Develop an effective awareness campaign for your organization
An awareness campaign is extremely important when raising awareness for your cause. On this page, we have provided a strategy for one way to conduct a campaign. Please read through it to help you move your cause campaign forward.
Personalized Cause offers awareness products to encourage participation in your event. This includes enamel awareness pins, fabric cloth awareness ribbons, and silicone wristbands. All products come in both a non-personalized and personalized style. Each personalized version can be customized with your logo or awareness campaign slogan.
Set goals for your awareness campaign
Plan your awareness campaign by determining its focus. For example, awareness campaigns are often part of broader national awareness days, months, or weeks. Because the goal of an awareness campaign is to increase awareness for your cause, find concrete ways to measure the campaign's growth and visibility. Determine what indicators you’ll use to track growth and rates of engagement.
By closely tracking participation, like the number of new followers gained, you can assess the reach of your campaign. Similarly, participation rates help to show how many people are interacting with your content and showing interest in your cause. Examples of this are participants sharing a post with a friend or encouraging others to participate.
It’s important to set your awareness campaign’s goals early in the planning process. When you know what you’re aiming for, it’s much easier to develop a strategy that will get you there.
Choose the right date for your awareness campaign
As with any campaign, you need to allow enough time to plan your awareness strategies and for your audience to thoroughly engage with it. This allows your cause to build momentum over the course of the campaign. For this reason, determine a specific timeframe for your awareness campaign that allows for advanced planning and preparation. If your campaign coincides with an existing national awareness month, week, or day, build your timeframe around it.
In other words, for example, will a single day of awareness activities be enough to help you reach supporters, or will a week or month be better suited to your goals? Please see our Awareness Calendar for dates that are currently being used.
Regardless of the focus of your awareness campaign, kick off or conclude it with a main event (either in-person, virtual, or hybrid). An event will help you capitalize on your audience’s energy to keep them engaged until its end. Or it will encourage participants to continue to take action after your campaign ends. It will also keep participants looking forward to the next year's event.
Identify your audience
You’ll need to consider who you want to engage so you can develop the marketing and outreach strategies that will be most effective. Narrowing down your audience segment can help improve the message and communication channels of your campaign.
Craft your awareness campaign message
Your awareness campaign should connect back to your mission. To create the most effective message, aim your promotional efforts at increasing awareness and excitement with those who have participated in the past. If this is a new campaign, generate excitement. You can do that using pins, ribbons, and wristbands that are outward expressions of their excitement and participation.
Focus on one aspect of your mission. For example, if your mission revolves around education and children’s welfare, your awareness campaign might focus on child poverty or literacy issues in your community. This gives your audience a more specific societal issue to focus on rather than feeling overwhelmed by your mission. In other words, break your mission into easy-to-understand pieces. This is crucial to your success.
Engage ambassadors
Creating reach and casting a wide awareness net is key to your campaign’s success. Involving your board, volunteers, supporters with large social media followings, and business connections can help to significantly expand your campaign’s visibility.
Enlist your most engaged supporters as “ambassadors.” Your ambassadors are the social butterflies of your cause world. They should be outgoing, well-connected, and eager to chat about your cause with anyone. This is why looking for ambassadors is often a smart move and can translate into successful ambassador relationships. Once you’ve identified the right supporters for the role, meet with them to request their help and explain the impact their involvement will have on your campaign and mission.
Secure your awareness campaign’s sponsors
Sponsors and partners are a must-have, and this trend doesn’t end with awareness campaigns. Sponsors can help supercharge your efforts during the year, as well.
Large corporations with well-developed nonprofit sponsorship or corporate social responsibility programs make reliable partners for any campaign or event. However, don’t forget to think about local supporters. For smaller organizations, awareness campaigns often focus on how issues specifically affect their community or region.
Set up your awareness campaign’s online presence
Once your campaign’s core guidelines and main strategies are in place, find creative ways to drive your supporters to engage with your cause. Specifically, make sure you have the following:
- Distinct awareness campaign branding.
- A clear impact statement that explains the intention behind your awareness campaign.
- Your mission statement to introduce your organization to new participants.
- High-quality photos and videos that engage supporters and motivate them to get involved.
Create a marketing plan for your awareness campaign
During awareness campaigns, it’s all about the reach. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Instead, spread your campaign out across multiple channels to reach all your supporters. Some popular channels include:
- Social media posts that encourage shares.
- Emails targeted to your audience.
- A landing page on your website or blog post.
- Text messaging updates.
- Direct mailings for VIP supporters.
Celebrate and promote awareness milestones
Throughout your awareness campaign, keep your new and current supporters in the loop and let them know how it’s progressing by sharing major milestones.
For example, highlight:
- When your organization gains 1,000 new followers across your social media platforms.
- When you’ve gained over 100 new donors.
- When you’ve raised over $1,000.
The best way to celebrate major milestones as they relate to your awareness campaign goals is by concluding with an event. Events are a great way to bring your campaign full circle, thank your donors, and celebrate all of the objectives you’ve met and exceeded from your fundraising and engagement efforts. Take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support and emphasize the impact they’ve made on your cause.
Remember, awareness campaigns are all about creating long-term relationships with existing participants and attracting new supporters who can help drive your mission forward over time. Your cause is important. Use these strategies to take your awareness campaign from year-to-year and build a strong and loyal following.
Examples of Effective Awareness Campaigns
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Kayla’s Hope: Hope Week
Centered around the mantra “It’s okay to not be okay,” Kayla’s Hope was founded to bring awareness to mental health and raise funds to support mental health treatment after 15-year-old Kayla Lehmann tragically lost her life to suicide. With her 18th birthday coming up, her community wanted a way to honor Kayla’s legacy while increasing visibility of mental illness and creating a lasting impact.
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Animal Cancer Foundation: #CurePetCancer Awareness Campaign
The Animal Cancer Foundation, created to fund research for a cure, needed a way to bring awareness to canine cancer and rally animal lovers around making the world a better place for people and pets. To achieve this goal, they hosted an awareness campaign to coincide with Pet Cancer Awareness Month.
By linking their campaign to a related awareness month, this organization was able to join the conversation on canine cancer, capitalize on existing public attention, and spread its mission to a broader audience.
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Helpusadopt.org: Help Build Families Campaign
Helpusadopt.org seeks to make adopting children more financially accessible by providing grants up to $20,000 to couples or individuals in need. However, the financial hardship of adoption isn’t something that is often on the public’s mind, and Helpusadopt.org wanted to change this to better meet their mission.
During National Adoption Awareness Month in November, Helpusadopt.org ran an awareness campaign centered around the idea of “building families.” Tapping into the public’s attention around adoption during this time was the perfect way for Helpusadopt.org to stand out and more easily reach readers who would be inclined to become long-term supporters.
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Humane Society of the United States: More Than a Pet Campaign
As one of the most famous animal welfare organizations, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is a national nonprofit that aims to end suffering for all animals and tackle animal cruelty head on. However, a big part of their mission is also educating people on animal welfare issues so they can act in their own communities.
To help people learn more about animal welfare, the HSUS frequently leads high-impact and well-designed awareness campaigns, including a recent one: the More Than a Pet Campaign. This campaign seeks to educate the public about unequal access to pet care and resources and the pet poverty crisis.
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The ALS Association: Ice Bucket Challenge Awareness Campaign
You’re more than likely familiar with the famous ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, an awareness campaign hosted by the ALS Association. This campaign challenged people all over the world to pour a bucket of ice over their heads. The viral success story resulted in over $115 million for ALS research. In addition, the campaign jumpstarted global discussions around ALS for the first time.
Why did the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge make such a significant impact? Because it leveraged the power of social media and used a unique challenge that was perfect for summertime! The share ability of the campaign was baked into the challenge itself. Participants had to tag three of their friends to join in or donate to the ALS Foundation.