Featured Services: Campaign Planning // Copywriting // Email Marketing // Digital Advertising
Monthly Donor Acquisition: Community Mindfulness Project
How many staff does it take to run a successful fundraising campaign?
Typically, when an executive director comes to me for a fundraising campaign plan, with no support staff, it makes me nervous. Will they really carry it through, or will the plan collect Google Drive dust when they get pulled to other priorities?
But Ella Saunders Crivello, Executive Director at Community Mindfulness Project (CMP), is a woman who understands the value of a comprehensive, multi-channel campaign and sees. it. through.
We first connected last summer when Ella joined Done By December. I loved collaborating with her on a campaign that, in her words, blew her year-end fundraising goals out of the water. So when she came to me early in the new year with her sights set on a monthly donor acquisition campaign for The Circle—CMP's monthly giving program—I knew we could pull it off.
Scrappy Mode: Activated
We ran this campaign lean, intentional, and without a single wasted resource. The team? Just three people. Ella and me on planning, messaging, and all content development. Our friend Chris Barlow managed a small investment in hyper-local Meta Ads.
The channel mix:
Updated copy on CMP’s monthly giving page to reflect campaign messaging and goals
6 emails to CMP's list, including 2 extra sends segmented to a high-intent group of past donors, program participants, and link-clickers
Personal, straight-to-camera videos and organic social posts from Ella
A small Meta Ads campaign targeting warm and cold audiences across Fairfield County with a mix of videos, carousels, and simple text graphics
Ella brought everything!
Here's what makes a scrappy campaign succeed: the human being at the center. Throughout the planning and implementation process, Ella was humble, open, and game for anything. If I gave her a video script, she’d hit record. If I asked for postpartum photos to help tell her personal story, she’d send.
She brought her own personality to the campaign, too—like sending a happy dance video to every new monthly donor who signed up via her organic LinkedIn posts. That energy is what draws people in.
Based on my outlines, Ella wrote emails that were thoughtful, personal, and packed with value: mindfulness exercises, honest organizational transparency, and a genuine voice that felt like it came from a real person, because it did. Supporters responded.
The Strategy: Honest; Specific; Donor-Centric
The campaign messaging was built around a real organizational tension. CMP was facing a genuine choice: keep showing up with free weekly mindfulness sessions, or expand their deeper, trauma-informed training programs. Rather than masking that dilemma, we invited donors to be the ones to resolve it.
One of my favorite emails from the campaign did exactly this. Sent to a high-intent segment of people who'd already engaged with the campaign, it named the tension directly. Here’s a snippet:
"Our team is sitting with a real tension: Do we keep showing up with free weekly mindfulness sessions—the consistent, open-door presence that people count on? Or do we expand our in-depth trauma-informed training courses—the ones our community partners are asking for?
I know the right answer: We need to do both. But without more steady, ongoing support, we're stuck making tough choices each month between these critical program pathways. If just 40 of you share our vision to expand access, we won't have to choose."
This and other campaign content leveraged key philanthropic psychology principles, including the idea of preventive fundraising. People need to know what can happen if they donate, but are often more motivated to know what will or won’t happen if they don’t.
The final email of the campaign, sent to everyone who'd engaged but hadn't yet joined, was equally direct. Ella named the specific things a $10/month gift would make possible:
A bilingual facilitator their Stamford programs had been waiting on
A yes to a Bridgeport school with no budget
A room still open for the mother navigating recovery who'll need it next week, and the week after
No fake urgency. No generic nonprofit language. A big vision broken into highly specific steps any supporter could easily climb.
Campaign-specific landing page copy
Landing page copy - specific needs and donor-centric call to action
Meta Ads managed by Chris Barlow at Beeline Marketing had a Cost Per Landing Page View as low as $0.11. This is *extremely* affordable for fundraising ads, especially targeting a local geography.
The Results
$2,550
In projected annual revenue from 14 new monthly donors
$19,205
Raised across 45 one-time and new monthly gifts in
a single month
$260,000
In major gift revenue secured during and directly after the campaign, raised in partnership with the Board
This campaign revenue has already enabled CMP to hire two new bilingual facilitators and expand free programming for the public. Not to mention those major gifts. The messaging, the visibility, and the organizational confidence that came from a focused, well-run campaign gave Ella the springboard for personal conversations that secured four major gifts during the same month—with two committing to multi-year gifts
To quote Chris Barlow, this campaign "punched above its weight class."
This case study is proof that fundraising campaigns don't need to be fancy. They need to be donor-centric from start to finish. Ella's emails and videos were personal and moving. The campaign goals were highly specific and clearly communicated in every touchpoint. And we inspired donors with the vision of a more peaceful and healthy community, too.
Now, Ella has a framework for future monthly donor acquisition campaigns and effective messaging she can weave into her year-round comms. *Happy dance*
“Thank you for all your support in this campaign. Thanks for being patient with me, and also thanks for giving me the confidence and the momentum to believe in my fundraising instincts, try new things, and take leaps of faith!”
—A sweet email message from Ella