Santa Barbara Foundation
With a powerful campaign strategy focused on urgency and legacy, Save the Redwoods League exceeded their $120M fundraising goal and raised over $139M to protect and restore California’s iconic forests.
Sector
Deliverables
Fundraising Campaigns
$120M goal in a tired-donor moment.
Save the Redwoods League launched Forever Forest: The Campaign for the Redwoods in 2017 with a goal that would have been challenging in any era: $120 million to not only protect the remaining old-growth coast redwood and giant sequoia forests, but to also begin growing back what we have lost in the last century.
It was a big idea, one they hoped would lay the foundation for a new era of redwoods conservation. How could they sustain the commitment and generosity of their longtime donors while also engaging a new generation of donors to understand and commit to their $120 million fundraising campaign?
Restoration, not just protection.
To skirt donor fatigue and inspire a vision worth funding, the campaign’s success rested on helping donors see this not just as a continuation of their good work saving redwoods from the ax, but as an opportunity to be inspired by the science that today allows for permanent and lasting protection.
Forever Forest: the campaign theme.
Donors needed to appreciate the urgency of this moment: that by acting now, we could forever
restore and protect the redwood forests of California. Our communications strategy added the right amount of rationale (a scientific plan is in place) and emotion (you are the key to protecting the majesty of these forests forever).
We created the campaign theme: Forever Forest: the Campaign for the Redwoods that speaks directly to stalwart and new donors who want these forests to thrive now, and for their grandchildren and beyond. The graphics, donor messages, donor appeal deck and campaign video helped the fundraising leaders at Save the Redwoods easily gain the commitment of donors by showing how their gift did something big it could not do anywhere else.
$139M raised — past target by $19M.
By showing donors how they could make an outsized impact Forever Forest: The Campaign for the Redwoods far exceeded its goal, raising more than $139 million.
