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Licking County Humane Society
The Situation
Elycia Taylor is the Communications Director at Licking County Humane Society in Ohio. Hot off the heels of an expansion project that doubled the size of their operation and total reach, Elycia knew there was an opportunity to capitalize on the increased exposure. One thing that she’s learned during the past XX years of service at LCHS is that the stories of the animals themselves is the most powerful message she can extend to donors. “The best outcomes occur when donors have the feeling of attachment and ownership over the animal. Creating a direct link between a supporter and an animal they immediately fall in love with is powerful.”
The Solution
Having seen success from passive stewardship channels such as social media and email, Elycia was excited to test the impact of direct stewardship via Harness’ Auto-Message feature. From the very first touch, Harness automatically primes donors with a welcome message followed by an immediate thank you message once they make a gift. “We added photos of our animals to each automated thank you message, creating an instant connection between donors and our mission. The responses we’ve received have been incredible. Never before have we been able to drive engagement by simply saying thank you!”
After successfully implementing Harness and driving over 300 new donors to the platform, Elycia was faced with an urgent funding need: Sophie, a dog, was in need of a new prosthetic leg that would allow her to walk again. With the cost of the procedure expected to be around $2,000, Elycia decided to turn to her donors to see if they’d be willing to help. She put together a narrative surrounding Sophie’s battle against a congenital deformity that was compromising her ability to walk and sent a text to her donor base to see if anyone would be willing to help…
The Results
The response was tremendous. Within 36 hours, Sophie’s campaign was fully funded by 33 individual donors giving over $2,150 directly from their phone. “All I can say is that it was awesome! Neither email nor social media has ever had that quick of a response!”
Since running Sophie’s campaign, Elycia has run many more campaigns yielding similar results. In fact, her “Feed our pets for a week!” campaign resulted in enough money to fund 2 weeks of food in just 5 hours!