A “brand within a brand” fundraising campaign is asking supporters to take a walk in aid of humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières).
The Walk Without Borders Challenge was developed by Stephen Thomas, which specializes in marketing and fundraising exclusively for the non-profit sector, and has worked for the Canadian arm of MSF for six years.
The seven-week campaign encourages people to raise money by walking a distance of their choice — walking is a key element in many MSF stories with patients and field workers often having to travel long distances to receive or give lifesaving medical relief.
Personal stories are featured at WalkWithoutBorders.ca, and participants raise money through sponsorship from family and friends.
The campaign is fully bilingual and online communications play a huge role. As well as a promotional email facet, there’s digital advertising, personalized fundraising pages, Facebook and Twitter presence.
Vice-president and chief creative officer of ST, Bryan Tenenhouse, said it was imperative to create something fun, but that also focuses on MSF’s mission of saving lives around the world.
“In developing a brand within the brand, it was necessary to bring all the messaging and creative back to a focus on the beneficiary, while making all of the fundraising activity as relevant to the MSF brand as possible,” he said.
Key to being able to achieve that objective, Tenenhouse says, was developing a storytelling approach that establishes a connection between the challenge and the experiences of MSF.
“We decided to make that connection quite literal by asking participants to actively select one of the personal stories profiled on the Walk Without Borders Challenge website and be inspired by that story as they choose the distance they’ll walk.”
Rebecca Davies, director of fundraising for MSF Canada, said the campaign is primarily about bringing in money to allow the charity to continue its work, creating an emotional connection between donors and people on the ground is “extremely powerful.”
