The Company
charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Founded in 2006, it has helped fund more than 4,000 projects in 19 countries, benefiting over 2 million people.

The Challenge
In 2009, charity: water started an initiative called mycharity: water, which is a website where people can create fundraising campaigns and collect donations from their network of friends, family, and colleagues. On mycharity: water, people can run, bike, give up their birthday, or simply raise money to fund projects for communities in need of drinking water. charity: water ties every dollar raised on mycharity: water to a project serving people in need.

To make sure their work is sustainable, local partners need 18 months to build the projects benefitting from mycharity: water donations and training the community in hygiene and sanitation. When the project is complete, charity: water is dedicated to showing those who raised money the GPS coordinates, photos and other details of the community being helped. charity: water turned to Silverpop to help extend the new Web feature "Dollars to Projects" to email with Silverpop Engage.  

“We want every donor to be able to see their impact, to see photos, GPS coordinates and other information about the people they've helped,” says Paull Young, director of digital, charity: water. “We've been a Silverpop customer since 2009 and wanted to take advantage of the more advanced features of Silverpop Engage to personally communicate with our fundraisers and donors on mycharity: water.” 

The Solution
Young worked closely with Silverpop’s Product Consulting team to determine the best way to create up to 25,000 unique emails to fundraisers (those who created their own mycharity: water campaign)  and donors (those who contributed to a specific mycharity: water campaign). After reviewing the requirements, it was determined that the  email portion of the campaign, aptly named Dollars to Projects, could be accomplished through the use of relational tables within Silverpop Engage to provide personalized information on each project. Silverpop’s Product Consulting team provided the data schema to be loaded into Engage and the templates that could be used for the mailing. In addition, training was provided so that charity: water team members could learn how to manage the campaign on their own.

Each email sent from the Dollars to Projects campaign is highly personalized using data within relational tables to include information on how much money had been raised by the specific donor or fundraiser and details on the specific project funded by that campaign or donation, including a picture of the actual site and information such as location, people served and type of project.

The Results
“100% of every dollar donated to charity: water directly funds water projects, and we proof every single project with GPS data and photos," says Young. "Whether you or your friends give $5 or $5,000, you'll see the impact of your efforts through our Dollars to Project initiative.”

Dollars to Projects had a tremendous response, including open and click rates as high as 53 percent and 40 percent, respectively. The emails were also shared on Twitter and Facebook using Silverpop’s Share-to-Social functionality. Comments such as “BEST EMAIL I RECEIVED IN YEARS” were common among the updates and tweets.

To get the maximum reach, Young divided his sends into three segments and performed subject line A/B testing.  “The goal of the project was to provide a WOW factor for our supporters and to make sure they were aware of the impact of their mycharity: water donation,” says Young. “By performing subject line A/B testing we know that we reached the majority of our fundraisers. We believe that Dollars to Projects is the most important project feature we’ve launched, and the email component enabled by Silverpop was critical for us to ensure that all our donors and fundraisers were able to celebrate their hard work.”

Download the PDF to learn how charity: water provides individual donors with specifics on how their contributions were used using Silverpop Engage.