BACKGROUND & CONTEXT

To say that 2020 was turbulent for the philanthropy sector, would be the biggest understatement.

Prior to COVID-19, Australia was making global headlines with the worst bushfire season since 1938. The fires destroyed 18.6 million hectares of land, leading to over 65,000 families being displaced from homes.

Mere days after the bushfires ceased, COVID-19 arrived at our shores. With strict lockdowns imposed as early as March, the Australian public were plunged into the worst unemployment rates since 1998.

Unsurprisingly, this hindered Australia’s generosity, as the charity sector experienced a dramatic 7.1% decrease in overall donations for 2020. A further 11.9% drop is projected in 2021.

CREATIVE CHALLENGE

Whitelion is a small charity that has a clear purpose: rehabilitating homeless youth. Unfortunately, 94% of overall donations are given to the most well-established charities, leaving charities like Whitelion fighting for the scraps. These scraps have never been so finite as what we experienced in 2021.

All of which was compounded by ongoing social distancing regulations; leaving many, including Whitelion, with no option but to cancel fundraising events and with it, over 70% of their annual donations’ revenue.

With limited cash reserves, we needed to establish a single alternative impervious to any future pandemic restrictions, and one which would help to supplement an entire calendar of fundraising events.

SOLUTION

Whilst a slew of industries slowed down, online shopping did not. In fact, during COVID-19, online shopping surged to a record 62% year-on-year – five times the rate of traditional retail sales growth.

Never before had brand homepages achieved this level of reach. Tapping into this trend would allow us to surpass any media reach that even the Goliaths would be able to afford…in a normal year.

Nonetheless, given the tumultuous state of affairs, corporations were still in survival mode and hyperconscious with where they utilised their budgets. So, our strategy was to make it easy for them to help us. Instead of donating money, all they needed to do was give us access to their homepage traffic.

Our solution was remarkably simple: we asked our corporate partners to give us their home address (their corporate homepage) for a single period, during which time we would ask anyone that visited each respective homepage to donate to Whitelion.

Amidst a year of such unprecedented challenges, realistically we knew there would be only one single period when helping homeless youth would get a modicum of attention. And that period was World Homeless Day.

EXECUTION

The technology to execute was simple. A single line of code created a website overlay, turning Australia’s most visited homepage addresses into donation portals for Whitelion. Brands simply embedded the line of code onto their website homepage. From there we were able to sync up the total donations data on to the core Whitelion campaign page.