mobilisation model.
A DIGITAL MOBILISATION MODEL
When we say a digital mobilisation model, we mean an approach which engages the public at scale by elevating values over transactional ‘products’. And then using those values to attract people who share them and to inspire them to take actions to make change happen - all in a digital space. Above all, we know that to be successful in digital mobilisation it’s vital any actions we encourage are:
consistent with our shared values
easy to do and have wide appeal
meaningful and have genuine impact
authentic and are firmly rooted in our plan to create change
A TEAM EFFORT
Brooke appointed Rally to help develop the strategy and advise on the execution. As this was a totally new approach for the organisation, we presented the digital mobilisation model to the Brooke’s Trustees to get their buy in and answer their questions.
At Rally we passionately believe in collaboration: empowering teams and introducing them to the right partners where needed who have the expertise to make projects the best they can be.
So we helped Brooke source a brilliant project manager to work alongside the inhouse team - the amazing Hayley Baker. Hayley had all the skills needed to both deliver the campaign and establish critical learnings so Brooke could use this pilot project as a springboard for more public engagement activity in the future.
We also introduced Brooke to our friends at Forward Action - because to be blunt, there isn’t a better agency in the UK to deliver the sign up pages, email journeys and digital advertising campaigns for digital mobilisation activity. We love them.
Rally sat on the project board along with Brooke’s CEO, Director of Programmes and Director of Fundraising & Communications. It was our responsibility to sign off the campaign strategy and all creative elements of the programme. We also sat in on all the tactical planning meetings with Forward Action to make sure the campaign execution was consistent with its strategic goals.
Over 100,000 people have now signed the action.
“We loved working with Rally on this project. Their skill, expertise and collaborative way of working helped us at every stage of the process – from designing the approach and engaging our trustees to connecting us to the very best delivery partner in Forward Action and supporting us throughout the project’s execution to ensure we delivered against our strategic goals.”
TARGETS SMASHED AND FOUNDATIONS BUILT
Brooke had a goal to mobilise 5,000 new action takers in the first 3 months of the campaign - a target that has been completely smashed! Over 100,000 people have now signed the action. Not only that, over 40,000 people have given Brooke permission for future contact, meaning the power of this campaign to deliver positive change will be seen for months and years to come.
The project was a huge success in terms of inspiring the public to get behind Brooke’s donkey hide campaign. But just as importantly Brooke successfully piloted a digital engagement model that it hadn’t used before and so created strong foundations for the future.
The pilot established performance benchmarks both for engaging the public at scale cost efficiently and encouraging ongoing acts of support. It also delivered crucial learnings for how fundraising, communications and programmes teams at Brooke can work effectively together to have a greater collective impact. It has created a springboard for growth and we’re excited this new model is now front and centre in Brooke’s thinking about its future public engagement strategies.