45% YoY Revenue Growth for Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy’s Year-End Campaign

PPMD was founded in 1994 by a group of parents and grandparents including CEO Pat Furlong, the mother of two sons with Duchenne. For almost 30 years, PPMD has dedicated time, money, and resources to researching, advocating, and building a community around Duchenne.

Erin Dresnick, Senior Director of Development, primarily focuses on individual income generation which includes large-scale campaigns and strategy for cultivation, major gifts, major donors, and foundation relationships. 

A Giving Platform That Ticks Every Box

Prior to the fall of 2021, PPMD was utilizing a different fundraising software, but when the organization was told its version of Salesforce was going to be sunsetted, the team realized it was time for a switch.

From the beginning of their search for a new software, Classy felt like the right product and had some capabilities that PPMD had been missing. PPMD heavily focuses on peer-to-peer fundraising but hosts a variety of events throughout the year for which tickets are needed. Classy could support all of PPMD initiatives and host the main donation button on the PPMD website. 

Stronger With Every Beat Year-End Campaign

PPMD has been working with Big Duck, a worker-owned nonprofit communications agency, for over 20 years, working on a range of branding and campaign projects, more recently on its annual year-end campaign. 

The PPMD and Big Duck teams started prepping for the 2022 year-end campaign in May. They met virtually and brainstormed strategies, themes, and audiences, discussed roles and responsibilities, and how to connect everything together with strong communications.

Big Duck created “Stronger With Every Beat” as the universal theme to raise money for PPMD’s cardiac initiative, bringing awareness and funding research to make sure the hearts of individuals with Duchenne are strong enough to support future therapies and a longer life span. 

The plan included sending out a series of roughly eight emails, direct mail, and multiple social media posts. Messages featured supporters sharing their stories of why raising funds in support of the cardiac initiative is important to them and how it will affect their lives. PPMD created videos, held webinars, updated their website, and held fireside chats referred to as “Pat Chats” with Founding President and CEO Pat Furlong.

PPMD utilized Classy’s handy source codes, which are special URL parameters that are best used when there are multiple channels all leading to the same donation page or campaign. The team only needed to create three donation pages that could be used across dozens of touchpoints. This saved them time by not having to create countless donation pages and helped streamline how they track donations across multiple channels.

The fundraising goal for the “Stronger With Every Beat” campaign was $500,000. In the end, PPMD raised almost $900,000 from 609 donors!

Celebrating Almost 30 Years of PPMD

2024 marks the 30th anniversary of PPMD.

With Big Duck’s help, the team will soon start planning the 2023 year-end campaign. They will kick off the project in a few short months, focusing on finding the right theme to resonate with supporters and determining the right channels to reach and engage them. 

PPMD is going to use the Classy for Salesforce integration to further segment audiences to tailor communications and gift levels for its campaigns.