A campaign to celebrate 100 years of an iconic organization strengthening lives and neighborhoods across Greater Baltimore.
Celebrating 100 Years of Community Impact
United Way of Central Maryland provides programs and services that strengthen the communities of Greater Baltimore by promoting equity and increasing access to basic needs. They focus on housing, health, economic impact and education, and provide speciality programs like 211 Help Lines and Neighborhood Zones.
United Way of Central Maryland has been serving its community for 100 years — and they’re doing it better every day. They came to Teal for help strategizing and building a multi-channel campaign to celebrate their century of impact — 100 Years: United for Our Futures.
Raising awareness, increasing engagement, and boosting donations
United Way of Central Maryland wanted to use the campaign as an opportunity to improve brand awareness, and elevate engagement among current and potential supporters and donors. Teal set to work creating a long-term plan that would come to life over the next year and a half. The plan included steps to:
Support United Way in their efforts to reach their fundraising goal of $20M
Attract new audiences, especially Gen Z, to build out a supporter base for the future
Deepen engagement with existing, but perhaps lapsed, supporters and donors
Retain dedicated, long-term donors, especially Boomers
All of Teal’s creative work positions United Way of Central Maryland as a dynamic, vibrant, and trusted force for good while establishing meaningful connections with audiences to ensure that their impact resonates for the next 100 years.
Establishing a brand & messaging foundation
To set the campaign up for success, Teal developed a creative platform around the theme of “amplify” that drove decisions going forward. We worked with United Way of Central Maryland to develop a manifesto and messaging framework that would guide how we talk about the campaign across all marketing channels.
On the visual side, we created a new campaign logo and brand kit that elevates the brand attributes of Community, Courage, Forward Thinking and Transformation.
Building a digital donation platform for a better future
With our creative platform in place, we turned our attention to building engagement and increasing donations. Riffing off the traditional concept of getting your name on a brick when you donate, we developed an innovative new idea – the digital brick wall.
The digital brick wall — everybody’s campaign
We wanted to make donations, and bricks, accessible to donors of all levels. Whether they give $1 or $1M, every single donor can get their name on the wall. When donating through the brick wall, users can “build their brick” by choosing colors and patterns to display along with their name. The digital nature of this solution also lets United Way display it on large screens at in-person events and venues.
Teal’s developers worked closely with the United Way IT team to integrate their donation form into the digital brick wall. Once the donation is complete, the wall updates with real-time data so donors can immediately see their brick on the wall.
Wide-display formats for in-person events
The brick wall was built to be flexible enough to live as a landing page online, and also flex to be displayed on large screens at fundraising and celebration events.
Creating strategic content for socials, email, and ads
To round out our multi-channel campaign, we turned our strategic brains to digital marketing. With a central goal of the campaign being focused on raising the number of small dollar donors, we used social, email and ads to drive up engagement. Partnering with United Way, we helped weave low dollar asks into their ongoing social and email calendar.
Social media
Social media efforts focused on telling the stories of those who make United Way tick. Pulling out quotes and personal photos boosted engagement, while branded graphics set the stage for campaign awareness and the excitement to come.
Email
On email, we helped build several re-engagement campaigns around donors that had dropped off lists in recent years, sharing stories of impact and asking for several dollars to help efforts in the next 100 years.
Ad buys
Fundraising ads were focused around direct-to-camera video asks on Meta and TikTok, and several lower-spend Google buys direct folks to the campaign landing page. Now we can drive traffic and reach folks that are already searching for information on United Way of Central Maryland.
Continuing the momentum
Be sure to check back for updates on the campaign as we continue the celebration into 2025!
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Project Team
Teal Media is a woman-led creative agency that builds brands and websites for nonprofits, foundations, and mission-driven organizations. We have a core presence in Washington, DC and Detroit, MI.
