mechanics and promotion of a charity event that collects up to 5 million rubles in one day
We have been holding the “Day of Caring” campaign for nine years. Every year, on the same day, thousands of people make donations to help children and families in difficult life situations. This year we completely changed the UX of the site, abandoned the calculator and instead told the stories of our wards in comics. I invite you to see what happened.
Hello! I am Alena Grinenko, PR director of the Solnechny Gorod charity foundation. We help our clients find a temporary or foster family, support orphans in hospitals, and provide psychological assistance to adolescents and families. I’ll tell you how we think through the mechanics of a charity event and where we promote it so that people notice us and make donations not out of pity, but with kindness and care.
Mechanics of a charity event
The promotion works on a separate landing page “caring day». On it we talk about the work of helping specialists – social educators, nannies, psychologists and all those who help children and families in difficult life situations. The collected funds are used to pay for their labor.
Until 2024, our message was “Changing work for caring.” We collected donations using a calculator on the website.
Today this format no longer attracts attention, and this year we focused on visualization: drew comics that tell about the fate of three wards of the foundation and the role of specialists in their history. Vivid images not only add emotion, but also clearly show at what point our specialists can come to the rescue.
The same idea runs through the comics as in previous years: every child has a chance for a happy childhood and a prosperous future thanks to the fact that in difficult times there will be someone not only caring, but also professional from Sunny cities”.
There is a form for collecting donations on the promotion page. It is standard, but after translation, a thank you page opens, which shows the ending of the story from the comic and a video with gratitude from the students.
On the landing page we indicate how much an hour of work of an individual specialist costs, how much money we have already collected and how many hours of assistance it has been converted into. Thanks to this data, those who first learned about the campaign understand where the funds are going and how many wards can receive help.
Also, as a thank you to those who will transfer funds, we have come up with:
A call with a recording of the voice of the trust fund. The child expresses gratitude for participation and talks about how the donation will help him and other children. This makes the helping process more personal and warm.
“Dobrocards” is a set of metaphorical cards. This is both a physical and virtual gift. All participants of the promotion will receive a set of Dobrocards by email, and those who want can fill out a special form to receive cards by mail. This way our project will be associated with a pleasant process of help and a moment of waiting for a miracle.
We do not forget the participants after the end of the promotion, on the contrary, we continue to talk about our work through mailings and calls, sharing reports and real stories of our clients. It is important for us to build warm relationships with those who come to us at least once. Most often, participants in one action become either regular supporters of the fund or participate in other actions.
To increase loyalty, we use personalized letters in the mailing list, messages in the messenger and calls from a real employee – you can talk with him about the fund’s activities, reports, ask questions, and seek help if necessary.
We want society to understand that families and children in difficult life situations have a real chance to cope with problems and live a happy life.
That is why the newsletter includes real stories that have already ended successfully: the family was removed from accompaniment, the child returned from the institution to his parents, or a replacement family was found for him.
We practically do not cover situations in the process when a family works with a specialist. This is not always ethical in relation to the ward and affects the building of his relationships with specialists. According to statistics, more than 30% of campaign participants make repeated one-time donations or sign up for regular subscriptions throughout the year.
Promotion of a charity event
There are only eight people in our marketing and PR department – we prepare all the content for the “Day of Caring” ourselves, and we are looking for partners for complex tasks.
Four months before the start we begin work — we analyze what worked in previous years and conduct brainstorming.
It is important to collect all the ideas, select viable ones and package them into technical specifications for the contractor. This document contains the concept of the “Day of Caring”, a description of the blocks on the future website and marketing mechanics. For example, this year the development of a website and publications in the media was handed over to the creative editorial team. This helped remove some of the complex tasks that were taking up our time.
We are launching a promotion – it lasts from April 1 to April 11. The peak falls on April 6: we publish articles in the media and special projects, partners publish our advertising. Previously, we offered to go to the website, leave an email for reminders and transfer a donation on a specific day. Much the same way as the famous “Earth Hour” is held. But in recent years, the information field has been filled with a variety of events all over the world, and people forget to return somewhere and follow links again.
In 2024, the site began operating on April 4 – and from that moment on it was already possible to leave donations. But the main day is April 11.
We try to find new mechanics every yearthat are in trend. That is why, in addition to the familiar emails, card posts and Shorts on the project’s social networks, we have documentaries and integrations with bloggers and ambassadors of the “Sunny City”. I'll tell you more about this.
Videos and posts for bloggers and ambassadors of the foundation
We shoot 15-second videos for Shorts on the accounts of ambassador companies – Renewal, CDEK, Treddy. In short videos we tell, for example, how on “Day of Caring” a courier goes from order to order, a laboratory assistant is busy with research – his usual routine, a barista is preparing coffee for clients. But these people take the time to go to the site and leave a donation. Each story shows responsiveness and concern, as well as the ease of charity. Companies will post these videos on their sites, and “Sunny City” will post them on outdoor surfaces and video screens to reach a larger audience.
In addition, every year we select bloggers who could talk about the campaign – they bring up to 10% of donation conversions. When choosing, we pay attention not so much to the number of subscribers or the topic of the blog, but to the attitude of the influencer towards people in difficult life situations. For example, if a blogger expresses a negative opinion about dysfunctional families, is distrustful of charitable foundations, and collects donations on a personal card, we will not cooperate with him. Not because he is bad or wrong, but because we disagree on a value level. And we are also refused: some have a clear position on placing social advertising, some support a certain category of beneficiaries, some are not ready to post our content for free. And that's okay. It turns out that out of 500 bloggers, about 50 people will write about the action. This is a small base, but the contacts in it are as loyal and involved as possible: usually bloggers don’t just talk about the action, but share their life experiences and show the ordinary nature of our clients.
Press releases, posts and films for the foundation’s social networks
With content in VK and Telegram on the day of the promotion, we work in the moment: we draw up a plan for publications and stories in the morning and stick to it throughout the day. At the same time, we constantly experiment with formats: we publish circles, write posts, share stories. For example, when a famous performer supported the campaign and donated 666 thousand rubles, we immediately wrote a post about it. We also notice support and activity from ordinary people and try not to leave them unattended in order to reveal the work of the foundation from different angles and increase trust among our supporters. This year, for example, on the fund’s telegram channel we are giving away merch to everyone who talks about the promotion. People share screenshots of their publications or stories, showing by example that anyone can provide us with information support.
In 2024, they decided to shoot two short documentaries about the foundation’s employees.
We chose two characters with contrasting personalities:
Nanny. He is a sincere person with an open heart who takes care of babies in hospitals.
Social teacher. This is a charismatic and cheerful young man who supports teenagers, helps them build a life path and saves them from anxious thoughts.
We use these videos for promotion on VK. Each film focuses on how the work of a specialist helps our clients and how much an hour of his help costs. We list the same amounts on the “Day of Caring” landing page.
People can make sure that funds go to specific purposes.
Post and story templates for organic traffic
We plan to attract subscribers and motivate them to publish content about the promotion. On the days of the event, we come up with and draw templates for posts that we publish on our social networks. Everyone can place pre-prepared text with a banner or video on their page.
We also organize a flash mob on a prohibited social network – for this you need to use a template to share a photo that reflects your concern. Even if the subscribers are only friends and acquaintances, most likely at least one of them will take part in the promotion or tell their loved ones about it.
Analytics of a charity event
Since April 6, our analyst has joined the campaign, collecting data from the site: how many people visited and on what screen they left the page, how many donations they sent and in what amount. If an analyst notices errors, we correct them right during the promotion.
Systematic work with analytics helps to remove unviable features that no longer affect conversion, but still take up our time for setup. For example, in Yandex Metrica we saw that in recent years interest in the calculator has dropped, and we replaced the form with it with comics with the stories of our students.
We summarize the results of the campaign on April 12 – we publish information on the website about how many people took part, what percentage of them are men and women, the size of the largest donation and the total amount. If a person learned about the promotion on the last day, he can still make a donation – the form does not close.
The last stage is to generate financial statements for the promotion and publish it on the main website of the fund, as well as send it in the mailing list to each participant. There we specifically state how much money was spent on the projects, how much was spent on paying for the work of helping specialists, and how many children and families received support. We send reporting letters throughout the year.
For ourselves, we are collecting a document based on the results of the action. There we specify which layouts and advertising integrations worked well, and which ones should be replaced with new ones. The majority of the file is occupied by the site’s UX—audience behavior, statistics on screens and buttons. So we realized that the “Give Care” or “Make a Donation” button should be available to the user on any screen of the site, this simplifies the task and increases conversion.
How much does it cost to launch a charity event?
Placement with bloggers and ambassadors is free for us. To talk about the campaign in advertising, every year we fill out applications for participation in grants and win money from different platforms for targeting and context. In 2024, we received 195,000 rubles as part of grant support competitions from the Help Is Near Foundation (Yandex), VK and OK:
80,000 rubles from a monthly grant for NGOs from the Help Is Near Foundation (Yandex);
100,000 rubles from VK;
15,000 rubles from Odnoklassniki.
The only thing we pay for from the fund is seeding in telegram channels, production of the website and articles by the creative editors. The entire production of the promotion in 2024 cost 235,000 rubles.
We plan the amount of donations that will help pay for the work of helping specialists – hospital nannies, curators, psychologists. On average, their hour costs 570 rubles; a year, 80,000,000 rubles are spent on labor costs – this is 48.5% of all funds available in the “Sunny City”.
In recent years, the average donation bill on the main website of “Sunny City” is 623 rubles, and one-time donations are 1,200 rubles. This year, during the campaign, we plan to collect 5,000,000 rubles – this is enough to pay for more than 8,500 hours of work by specialists, which means that more than 10,000 wards – children, teenagers and families in difficult life situations – will definitely be able to receive help.
