Campaign: Beardsgiving

Client: The Ability Experience (non-profit organization)

Roles: Copywriting, photography, video production, graphic design, social posting & community management

Goals: Fundraise $100,000, raise awareness for people with disabilities

Beardsgiving was an online fundraising competition between the four regions of Pi Kappa Phi chapters (Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, and West) during the month of November. The goal was to raise funds to ensure every Pi Kapp member has the chance to pick up a hammer, drill, and saw, to build a project that impacts thousands of campers with disabilities for years to come. You did not need to grow a beard to be successful in this competition! You just needed to believe in the mission of The Ability Experience and the ruggedness of November.

This was our inaugural execution of this fall fundraising event. This event was focused across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Participants were driven to engage and fundraise over the five-week span of the event.

Results: Even though we did not hit the aggressive goal of $100,000 fundraised, the event was deemed a success - raising immeasurable awareness and $44,763 for people with disabilities.

Throughout the campaign we used a themes of being rugged, outdoorsy, and lumberjack-esque, using blue plaid in all of our graphics from social media posts to email headers. Our “host” of the campaign was The Ability Experience staff member Spencer Haworth who donned a plaid shirt and suspenders and used his husky voice to aggressively encourage participation and excitement for the event.

On October 17 we teased the campaign by posting a graphic with no caption. The graphic included the beard logo and the starting date of the competition. Many followers were very interested to see what the graphic was foreshadowing.

Shortly after the teaser, the initial promotion began with an introduction video and posts supplementing its release.

To kickstart sign-ups for the event, we promoted free Ability Experience trucker hats to the first 500 participants on October 26. By the end of the next day, sign ups excelled past 500. The second wave of incentive give-a-ways were Ability Experience croakies to the next 250 participants.

During the event, we used social media and email to communicate with student members as well as Facebook Live to give updates to leaderboards. To encourage student participation we used the hashtag #Beardsgiving with every post and promoted its use for any news or beard related social media.

Participants were encouraged to post pictures of their beard development. Many others got creative and found alternative ways to keep posting even without growing a beard!

Those who did post pictures of their beards had a chance to be featured as the “Most Valuable Beard” (MVB) of the week which won them various giveaway packages.

As the weeks went on, The Ability Experience staff starred in various weekly coaching videos going to help the students raise money. These were kept light and fun, yet informative to the fundraising efforts of the participants.

To supplement the coaching videos and challenges, we posted funny “beard facts” on our social channels to continue engagement during days without video updates.

Weekly rankings were posted for regions as well as solo fundraisers for each region.

Each week had different incentives for the top fundraising chapters and individuals. During the second week, we introduced random daily challenges where the student or alumnus who had the most donors that day won a YETI Rambler mug.

On the final week, we went to the Championship Round. All qualifying chapters went head-to-head in one last week of fundraising. This week, leaderboards were updated frequently.

In summation, the event wrapped up on Thanksgiving Day with a Facebook Live announcement of the winners which was one of the most popular posts of the year. On top of other packages, winning chapters and individuals were given custom wood-burned awards with the logo.

Even though we did not hit our initial goal of $100,000 fundraised, the event was deemed a success - raising immeasurable awareness and $44,763 for people with disabilities.