Joni and Friends Raised 121% More YoY on Giving Tuesday with Studio
Mission
To glorify God as we communicate the Gospel and mobilize the global church to evangelize, disciple, and serve people living with disability
Challenge
Create a special opportunity for giving during an important year-end fundraising period
Solution
Studio’s design flexibility enabled Joni and Friends to tell its story and raise 121% more year over year on Giving Tuesday
“With Studio, we could quickly create our Giving Tuesday campaign and customize it exactly how we wanted without needing a developer to step in. That allowed our team to be more agile in our campaign creation and save us time waiting for input from other teams.”
– Amy Hurtado, Vice President, Marketing & Engagement
Giving Tuesday Results with Studio:
121% increase
in dollars raised year over year
37% increase
in the number of gifts year over year
Using Studio for the first time on Giving Tuesday
Every year from November 1st through December 31st, Joni and Friends runs the Perfect Gift campaign to spread Christmas Hope. Through this campaign, donors can contribute $250 to provide a pediatric wheelchair and Bible in the recipient’s language. This year, Giving Tuesday, an important philanthropic day fell in the middle of the Perfect Gift campaign.
The team had just started testing Studio, GoFundMe Pro’s donation website builder, and saw early success. They decided to use it for the Giving Tuesday campaign, which, like the Perfect Gift campaign, still focused on the pediatric wheelchair, but introduced a unique individual’s story to set it apart. Thanks to a generous match gift featured on their Studio campaign, the amount raised on the day would be doubled.
Optimizing the donation flow from start to finish
On Giving Tuesday, Joni and Friends added a pop-up to its homepage, which led directly to the Studio campaign. To optimize the campaign, the Joni and Friends team used source codes to better understand the performance on different channels during Giving Tuesday. Although the campaign was separate from the overall Perfect Gift campaign, source codes made it very clear which channel a donor came from.
When a supporter decided to make a gift, the Studio checkout process was only a few short steps and kept them on the same page. In addition, the Joni and Friends team mastered the donation follow-up strategy, which includes personal touches and automated nudges, that were easy-to-add custom elements in Studio.
- They placed a post-donation call-to-action on the Thank You page to encourage donors to upgrade their gifts to recurring donations.
- On this same Thank You page, there is an advent devotional available for download.
- The Joni and Friends development team takes a personal approach by calling each new donor on the phone and writing handwritten notes.
This year, with the high-performing Studio campaign, they raised 121% more than the previous year—and grew the number of gifts by 37%! This proves the incredible impact of powerful storytelling backed by technology that empowers donors to make a contribution.
We found that the match was a really powerful motivator, but the ease of giving was what really set this campaign apart and led to the amazing success that we saw on Giving Tuesday.
Creating a consistent giving experience with Studio
Due in large part to the success of the Giving Tuesday campaign, Joni and Friends is going all-in with Studio. The team is planning to convert many standard donation pages into more visually appealing Studio campaigns. Because of the design flexibility, the campaigns can be created in-house, without the need for a designer to step in. By duplicating a Studio campaign, it’s even faster and easier for the Joni and Friends team to create and customize a campaign and keep a consistent image and story across all channels.
To be able to tell a story on the same page that a donor can make a donation is game-changing. We’re excited about all of the possibilities with Studio.
