HMA’s (and Canada’s) inaugural Goodstock 24-hour give-back event is now over.  And what an amazing experience and wonderful success it was!

We invited charities from all over Vancouver and Toronto to send in applications telling us why they should be the recipients of 24 hours of free professional fundraising advice, design, copywriting, video web work and so much more.

Choosing was perhaps the most difficult part of the whole event, but we somehow narrowed it down to 4 Vancouver charities and 3 Toronto organizations. 

Our new clients-for-a-day were:

In Vancouver:

• Battered Women’s Support Services
  
• Small Animal Rescue Society
• From Grief to Action
• L’Arche Greater Vancouver

In Toronto: 

• Golden Rescue: The Canadian Golden Retriever Adoption Service
• Eva’s Initiatives
• Annex Cat Rescue

We met each client for an hour in the weeks leading up to the event to learn more about them, but the vast majority of work was done in a single 24-hour period from Friday morning to Saturday morning on December 4th & 5th.

Along with all our own HMA staff of fundraisers, designers, copywriters and project managers, we recruited the help of some of the most talented cats in the ally:  Christine, Francis, Dan, Miguel, Nina, Sheetal, Shannon and Laisie from HJC New Media; Michelle Lee, Michael Brouillet, Stephanie Dudley and John Lepp – amazing designers; Brianna LePiane, Rachel Zant, Sonya Swiridjuk, Lindsay McDonald and Sonya MacDonald, the bee’s knees of copywriters; and Trevor Delahaye, video editor guru.  These wonderful people volunteered hours and hours (many, all 24 hours) of their time to produce extraordinary campaigns for our lucky clients.

Our marathon began in both Vancouver and Toronto at 9:00am on Friday, starting with briefing meetings with our new clients.  Our tasks were assigned to us, questions asked, resource materials handed over, we waved them good-bye and we were off.

The following 24hours are a bit hazy to remember now playing in my head like a cheesy 80’s movie montage.  Hard work was punctuated by food-themed breaks.  At one point, the President of From Grief to Action brought in delicious muesli for everyone (hey, it’s the west coast!); at 2am there were rootbeer floats delivered; Terra Breads donated the largest bag of bread anyone had seen in their lives; and local restaurants kept us deliciously plump. 

The result of all that work, though, isn’t hazy at all.  At 10am on Saturday morning our exhausted-but-exhilarated team presented the fruits of our labour.  (You can visit it all at www.harveymckinnon.com/goodstock)

For Battered Women’s Support Services, we produced a multi-media campaign which the organization will launch next April.  It publicizes the shocking fact that 1 in 3 women in B.C. are affected by violence, and 1 million children in Canada have seen their mothers abused. The campaign – called The Violence Stops Here – calls on men to be part of the solution, standing up for women by standing up to abusive men.  We developed an overall campaign strategy, a sub-brand and logos, e-blasts, a website, direct mail pieces, and video and radio scripts.

We developed online and offline materials to promote L’Arche Greater Vancouver’s March 2010 event, The Art of Being Together.   We created a visual identity including event tagline, two different poster treatments (whittled down from 12 concepts that the amazing Michelle came up with!), print ads, and a series of e-blasts.

The Small Animal Rescue Society has never spent any money on fundraising – devoted so much to the animals they rescue that 100% of their funds have always gone to food, shelter and vet bills.  We helped them out by writing their first ever appeal to donors, creating an email appeal, a new website, and an online video. We also wrote them a fundraising strategy to help them grow their income and their ability to rescue the little critters that rely on them (two of whom came in personally to say ‘thank you’ on Saturday).

To help From Grief to Action’s work to support families coping with addiction, we created a new design for The Coping Kit, a set of support & information materials; a conference booth banner; banner ads; email appeals; direct response copy; and a fundraising strategy.

Back East, our teams created a new website, newsletter, and email appeals for Golden Rescue (golden retrievers), along with an online marketing strategy.

For Eva’s Initiatives we came up with a completely integrated communications and fundraising strategy encompassing direct mail, online appeals and pushes for Charity Giftbag – a new  online tool which was generously donated to all three Toronto Goodstock charities (charitygiftbag.org).  Eva’s will now be off to a great start, with three gifts already set up on this site.  Some website re-design recommendations were presented, as well as strategy for how to improve Eva’s retention and acquisition mail campaigns.  Full copy and design was developed for a new emergency campaign and a matching gift appeal.

For Annex Cat Rescue we put together a strategic document with our recommendations regarding how they can leverage the internet to boost their fundraising and strengthen the organization’s relationship with their members and volunteers.  This included a new vision for their website; a profile set up with CharityGiftbag.org; and creative ideas for email and social media communication strategies and fundraising campaigns.

The presentation of creative was emotional. There was a lot of laughter, and there were tears.  There were thank-you’s both human and animal (retrievers in Toronto, bunnies in Vancouver). 

The charities we selected, who we urge you to check out, are incredibly hard-working but small. They would never have been able to afford the costs of working with an agency, even non-profit-sector agencies like ours that keep their fees well below corporate standards.  As the President of From Grief to Action put it in an email received by our jet-lagged team on Monday morning,

“To receive the knowledgeable attention of such a spirited team for a solid 24 hours is a big gift – the kind that will go on giving (if you’ll pardon the cliché). You have given us so much to work with, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.  We are deeply grateful to you for this amazing Goodstock gift!”

Needless to say, this handful of charities have 30 new fans, and 30 donors-in-waiting for the moment their new fundraising materials go live.  We’ll be at FGTA’s 10th Anniversary Celebration in 2010; we’ll be standing up for women during the Battered Women’s Society’s The Violence Ends Here campaign in April.  And we’ll be wearing our art-critic hats at The Art of Being Together in support of L’Arche Greater Vancouver in the spring.  And it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the abandoned bunnies of Vancouver have found themselves a few new foster parents, either.

And next year?  Well, with 364 more nights to catch up on our sleep, we are definitely going to be doing it again.  A year older and – maybe a tad wiser.  We’ve learned to write copy first. We’ve learned that we don’t need quite so many food sponsors.  And we’ve learned that we’re really really good at what we do, and that there are lots of struggling non profits out there who can use a little help. 

Our plan next year is to challenge agencies in other cities around the world to join us, and give that help to a handful of worthy causes in their own backyards.

Are you up for it?

Morgan Cartier & The HMA Goodstock Team
Harvey McKinnon Associates, Vancouver & Toronto
www.harveymckinnon.com/goodstock