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One For the World (OftW)

Chloë Cudaback is the lead contact (communications manager). (Previously Jack Lewars)

Background on OftW

How does OftW differ from others in this space?
Chloe: Focus on youth and university students at a pivotal point in their life
Accessible messaging, more of a starting point, less gatekeeping
David: 1% is 'more manageable' as a starting point perhaps
Luke: Narrow focus on one type of charities: global health and poverty
  • OftW has a donor base of ~700 active donors, ~1650 pledged donors (who pledged but haven't started donating yet) and ~2000 lapsed donors.
  • 80% (of donors?) are in the USA
  • Focus on global health charities
  • They focus on donations to GiveWell charities ... but technically OftW pledgers can give to any 510c3

Some key goals

Reinstein/Lewars conversation notes
  • Activating more donors who took the pledge at university, so their donations actually start;
  • Retaining donors for longer once they activate;
  • Upselling donors to give more over time (either more as a raw amount, e.g. 'keeping pace' at 1% of their income; or more as a percentage, e.g. 'graduating' to take the 10% GWWC pledge)
  • Acquiring new donors with fewer touchpoints, e.g. via online advertising, via our website etc. (we currently get ~0 organic sign-ups)

Who/what/how to test, learn, and adapt

Pipeline/groups/segments

  1. 1.
    Pledgers
  2. 2.
    Active donors, i.e., "Activated pledgers" (Chloe is thinking of segments to this and how to appeal to them)
    1. 1.
      Second tier -- people who have given each month for 12+ months; "Legacy donors" (DR: maybe 1x per year high-value donors should be in this group)
  3. 3.
    One-time donors (these may or may not be pledgers)
  4. 4.
    Cancelled
  5. 5.
    Payment failures
  • Another group worth considering: 'pledge-curious supporters'

Goals/actions

  • 'Activating' Pledgers as donors (pledged but not donated)
  • Active donors
    • Retain
    • Upsell (maybe only to the second tier?)
  • Acquiring pledges, perhaps from a 'pledge-curious group'

Interested in knowing more about

  • Content -- expand our ability to tell stories about the beneficiaries
    • Ways to tell these stories
  • Frequency (of comms with supporters)

Communications contexts

  • Platforms: Social media, email flows
  • Telling stories in a corporate context
Typical audiences have been students and young professionals, but there is interest in corporate outreach
  • Zoom and lunchtime talks in corporate contexts (How many? Seems very promising!)
    • How many people are activating/pledging following these lunch+learn?

Typical donor journey:

We are in the process of creating these homepages and setting up conversion tracking. As OFTW has ~0 organic sign ups currently, we are testing for a variety of conversion routes, including: [Todo: clarify this]
  • university campus, someone I like tells me they are involved in OftW, asks me to come along with free food
  • at some point I take the pledge
  • It is not a highly controlled process
  • asking us (staff) a question by email
  • joining a group call with others wanting to learn about effective donating (Kennan as dir. of chapter management)
  • taking the pledge
  • making a one-off donation

Some rough numbers

650 active donors
1500 people in pipeline (pre-activation date)
750 new people a year are recruited... thinks it would be 2-2.5k
OFTW has a donor base of ~700 active donors,
~1650 pledged donors (who pledged but haven't started donating yet) and
~2000 lapsed donors.

Ongoing/completed/upcoming experiments

Email upsell emotion/impact message trial (see below)

University experiment - redacted as being prepared

  • Homepage message testing
  • Activation trial