Challenge: Raising Money

While the annual report designs for this nonprofit educational advocacy organization have historically taken a more passive role in fundraising, this year, our goal was use the publication to raise money in a more pro-active way, and to do so on a limited budget.

Solution: Focusing on Impact

Using the theme “From Isolation to Empowerment,” the annual report features stories of 4 kids who have overcome obstacles to their learning with the help of Student Advocacy. This year, we focused on the role that the advocates have, and the impact they have achieved for the students. This puts specific emphasis on the tangible actions that advocates take to help kids, helping the organization’s audience understand what it is they do.

Results: An Empowered Staff & Board

We also created donor solicitation cards that matched the look of the annual report, to give staff and board members a tool to reach out to their respective audiences and fundraise on behalf of the organization. They can write personal messages in the cards, which have a donor message in them, using them as a direct follow up to the annual report. And the consistent design helps donors recognize the two pieces as coming from the same organization, boosting the organization’s fundraising impact.

Links

• See more publications.
• See full Student Advocacy Case Study.
• See other Nonprofit Marketing Case Studies.
• Contact Red Rooster Group for help with your marketing and design.

Red Rooster Group is a New York based graphic design firm that creates effective brands, websites, and marketing campaigns to increase your visibility, fundraising, and communications effectiveness. Contact us at info@redroostergroup.com.

Challenge

In an economically rough year, Student Advocacy needed to demonstrate its financial responsibility. Given that its annual report was one of the few mailings it does in the course of the year, it still needed to use this a vehicle for fundraising.

Solution

For this nonprofit annual report, we focused the design on the stories of four students who were experiencing very difficult situations and who Student Advocacy was able to help. Lacking good photos of the students, we used illustrations to heighten the emotional drama of the stories. To keep printing costs down, we used a format that was smaller than standard size and printed the report in only two colors.

Results

This successful example demonstrating that nonprofit design does not have to be costly to be successful, we were able to produce a the publication within their budget and still tell their story. In fact, Student Advocacy received comments from donors who had noticed the stories even more than they had in previous year’s annual reports.

We are in our fifth year of helping Student Advocacy generate awareness and donors through their publications and fundraising events.

Links

• See how we developed Student Advocacy’s brand.
• See other nonprofit publications.
• Contact us about your annual report or publication design.

Red Rooster Group is a New York based graphic design firm that creates effective brands, websites and marketing campaigns for nonprofits to increase their visibility, fundraising and communications effectiveness. Contact us at info@redroostergroup.com.