Featured Services: Digital Advertising
Fundraising with Meta Ads: Neighborhood Cats
Cat people are their own breed.
To be honest, I’ve never been one of them. But over the last six years, partnering with Neighborhood Cats and watching this small team rehabilitate hundreds of cats on the verge of death to live happily ever after, there’s a soft spot in my heart for felines now.
In 2020, the cofounders of Neighborhood Cats joined my CharityHowTo training on how to fundraise with Meta ads. Immediately after the session, they (Bryan and Suzi) reached out, and we started working together on an advertising pilot.
We spent the first couple of months testing. General appeals vs. urgent asks. Designed graphics, single photos, videos, and carousels. Facebook vs. Instagram placements. Interest-based audiences, demographic audiences, and Lookalikes.
We were on a mission to find the most devoted cat lovers in the Metaverse.
We unlocked a winning formula and installed Fundraise Up to convert even more gifts. Since then, we’ve run monthly campaigns that at least triple their ad spend; sometimes earning up to a 10:1 return! The cherry on top is the steady stream of devoted monthly donors we’ve acquired with these ads, without running any dedicated sustainer campaigns.
Here’s a peek at some of our campaigns:
Results
3:1
Minimum return on ad spend across all campaigns
7,000
Donors acquired, including 460 monthly donors (growing all the time!)
$36k
Estimated annual revenue from recurring donors (growing all the time!)
$395k
Raised directly from Meta Ads
(growing all the time!)
When the Maui wildfires broke out in 2023, we raised $90,000 with a single video ad.
Bryan and Suzi live in Maui. When the devastating wildfires broke out in their backyard, thousands of cats were displaced from their homes, yards, and colonies with no warning. We needed to run a fundraising campaign right away, and it was nearly impossible to capture video content within the burn zone.
Though it’s always the team’s instinct to focus on the cats, not on themselves, I encouraged Bryan to film a short, straight-to-camera video on his phone at home explaining the situation in Maui and asking for help.
This short, down-to-earth video turned into one of the most impactful fundraising campaigns I have ever run.
We spent $7,500 to raise $90,000. That’s a 12x return on ad spend, not including the lifetime value of the 36 monthly donors who are still supporting years later.
These funds allowed Neighborhood Cats to rescue and rehabilitate more than 600 cats who were stranded, injured, and starving. Bryan and Suzi worked their tails off day and night for months to save as many innocent animals as they possibly could.
Whenever I question advertising on social media platforms because of their countless societal problems, I think about this campaign, and I’m reminded of the positive power of finding the right people in real time online.
The purr-fect partnership continues.
This advertising retainer has been successful for six years (and counting) because we’ve struck a balance between creative testing and sticking with our proven formula. Every month, we test a small tweak or two to our text, creative, or targeting. But the structure we landed on in those early months continues to deliver. Not every test is an improvement, but it’s all part of the process.
The other reason this partnership is successful: The Neighborhood Cats team consistently sends irresistible content. Nothing highly produced. Raw, genuine stuff.
Before and after photos. Videos of frightened kittens in their kennels. Vivid, multi-paragraph stories. Unique cat names that make people stop mid-scroll (Bubba, Linus, Beaver, Ludwig, and Fergus, to name a few). Timely updates after each cat receives medical care. Personal stewardship emails. This authentic content that can only come straight from the heart of an organization, and it makes all the difference.
*Special shout-out to the Neighborhood Cats team for sticking with me when I took weeks off for endometriosis surgery in 2021, and again when I took months off for maternity leave in 2024. They are true friends, and I am beyond lucky to work with them.
“Raising funds on social media was not in our plans until we watched Caroline’s webinar and decided we should give it a try. Fast forward, and social media ads are now an integral part of our development plan, thanks to the great results. Caroline is exceptionally knowledgeable about social media tools, very creative, willing to experiment, and responsive. We’re so glad we connected!”
—Bryan Kortis, National Programs Director, Neighborhood Cats