An art for social change and digital fundraising case study about turning new knowledge into lasting fundraising skills.

Nonprofits often have to find new ways to fund their work, especially when they are exploring fundraising strategies they are not familiar with.

Many traditional nonprofit fundraising efforts begin with institutions. Find a funder. Investigate the opportunity. Write the proposal. Submit it. Wait. When the funding is secured, the job can proceed. When it doesn’t, the search restarts. Grants matter. Institutional support enables a vast amount of nonprofit work. However, as fundraisers know, this is not the only method by which people can support a cause. Individual contributors also give, and are likely to respond to news, attend events, promote campaigns, and contribute online.

But reaching individual donors requires understanding how to connect with them, what to ask for, and how to make giving as easy as possible. A compelling campaign can inspire someone to give, but a complicated donation process can discourage them from completing their gift.

Whether an organization is bringing a theatrical production to life, advancing a social issue, or providing essential community services, the challenge is similar: how do you find resources to fund work that matters, especially when funds are shrinking and you are exploring approaches outside your usual fundraising practice?

That task is especially intriguing when the effort involves art for social change. How do you encourage people to fund an artistic initiative that also aims to influence the conversation? Where can you discover folks prepared to give? And how might digital fundraising assist in connecting a purpose with its supporters? This is a case study about broadening the fundraising tool set. It goes beyond traditional institutional financing tactics to include individual giving and digital engagement. It also discusses what happens when professional development begins with the questions that someone is attempting to answer.

About the Organization

Wonderlust is a theater organization that uses art to promote social change. Its work introduced a fresh set of fundraising questions to our client, an experienced nonprofit fundraising specialist who was assisting the organization.

Our client has spent most of her career working with institutional fundraisers and wealthy philanthropists. She understood fundraising, but she was working in a new field. She wanted to know which ways from her previous expertise might work, where digital fundraising may aid, and how individual giving would complement the strategies she already understood.

These weren’t questions about replacing grants. There were questions about expanding possibilities. Could the organization make the online contribution process easier to use? Could texting help it gain supporters? What role may a fundraising video play in its communications strategy? And how could it make these decisions if it didn’t view every digital instrument as the solution?

The chance was to see fundraising as more than just looking for the next grant. It was to think about how multiple channels, messaging, and relationships may help people support the job they were passionate about.

About Us

FUNKY BROWN CHICK frequently combines art with statistics, expert analysis, and a desire to identify what is truly happening. This provides communities with a point of reference, something to strive for when the time is right. We were founded by Twanna A. Hines, an award-winning sexual and reproductive health educator, healthy relationship advocate, and entrepreneur. Back in 2013, our primary focus was on supporting her efforts to promote sexual and reproductive health, rights, education, and justice through media arts.

Our work has always focused on how individuals come across ideas, connect with a cause, and decide to take action. This encompasses the art and stories that inspire people, the digital channels through which they discover and engage with that work, and the methods that help sustain it.

Our client had prior experience fundraising for organizations in a variety of areas, primarily through institutional sponsorship and substantial gifts. What she wanted was confirmation: which of her existing knowledge would apply to this new industry, and what did she need to know about fundraising for a hyper-local arts organization? There was also a bigger professional question. How much digital fundraising should she include in her client services? Major-gift fundraising can use digital technologies, but these partnerships do not always begin online. Individual giving via digital media poses new problems about audiences, communication, and how people are solicited to support the cause.

Rather than sending our client to a general class, we went through the actual questions she had. The interaction required around five sessions. We could get to the substance of the questions without having to spend time setting the background since we already knew each other and had a shared concept of movement and social change. The study focused on practical possibilities, such as how to improve the online giving experience, create a fundraising video, and evaluate how the group reaches out to potential donors. Some ideas were discussed rather than executed, but the sessions provided our client with clear approaches to discuss with her clients.

That is what targeted guidance can accomplish. It can connect existing skills with new opportunities without requiring someone to start from scratch. In this engagement, that included assisting our client in developing a better grasp of digital fundraising and thinking about how she could apply it in her work.

The technique created space for:

• Expanding on our client’s current skills by combining institutional fundraising and major-gift experience with digital fundraising and donor interaction.
• Making genuine decisions: taking into account her client’s donation page, communication methods, and the time and target audience for fundraising drives.
• Transferring knowledge to other projects: adapting digital giving concepts, such as text-to-give and QR codes, to another client’s yearly giving campaign.

That last part is important to us. The purpose is more than just answering one client’s question. It is to impart knowledge in such a way that individuals may make informed judgments even after the interaction has ended.

What Changed

From ‘Institutional’ Fundraising to ‘Digital Individual’ Giving

Our client was well-versed in fundraising before her engagement. She has previously worked with charitable groups from many sectors, notably seeking institutional funding and developing major-gift donors. However, when she began sponsoring a hyper-local theater organization that works in arts for social change, she encountered a new set of questions. How much of her existing knowledge would be applicable? Where might she find individual donors? And how far should digital fundraising be integrated into the services she provides to her clients?

The distinction is important. Institutional fundraising and big gifts remain vital, but they do not always use the same channels or engagement tactics as online individual giving. Our client’s prior experience provided a solid basis. She wanted a better grasp of how digital fundraising operated and how it could complement the methods she previously utilized. Her pre-engagement survey provided a starting point. Our client ranked her comprehension of the essential components of a successful digital fundraising campaign as neutral. She denied that she grasped current trends and best practices in online donor acquisition, development, and stewardship.

Following the engagement, her responses changed. She firmly agreed with both comments.

This is a tangible shift in stated knowledge: from a neutral assessment of her understanding of digital fundraising strategy and disagreement about her familiarity with current online donor behaviors to full agreement on both. The poll does not prove her customers raised more money as a result, but it does show our client left the engagement reporting with a better understanding of the issues she came to investigate.

From General Fundraising Knowledge to Sector-Specific Questions 

Our client had previously raised funds for many groups, but theater and hyper-local arts for social change were new territory. She didn’t have to learn fundraising from scratch. She needed to understand how her previous experience translated to a different type of organization and what extra concerns came with the job.

Arts-based social transformation presents concerns that go beyond simply discovering a grant opportunity. How do you convey the worth of creative work? Who might be willing to support it? How can an organization relate its goal, storytelling, and audience to individual giving? And how can a fundraiser determine which digital tactics are best suited to the organization rather than merely using a technology because it is available? The pre-test asked about understanding the arts for social change, identifying how artistic and creative initiatives contribute to social impact, and discussing the link between arts-based interventions and social results. It also inquired about combining digital fundraising with storytelling, culture, and artistic expression.

These questions were important since the interaction was more than just learning about digital fundraising in theory. It was about how digital tools may help fundraise for arts-based social change.

Our client’s before-and-after scores for these arts and culture items are not included in the available survey findings, so we cannot claim a quantifiable improvement in those areas. What we can tell is that the engagement allowed her to think through the practical questions posed by her work and determine how her prior knowledge could be used.

From Email Outreach to More Ways to Reach Supporters

Prior to the partnership, our client assisted Wonderlust in developing its fundraising strategy. One practical difficulty was how to improve the organization’s online giving experience and communication with potential donors.

Our client collaborated with Wonderlust’s communication consultant and the organization’s communications consultant to develop the donation page and giving platform. They also created a short fundraising video. The group finally decided not to publicize it while focusing on recruiting people for its cohort. That ruling underlined an essential point: organizations must consider the audiences for different appeals. Recruiting individuals to engage in a program is not the same as asking them to donate. If both campaigns occur simultaneously, companies can examine whether separate audiences and communication techniques would assist each request in reaching the proper people.

Another change was more straightforward. Our client pushed Wonderlust to switch from email outreach to texts. Our client said that they received positive answers from those texted.

From One Engagement to Broader Digital Giving Options 

Our client’s engagement had an impact on her work with another customer as well.

Typically, that organization raised around $40,000 through its year-end giving initiatives. Our client assisted with introducing text-to-give at an event and adding a QR code so participants could access a digital giving option in addition to traditional pledge cards as the organization prepared for its annual giving campaign.

Prior to these enhancements, guests may reply by using pledge cards. The digital possibilities expanded their opportunities to contribute. Rather than replacing the previous strategy, text-to-give and QR codes enhanced the number of ways to give. This was not the engagement’s primary goal. But it highlights why information sharing is important. Our client may adapt concepts she developed while working with an art for social change client to a fundraising drive for another nonprofit.

Our client found and executed more digital giving alternatives in a separate client context, which is what we’re most proud of.

From Looking for a Class to Receiving Guidance

Our client mentioned that when she finds something novel, her first reaction is to look for a class. However, rather than following a broad curriculum, our client’s engagement with our CEO, Twanna A. Hines, provided guidance based on her expertise, questions, and client work. They spent about five sessions discussing actual digital fundraising ideas and how they could be applied to the organizations our client supported. Their pre-existing relationship and mutual understanding of movement and progressive social change work also contributed to the process’s efficiency.

Our client was able to use what she learned during the engagement in her broader consulting career. For example, she implemented text-to-give at an event for another client’s annual giving campaign and included a QR code with traditional pledge cards. These adjustments highlighted how she may include more digital giving alternatives in her current fundraising efforts.

Our client’s conviction in linking donations with arts-based social change was also evident in the post-engagement survey. She strongly agreed that she recognized the role of art in increasing social impact, could identify how artists and cultural institutions contribute to social change, and was comfortable addressing the link between arts-based interventions and social outcomes. She agreed that she could create fundraising tactics focused on narrative, culture, and artistic expression, as well as understand how digital tools may help grow audiences, communities, and donor support for arts-based social change activities. She also strongly believed that fundraising and culture-change techniques might complement one another.

Our client saw value in more than simply learning new facts. It was having a targeted strategy to combine her previous skills with new techniques and evaluate how digital fundraising could fit into her work. When asked what could have been improved, she replied that the engagement was “exactly what I needed,” joking that the only upgrade would have been to hold it in person in Portugal.

Her recommendation summed up what made the experience unique: “If you need to think about your digital marketing and fundraising, Twanna is your person.” Our client particularly admired Twanna’s broad perspective on the movement and progressive social-change sectors, as well as her ability to translate that knowledge into “really bespoke guidance.” The interaction assisted our client in navigating unknown ground by providing practical, individualized support rather than a one-size-fits-all lesson.

The Lasting Impact

The interaction with our client extended beyond simply sharing digital fundraising skills. It assisted her in translating what she had learned into a practical skill that she could apply in future client interactions. Our client picked three organizations as part of her final thesis and created a digital fundraising campaign for each. She finished the assignment, exhibiting a talent she didn’t feel capable of applying with the same confidence at the start of the engagement.

• Our client’s capacity to create digital fundraising campaigns for various organizations improved as a result of the involvement.
• The final assignment allowed her to apply what she had learned rather than just study the concepts.
• The skills she developed will enable her to assist NGOs in raising finances, sustaining their work, expanding their missions, and reaching more people.

Our client’s long-term influence extends beyond the five sessions she spent working with FUNKY BROWN CHICK. Even if she never works with us again, she may transfer her abilities from one client to the next, implementing digital fundraising strategies for groups with varying needs and missions. For organizations, this means having access to more than just campaign writing skills. It entails working with a fundraiser who can assist them in exploring new ways to attract contributors and raise the funds necessary to continue their mission.

This is what it looks like when targeted instruction assists a professional in building on existing experience and developing skills that will be useful far beyond the scope of one engagement. Our client’s expertise has an ongoing impact wherever she takes it.

We understand that strong fundraising enables social-change groups to continue their work and reach the people they serve. We’re delighted to have helped our client improve her capacity to relate digital strategy to her mission.

If we can imagine a better world, we can build it. Ready to think about what kind of impact your current work might have in 2027? Let’s talk.