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How one charity utilized GivePanel to raise over £70,000 in one event

Cause:
First Response
Location:
United Kingdom
Solutions used:
Facebook Challenges
Data Management
By following GivePanel’s Facebook Challenge guide, Scotland’s Charity Air Ambulance raised over £70,000 and had its best acquisition campaign to date.

Prior to joining GivePanel, Scotland’s Charity Air Ambulance (SCAA) had already invested time in building an audience on Facebook and had seen relative success through organic fundraising. However, it had not yet attempted a Facebook Challenge. With GivePanel’s support, SCAA raised above and beyond what it had anticipated and reached hundreds of new supporters.

Set the scene

Who is Scotland's Charity Air Ambulance?

As Scotland’s only charity air ambulance, SCAA is funded by the people of Scotland, primarily through donations, fundraising, events and its life-saving lottery. In 2019/20, it raised an incredible £6.5 million through public donations to fund its frontline services. 

Social fundraising has played a significant impact in SCAA’s income since 2020 when the charity invested in a three year strategy which saw them increase their Facebook audience from 30,000 to over 130,000. In 2020, £80,000 of its total income came directly from Facebook through organic donations and birthday fundraisers. 

Fast forward to October 2021, SCAA launched its first pilot Facebook Challenge of 100 Miles in October, raising over £70,000 from just the event alone. But what did that look like?

What people are saying
The ROI achieved well and truly exceeded the expectations that we put in place.
- Alex Gregg
The challenge

100 Miles in October

A Facebook Challenge is a virtual event that runs solely on Facebook and leverages the power of social networking through ads, groups and fundraisers. This means: 

  • Lower acquisition costs
  • More fundraisers
  • And a chance to meet supporters where they already are!

Their 100 Miles in October Facebook Challenge successfully raised over £70,000 with a spend of just over only £7,000! Alex comments, ‘the ROI achieved well and truly exceeded the expectations that we put in place.’ 

In addition to the fantastic financial results of SCAA’s first pilot challenge, they also found that the event had resulted in their best acquisition campaign to date. They had reached a whole new audience – of the 700 supporters that registered for a t-shirt, 92% were completely new to the charity so found that Facebook Challenges are a great way to connect with new supporters.

Unsurprisingly, when asked if SCAA plan to continue with Facebook Challenges and GivePanel, the answer was positive, with Alex saying ‘given how the first one went it’s a little bit easier to forecast how the next ones will go.’

The GivePanel difference

Meeting supporters where they are

Scotland’s Charity Air Ambulance made use of GivePanel resources including Academy assets, benchmarking documents and staff support, with Alex commenting that ‘there was just an array of support there to help us with our first one.’ 

Alex also emphasised the importance of following GivePanel’s guide to Facebook Challenges and said that ‘we obviously followed GivePanel’s advice, and rule book to a tee pretty much. And yeah, off the back of that we had a really good pilot campaign experience.’ 

In addition to the support in launching their Facebook Challenge, SCAA also utilized GivePanel to manage their event throughout, making use of such features as the automated email journeys and matched fundraisers. Alex notes: 

“I think the most useful pieces were being able to obviously connect up your event participants with a registration form, so that order matching feature works really, really well. So it was very easy to see who our supporters were that were doing the challenge that had opted into further communications, for example. That was a really good thing. (…) Then the email, the automatic email feature was really good and worked really well. We had a much higher open rate than we usually see with our own email providers. So that was something that was great. And it was very, very easy to obviously set up and utilize for the challenge.”

Despite finding that they were a little delayed in advertising and struggled with content production in the group, SCAA went on to have a fantastic first Facebook Challenge with just under 400 active fundraisers taking part.

Scotland's Charity Air Ambulance
Scotland's Charity Air Ambulance
Scotland's Charity Air Ambulance
Scotland's Charity Air Ambulance
The results

The Challenge in numbers

£70,000+
Total Raised
£185
Average Raised
£3.62
Cost per Lead
10:1
ROI
Final thoughts

Top tips from Scotland's Charity Air Ambulance

Reach a new audience – of the 700 supporters that registered for a t-shirt, 92% were completely new to the charity so Facebook Challenges are a great way to connect with new supporters.

Plan content – have a content strategy in place for managing your Facebook group to help create engagement and steward the actions you want them to take.

Follow the rules! Don’t deviate from GivePanel’s suggested plan on how to run a Facebook Challenge – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Alex Gregg
Scotland's Charity Air Ambulance
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