The Antarctic doesn’t belong to any single country.

It belongs to all of us. Every year, world leaders weigh in on decisions that can make or break this fragile, pristine region and its endangered wildlife. The health of the Antarctic—its temperature, glaciers, and biodiversity—ultimately affects all of our safety and wellbeing. And one nonprofit, The Antarctic & Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) has worked for more than 40 years as the region’s greatest advocate.

ASOC is the only environmental NGO observer within the Antarctic Treaty System. They have a seat at the table, behind closed doors, where the most critical decisions are made.

When fundraising guru Barbara O’Reilly of Windmill Hill Consulting told me about this client and invited me to join the team, I was amazed to learn how much they have accomplished over the years with a small team of full-time staff supported by campaigners, researchers, and consultants like Barbara and me.

To grow ASOC’s individual giving program, Barbara had already helped ASOC lay some wonderful groundwork and was seeing growing fundraising results from a branded recurring giving society, consistent email communications, and major gift stewardship. Now, it was time to bring more earth lovers into the funnel with digital advertising.

ASOC had all of the ingredients to make social advertising a success: an email list of existing donors, a solid base of social media followers, and the appetite to try something new. The cherry on top was their treasure trove of professional photography.

First, we set up a few ads and started testing.

We spent the months of September and October creating a Facebook Ads Manager account, setting up proper tracking, and A/B testing different audiences, imagery, ad text, headlines, and calls to action. With only a small ad spend, this first round of ads received more than 1,600 post engagements and an average click-through rate of 16% (!!), which told me we were onto something. The ads were bringing in new donors and newsletter sign-ups, and equipping us with a wealth of data.

Informed by those two months of data, we crafted a winning end-of-year campaign.

Iterating on the most successful ad text, headlines, and imagery from our fall tests, and with the help of a graphic design partner, we brought an emotive, feel-good end-of-year campaign to life. We cast the Antarctic’s most beloved residents (penguins!) as the stars of the show and ran two different creative concepts to keep the campaign fresh. Both campaigns featured gorgeous penguin imagery and festive, heartwarming copy:

We piloted a peer-to-peer fundraising toolkit, too.

In addition to Facebook and Instagram advertising, we developed a simple Facebook Fundraiser toolkit for ASOC to share with their board members in time for #GivingTuesday. Multiple board members hosted holiday fundraisers for ASOC by following the toolkit and shared that the document made the process easy and enjoyable. ASOC will continue to refresh and repurpose this toolkit for key campaigns in the future, up-leveling their existing donors to fundraisers.