Featured Services: Campaign Planning // Copywriting // Digital Advertising
Campaign Strategy for Growth: BRAC USA
How do we get Americans to learn and care about people battling extreme poverty on the other side of the world?
This is the question I’ve partnered with BRAC USA to answer over the last few years, beginning with their year-end campaign strategy in 2024. For all international NGOs, this is thequestion that never sleeps. In my experience, creative campaigns, multi-channel marketing, and authentic video content are the answer.
After two successful year-end fundraising seasons together, the BRAC team asked me to design a campaign for World Refugee Day 2026. I knew unique content—including video—was the way to get people here in the U.S. to stop, learn, care, and donate.
The campaign plan I put forth was extremely ambitious. It required straight-to-camera videos filmed in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, one of the hardest-to-reach places even without the 2026 fuel shortages.
The plan required publishing daily blog, email, and social media content over 7 days, plus all of the warm-up and cool-down content. And, as my campaigns always are, it was multi-channel: with Meta, Google, and LinkedIn ads, YouTube and organic socials, text messaging, email, blog content, and a landing page hub.
I wouldn’t plan such a complex campaign for just any team. I knew the small-yet-powerful communications squad at BRAC USA could handle all of the content sourcing, creation, and segmentation.
Three goals. One campaign.
In most cases, I choose one focal stage of the donor journey for each campaign. This keeps the goals and content more manageable. But World Refugee Day lended itself to multiple goals for BRAC: awareness, growing their supporter list, and fundraising. So we swung for all three.
Awareness & lead generation
May and early June were devoted to lead generation. The BRAC team ran a Civic Shout petition that brought in more than 12,000 new email contacts (including 3,000 phone numbers), practically overnight.
We also ran Meta Ads with a built-in Instant Form to earn more than 700 new contacts for a $2.40 average cost—well below the M+R Benchmark of $3.64. We also tested LinkedIn Ads but, as has always been the case in my experience, they were a flop. 🤷♀️
The petition and Meta Ad copy were educational, using shocking facts like “the world’s largest refugee camp you’ve never heard of” to motivate sign-ups. All new contacts entered a simple automated email flow with light education about the Rohingya refugee camps, to prime them for our upcoming campaign.
Fundraising
With almost 13,000 new contacts added to BRAC’s email list, the team rolled out the “7 Days With the Rohingya” content series June 12th-18th.
Each day had a different theme. Water. Food. Shelter. Education. Health. Work. Protection. Each day, a written blog + video filmed inside the refugee camps were released.
The content was sensory and specific, bringing the Rohingya camps to life. Like reduced food rations, limited water pumps sending women and children walking or waiting in lines for hours a day, learning centers destroyed by natural disasters, and more.
Leading with value & timing the ask
This seven-day series couched soft fundraising asks but was primarily intended to teach globally-minded Americans about a worthy and little-known issue. Each daily blog and email included a reflection prompt to boost empathy, and the BRAC team vibe coded a Ration Calculator to help the numbers hit home.
Directly following the content series, the day before World Refugee Day, we announced a flash match. We doubled down on fundraising with this two-day match on June 19th and 20th. BRAC switched Meta and Google Performance Max ads over from lead generation and web traffic objectives to fundraising, and sent multiple email and text appeals.
World Refugee Day was, as planned, the big day of giving. But as you can see below, the campaign drove a steady trickle of gifts from all channels throughout the content series and in the days following WRD (the big blue spike):
This campaign brought in many small gifts from many channels, welcoming 48 new donors—including 10 new monthly donors—to BRAC.
There were a few major gifts directly from the campaign, including a $5,000 gift from a text. And BRAC’s major gifts team reported positive feedback, deeming the campaign a valuable touchpoint with BRAC’s most generous givers.
The Results
$34,500
In revenue attributed to the campaign, a 130% YoY increase
13,000
New contacts, including more than 3,000 new phone numbers
48
New donors, including 10 new monthly plans
Not to mention, close to 200,000 views on campaign videos hosted on YouTube with a minimal ad spend, boosted organic social media engagement throughout the campaign, and almost 13,000 new contacts who were warmly welcomed.
This campaign is proof: When you invest the time and care to create show-don’t-tell content that immerses people in the daily challenges of the people you work with, it does pay off.
The quest to help American donors learn about and empathize with the needs of people living in extreme poverty across the world continues. I’m honored to help them (and you!) discover BRAC—born in the Global South and now one of the biggest, most innovative NGOs in the world.
“I've had the pleasure of working with Caroline for more than two years, and she's become a true extension of our team. She has an uncanny ability to quickly understand a brand, synthesize ideas from brainstorming sessions and campaign performance, and turn them into thoughtful, multi-channel campaigns that actually work. Beyond her deep digital expertise, Caroline brings an infectious can-do energy that makes every working session more creative, collaborative, and fun.”
—Meghan McLaughlin, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing, BRAC USA