JobTrain Case Study

JobTrain

A Job Training Organization Increases Its Revenue

Ongoing fundraising and communications strategies are helping this organization elevate its brand, leverage AI, and raise more money.

Organizational & Brand Strategy
Fundraising Messaging
Capital Campaign Messaging Strategy
Annual Fund & Spring Appeal Campaigns
Fundraising Event Promotion
Annual Impact Reports
Internal & External Newsletters
Videos
Custom AI Solutions
AI Technology Adoption
Strategic Consulting

Fundraising Results

61% increase

in total amount raised v. prior year

2024 YEAR-END CAMPAIGN

400% return on investment

and reclaimed 3 long-lapsed donors

2025 SPRING APPEAL

Fundraising Results

61% increase

in total amount raised v. prior year

2024 YEAR-END CAMPAIGN

400% return on investment

and reclaimed 3 long-lapsed donors

2025 SPRING APPEAL

Helping a Homeless Organization Reach New Heights

LifeMoves

Helping a Homelessness Organization Reach New Heights

We helped one of the largest providers of services for the homeless in the country reach unprecedented levels of growth to meet increased needs in Silicon Valley.

Organizational & Brand Strategy
Brand Positioning, Design & Management
Fundraising Campaigns
Fundraising Event Promotion
Corporate Sponsorship Materials
Strategic Messaging & Presentations
CEO Letters & Communications
Annual Reports & Newsletters
Thought Leadership & Client Success Videos
Website Pages & Enhancements
Google Ad Grant Management

A growing homelessness crisis demands effective approaches and funding. LifeMoves tapped into our strategic branding, marketing, and fundraising services to propel the organization to take on this challenge. With a new CEO at the helm, we helped position LifeMoves for success. Over the four years we have worked with this nonprofit, its annual revenue grew from $38 million to $118 million due largely to new government contracts.

Select Results

19% increase

in total amount raised v. prior year

2020 YEAR-END CAMPAIGN

42% increase

in total amount raised v. prior year

2021 YEAR-END CAMPAIGN

43% increase

in average gift amount for lower-level donors

2021 YEAR-END CAMPAIGN

65% increase

in average gift amount for higher-level donors

2021 YEAR-END CAMPAIGN

100% increase

in number of donations by lapsed donors v. prior year

2020 SPRING APPEAL

100% increase

in amount donated by lapsed donors v. prior year

2020 SPRING APPEAL

43% increase

in monthly givers over 2 years

2021 – 2023

475% increase

increase in the amount raised v. prior year

2021 RIDE TO END HOMELESSNESS

73% increase

increase in the amount raised v. prior year

2022 RIDE TO END HOMELESSNESS

The Challenge

LifeMoves first brought on Red Rooster Group to improve its fundraising in March 2020, just as COVID started. The organization needed to keep its 7,000 clients safe and re-trench for the new realities of lockdowns. Since then, the closing of businesses exacerbated the already unprecedented homeless situation due to rising home prices in Silicon Valley. LifeMoves needed to raise money for the short term and develop its brand and fundraising outreach to address growing needs.

Transforming an Organization

Over four years, Red Rooster Group has worked to enhance the organization’s strategic perspective, brand story, fundraising outreach, and marketing communications.

Our brand repositioning work helped reshape perceptions of the organization from a provider of services locally, to a leader that has been recognized by the state with solutions that can be adopted elsewhere. LifeMoves built one of the first modular, interim housing facilities in Northern California (whose opening was attended by the Governor) and won contracts for six more sites, including one of the largest in Northern California.

We have managed fundraising campaigns that have brought back lapsed donors and increased the amounts raised, including their largest campaign ever, and promoted fundraising events that attracted key audiences such as high-level donors and elected officials.

Our strategic advice, research, and communications have elevated the organization as it introduced its strategic plan, attracted new corporate and community partners, and set a strong foundation for success.

By introducing new fundraising ideas and best practices, we have increased the organization’s level of sophistication so that it can continue to improve results.

How We Helped

Strategy

Organizational, Fundraising, Marketing, Branding, & Thought Leadership

Leveraged the CEO as an authoritative voice on the issue to position the organization as a national leader on homelessness.
Developed strategy presentations to convey the needs of homelessness in Silicon Valley and attract funding from corporations.
Supported the organization’s strategic plan by creating a presentation, summary document, webpage, and promoting a series of online events to introduce the strategic plan to high-end donors, government officials, and community partners.

Individual Fundraising

Produce two campaigns per year (spring and year-end), including developing concepts, narrative, and theme, writing and designing direct mail packages and email series, producing videos, creating landing pages and donation pages, social media posts, and handling campaign management. Introduced personalization, custom gift arrays, and efficient mailing techniques.

Major Donor Fundraising

Promote two Principal Giving events annually including all digital strategy, outreach, presentation, journals, and sponsorship packages. Created customized materials and managed customized emailing for 7 Principal Gift Officers.

Fundraising Events

Promote the annual Ride to End Homelessness peer-to-peer fundraising event. Created brand strategy, designed new event logo, developed segmented email strategy and managed all emails, and design other promotion (advertising, banners, etc.). The ride has grown from $40K before us, to $400k in revenue.

Corporate Giving

Support the corporate sponsorship department with a range of strategic and marketing initiatives to shore up corporate support including researching and developing a presentation on homelessness in Silicon Valley and materials to promote sponsorship opportunities for the new interim housing sites and other opportunities.
Created materials to solicit sponsorship naming rights on LifeMoves facilities.

Brand Management

Evolved the organization’s brand to be more authentic — from merely showing happy outcomes to conveying the vulnerabilities of people experiencing homelessness and the complexities of their circumstances.
Balanced their story of interim housing sites with their services, crafting the narrative around their customized, and comprehensive approaches to helping people achieve stability.
Stewarded their brand and updated their colors and overall look to be more dynamic.

Organizational Collateral

Crafted their organizational story and corporate collateral materials.
Designed banners and pop-up displays for community events.
Produce their annual Impact Report.
Write and design their quarterly print and email newsletters.
Write and design the monthly Keygivers email newsletter for monthly supporters.

Website

Set up landing pages in WordPress and donation pages in Classy to support fundraising campaigns.
Create new website sections and pages and update website content as needed.

Videos

Produce videos to tell the organization’s story and elevate its profile. Includes scripting, on-site shooting, and all post-production work.
- Thought Leadership Videos (click and scroll down)
- Client stories
- Services videos
- New Sites
- Other Videos

Communications Planning

Conducted an analysis of all emails sent by the organization over a 2-year period by audience and results, open rate, click rate, etc.
Handle dozens of emails for the organization over the course of the year (developing schedules. writing, designing, testing and approvals, coordination of URLs and lists, documenting, and reporting).

Fundraising & Marketing Continuity

Maintained all outreach, fundraising, website updates, etc. through 2 Executive Directors, a complete turnover of the Marketing Team, and new Chief Philanthropy Officer, and several new VPs of Development, providing stability and continuity throughout the organization’s growth.

What the Client Says

“I had the opportunity to work with Howard and the Red Rooster Group team during organizational change and growth initiatives at LifeMoves, one of the largest providers of homeless services in Silicon Valley. Howard’s talent for blending analytical thinking and creative problem-solving became critical for our transformation. He was a true partner and collaborator in our success.

He and his team are strong in revitalizing brands, launching groundbreaking initiatives, and tackling complex social issues. What truly sets Howard apart is his ability to look beyond immediate challenges. He envisions comprehensive solutions that drive long-term success, blending his expertise in behavioral psychology and fundraising with a genuine passion for creating positive change.

When you work with Howard, you’re not just gaining expertise; you’re partnering with a thought leader who expands your horizons and helps you achieve audacious goals.”

Marie Amoruso Jackson, Chief Marketing Officer

“I’m finally wrapping up my day and wanted to tell you all how great you were today. You totally hit it out of the park (just like my Dodgers last night!). We heard nothing but totally positive comments afterward. Your suggestions on how to engage the team right from the start were spot on. Many, many thanks.”

Katherine Finnigan, Development

“AMAZING….thank you Amit & Erin for making all this happen so quickly after our conversations…

Best“

Marie Jackson, Chief Marketing Officer

“This is such an understatement of what you did, Amit, what with the testing for ALL of these plus sorting out exclusions. Thank you for your amazing work!”

Erin Hayes, Database Specialist

“This is what you’ll call a well-oiled and amazing machine!!! Thank you!”

Camille Gonzalez Kennedy | Vice President of Philanthropy

[re: our customized sending of emails for spring events]

“Brian, not sure who is doing your videos and online appeals, but I want to give a heartfelt congratulations to the folks responsible for this one. The subject heading is what I always tell nonprofits who want coverage or for people to actually read what you’ve done. As a professional in the business for more than 40 years, I don’t give kudos often. This one works.”

Rita

“You all rocked the webinar this morning… huge thanks to all that you did as we went through all the learnings and even our ‘interesting’ glitches on the back end. Your calm and expertise really did shine…

We so appreciate you…”

Marie Jackson, Chief Marketing Officer

Helping an Environmental Organization Take Flight

American Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel

Helping an Environmental Organization Take Flight

We helped Israel’s largest environmental organization build its fundraising capacity and reach donors in the U.S. with a new brand, website, and digital campaigns.

Services

Brand & Website Analysis
Brand Positioning & Messaging
Membership Benefits
Website Copywriting
Website Design
Website Development
Digital Donor Acquisition Campaigns
Advocacy Petitions
Webinars
Fundraising Emails
Fundraising Direct Mail
Promoting Travel to Israel

3.3 Million

IMPRESSIONS

1.6 Million

PEOPLE REACHED

8,500

NEW PROSPECT EMAILS COLLECTED

“Howard’s thought partnership helped Nature Israel take a great leap forward. Our new website has brought us new major donors, including several major corporate entities. I highly recommend Red Rooster Group.”

– Rachel Canar, Executive Director

The Challenge

Established at the country’s founding, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel is the oldest and largest environmental organization in Israel. But it is not well known in the United States, making fundraising a challenge. Red Rooster Group was brought in the elevate its American fundraising arm, known as Nature Israel, and build a base of supporters in the United States.

What We Accomplished

Developed the brand positioning and created a donor presentation.

Built a new donor-focused website to improve awareness in the United States.

Established the Nature Israel Travel Brand, webpages, and brochures, and generated leads of people interested in their trips.

Significantly increased the awareness of Nature Israel reaching 1.6 million people with 3.3 million impressions.

Built a prospect database of 8,500 emails of people who have taken an action for the organization. (such as signing a petition).

Defining the Brand

Our first step was to leverage unique insights to establish a clear brand value. The organization had presented itself as protecting wildlife, advocating for nature, educating the public, and providing recreational opportunities in nature.

But to get the brand noticed in the United States, something more was needed.

Leveraging Israel’s reputation as a start-up nation for innovation —with its technology improving lives globally — we positioned Nature Israel as the green beacon for the world. As one of the most dense, diverse, and developed countries on Earth, Israel’s environmental solutions could have far-ranging impact for other countries.

Telling the Story

In order to engage donors in the organization’s work and impact, we created a presentation that describes its success in conservation, education, activism, and eco-tourism.

Webinar to Introduce this Nonprofit’s Brand

We created a webinar as a way to introduce Nature Israel to American audiences and generate leads, promoting it on Facebook with various audience targeting strategies. The webinar highlighted environmental technology that came out of Israel, featured the membership benefits chart we developed to engage people in membership, and invited webinar participants to visit the organization’s sites in Israel.

Creating a Fundraising Website

We created a new website for this nonprofit to appeal to donors in the United States. This website serves as their prime vehicle for fundraising. We started from scratch, reimagining the user experience, writing all the copy, creating the design, and developing the interactive features.

The website features the organization’s current initiatives, a timeline showcasing 70 years of impact, multiple pages describing reasons to support Nature Israel, customized news feeds and other features.

NATURE ISRAEL WEBSITE

Digital Campaign to Attract Prospective Donors

To engage audiences, the website features webinars, a travel section, petitions, and other features to generate leads and cultivate prospective donors. The lead generation features are integrated into MailChimp and Salesforce to create a robust database for the organization.

Using Petitions to Generate Leads

Our fundraising goals include generating new leads for Nature Israel and cultivating them as potential donors. To accomplish this, we implemented a 2-stage process. We attracted new leads by promoting petitions, a webinar, and blog posts on Facebook.

The campaigns led people to a Facebook form or landing page where we collected emails. We used five different audience targeting strategies, and A/B split testing on all ads. This has enabled us to collect more than 7,000 leads in a short period of time. The next phase involves cultivating these prospects into donors through a series of email campaigns.

Promoting Eco-Tourism

To cultivate larger donors, Nature Israel is running trips to experience “the wild side of Israel” — its amazing wildlife and nature sites. We created a Nature Israel Travel section on the website with extensive pages about each trip, brochures, email campaigns, and social posts.

TRAVEL WEB PAGE

DOWNLOAD BROCHURE

Nature Israel Travel March Trip Brochure

Travel Emails

Building a Fundraising Infrastructure

As Nature Israel’s strategic fundraising partner, we are setting a foundation for their growth by:

Creating an Operations Manual that documents all fundraising and marketing processes and is continually updated as needed.
Providing critical technological support in setting up and maintaining their back-end systems, including the WordPress website, MailChimp, Classy, and integrations between systems.
Cleaning up lists in MailChimp by consolidating tags.
Creating an Editorial Style Guide to ensure consistent communications throughout the organization.
Developing a master Marketing Calendar including emails, fundraising, event promotion, and other activities.
Coordinating marketing and fundraising activities with the Israel team.
Creating direct mail packages, handling printing and mailing management.
Introducing personalization and custom gift arrays in their direct mail.
Producing special fundraising projects, including Tribute Books.
Promoting organizational events in the United States.

Achieving Results

Foundation

Nature Israel now has a clearly defined brand, an engaging website, and a solid foundation to support its fundraising.

Prospects

Our digital outreach campaigns have generated more than 8,000 emails of people who have taken action on behalf of the organization.

Travel

Our travel promotion has resulted a list of several hundred people interested in their trips as well as groups visiting Israel to see the organization’s work first-hand.

4.1 Million
Impressions

43,654
Link Clicks

8,439
Emails Collected

“Howard and his team managed a rebrand and new website launch for Nature Israel. They really helped bring our organization into the 21st century. The website that they created is just beautiful and we are constantly getting this feedback. The SEO optimization they implemented is truly awesome, bringing us many new people from organic searches. Most importantly, this has brought it new major donors, including several major corporate entities looking for water offsets and environmental organizations in the region. Howard’s thought partnership helped Nature Israel take a great leap forward and he remains a true friend of our organization. He remains responsive to this day. I highly recommend him.”

– Rachel Canar, Executive Director

Unified Campaign Promotes Suicide Prevention Walks

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Unified Identity Promotes Suicide Prevention Walks

The pre-eminent events to raise money to prevent suicide needed a comprehensive brand identity to connect their three different types of events while retaining independent recognition for each.

Community Walks

Overnight Walks

We created a flexible system for print and digital ads and flyers that event hosts could customize for their local events across the country.

Campus Walks

The adaptable system was designed to increase awareness of the events in order to drive engagement and fundraising.

People around the country are using these tools to host local events in their communities that are coordinated with the national events for a consistent brand experience.

Integrated Campaign Promotes Early Childhood Mental Health

How do you help low-income parents pay attention to their young child’s mental health?

You need a message that doesn’t stigmatize, patronize, or scare them off.

A positive message helps parents see the good inside their child despite the frustrations that they might be feeling at the moment.

We also created brochures to reach doctors and other professionals who could refer their patients to the clinic.

A coordinated media approach included billboards and transit advertising to create awareness.

We used a combination of print and digital ads in local newspapers and websites to reach parents.

AdWords and social media campaigns with the YourChildsSmile.org URL drove traffic to a mobile-friendly landing page.

The landing page was integrated as a part of The Jewish Board’s website so that visitors could learn about their full range of services.

Participation in local events such as BayFest was an opportunity to engage people directly.

The 2-month campaign fulfilled the client’s goal of reaching a large number of people in a short period of time.

735,954

total people reached

Doubled

the average intake calls to the counseling center in the first 2 weeks of the campaign

Giving Voice to the Secular Community

Reason Rally

Giving Voice to the Secular Community

How do you get society to take a marginalized demographic seriously? Frame the message in a way that appeals to a wide audience. That’s what Red Rooster Group did to promote Reason Rally 2016 at the Lincoln Memorial, the largest secular humanist and atheist gathering in the United States, produced by a coalition of 22 organizations.

Services

Brand Positioning & Strategy
Messaging
News Releases
Articles
Advertising
Collateral Design
Website Design
Coordination of Coalition Members
Public Relations Support

THE CHALLENGE: Shifting the Tone

The first Reason Rally in 2012 had been an occasion for people to celebrate their non-theism. It had generated mostly negative headlines in mainstream press about “godless” people. The goals for Reason Rally 2016 were to galvanize more people — not just atheists — to the cause of separation of church and state, and to remove the stigma associated with not believing in god.

THE ISSUE: The Unaffiliated Are on the Rise

Non-believers are on the rise, and facts — not faith — are becoming more important to voters. A 2015 Gallup Poll found that among those between the ages of 18 and 24, 31% claim no religious affiliation. In the 45-49 age group, 16% are unaffiliated. A Pew study found that almost half of American adults do not care if a presidential candidate is an atheist. We developed the PR campaign to bring these facts to the attention of the media and elected officials.

THE SOLUTION: Framing the Message in a Positive Way

Red Rooster Group came up with the theme “Speak Up for Reason!” and positioned the rally as a “Voter Block Party” to emphasize the political clout of this demographic.

A Robust Public Relations Campaign

Website showcasing the inclusive message, roster of speakers, rally schedule, activities such as Advocacy Day, and DC trip planning information.
News releases showcasing the growth of the unaffiliated/atheist population in the U.S. as well as the important of separation of church and state.
Social media messages tying into current events.
Weekly conference calls made sure that everyone was on message for the next week.
Articles and blogs for coalition members to use in their publications.
Digital advertising for social media and websites.
Outdoor advertising in Washington, DC.

THE RESULT: A Positive Change in Coverage

Reason Rally 2016 was covered by major media as a gathering of voters, instead of “godless” people. The message that secular voters are a growing, reasonable segment of the population was reinforced by all media coverage. After the event, the message continued as bloggers opposed to non-theism discussed how to deal with the growing number of secular Americans.

The coverage changed from the dismissive Fox News report on the 2012 Rally to Fox’s on-message report in 2016 and on-site coverage by CNN, resulting in positive news coverage and successful reframing of the message about this demographic.

Red Rooster Group was supported by Sayles & Winnikoff Communications for media outreach and speaker coordination services.

“We looked at quite a few PR firms for Reason Rally 2016, but Red Rooster Group went far beyond the others in learning about our organization, the larger community we work within, and our project. They set a strategy for the communications that not only appealed to our own community, but engendered support from allies and even those with whom we haven’t typically seen eye-to-eye. Their website redesign was efficient and beautiful, while still being easy for my staff to use. They helped us get unprecedented media coverage with a consistent, positive message. All this was made even better due to their staff’s fun, engaged, and friendly working relationship.”

— Lyz Liddell, Executive Director

Integrated Campaign Promotes Technology Company

Capturing people’s attention in today’s crowded media landscape is difficult. When you are seeking to attract ad agencies, the bar is even higher. To help Reflexions Data stand out and reach this elusive market, we created an integrated campaign with a unique animal theme that employed print and online tactics.

Brochure

The concept, “Reflecting Your Inner Animal,” describes the way Reflexions Data brings out the best that agencies have to offer by executing their creative visions through websites, mobile apps, and other interactive outlets.

Ad Campaign

The campaign included animated banner ads that ran for two weeks on on AgencySpy, a website for ad agencies, and banner ads in AgencySpy’s email newsletter. Within this short time period, the campaign generated inquiries from this difficult to reach market.

Landing Page

A landing page capitalized on the web traffic generated from the online ad campaign — leveraging the look of the campaign while highlighting core aspects of the company’s services.

“Red Rooster Group has been our go-to team for print and digital marketing. Their team has been instrumental in helping us build our brand and stand out to potential clients. We love the results: consistently creative, unique, and visually impressive.”

Daniel Leslie Reflexions Data, Partner

Cancer Group Raises Funds and Awareness with Fundraising Campaign

Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation

Raising Awareness and Funds for Breast Cancer Research

Our multi-faceted campaign raised awareness of the cause, motivated 100 people around the country to host fundraising events, and raised $200,000 for the organization.

Event Branding

A clean symbol of a dove made from three parts, each with three arcs reinforces the concept of Triple Negative Breast Cancer.

Event Microsite

To encourage peer-to-peer fundraising, we updated the organization’s fundraising platform with bold, energetic graphics, and lots of resources to help people host successful events.

Emails

We redesigned the emails to be more attention-getting and more personal, with appeals from others in their communities. Each had a clear call to action. These efforts dramatically increased the response rate.

Before

After

All the emails we designed followed suit, with clear, compelling graphics that reflected the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Day brand while warmly welcoming people to the community and making clear the actions people could take.

Social Media

We produced a comprehensive social media campaign to generate interest and motivate people to host events and donate.

Printed Materials

We developed a range of print materials as part of the overall marketing outreach to support people who were producing local events.

Public Relations

A vigorous public relations outreach campaign to publications, websites, and blogs achieved a wide range of local and national coverage for the organization. As a result, more than 100 events were held around the country, raising more than $200,000 for the organization.

State Proclamations

In addition, to create credibility for the cause, we reached out to state governments to declare March 3 as Triple Negative Breast Cancer Day. Eleven states issued proclamations, which we touted on social media to bolster community and awareness in those states.

Opening Bell of the New York Stock Exchange

To gain even more publicity for the organization, we arranged for the client to ring the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange. The ceremony was covered on network and cable broadcast news, with the organizational logo featured prominently.

Media Coverage

CNBC Squawk on the Street
CNN American Morning
FOX NEWS Your World
FOX KTVU Morning News (San Francisco)
ABC KXTV News 10 Good Morning (Sacramento)

Results

As a result, more than 100 events were produced around the country, raising $200,000 and greatly increasing awareness of the organization and its cause.