The Green Chair Project

INTRODUCTION

The Green Chair Project is a non-profit dedicated to providing home furnishings donated from our community to families and individuals who are transitioning from homelessness or disasters and have secured sustainable housing. The Green Chair Project empowers families starting a new chapter of their lives.

Able&Co. had developed a pre-existing relationship with Green Chair by working with them on their annual Chair-ity Gala annual fundraising event. When Green Chair launched its Capital Campaign to expand their facility and, by extension, their impact on Wake County, they approached Able&Co. after being impressed with the creative results we delivered for The Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina and the grand opening of their newly expanded facility.

OBJECTIVES

The primary goal of the public phase of the capital campaign was to drive new monetary donations that would be earmarked towards the completion of Green Chair’s building renovations. A second objective was to build general awareness of Green Chair’s mission to help support members of the community on their path to recovery.

SITUATION

Green Chair had recently purchased the building they were renting for a fraction of the building’s worth, thanks to an in-kind price reduction by the owners. This gave them an opportunity to renovate and rejuvenate the building so that it would better meet the needs of the organization and the needs of those they serve.

The Green Chair Project‘s year-long private Capital Campaign goal was to raise $3 million for their building’s renovation. They reached $2.5 million of their goal and decided to raise the remaining $500,000 through a public capital campaign.

STRATEGY & CONCEPT

Green Chair’s private capital campaign was themed A Home for Good, which spoke to the good work the company does and the permanency of the facility.

Able&Co. was charged with the creation of a public-facing campaign that would ramp up to the grand re-opening of the facility and raise the remaining $500,000 needed to reach their $3 million overall goal.

Building off of the existing theme, we developed the concept of “Make Room” to be a movement and actionable call. The theme worked on multiple levels. First, we asked our potential donor audience to help us make room at the new Green Chair facility. Second, the theme alludes
to furnishing rooms for those in need. Finally, our concept speaks to making room in your own life to give and eventually volunteer. We broke it down into three main messages:

1. MAKE ROOM TO GROW – Covered the additions to the facility and all the physical aspects of the campaign.

2. MAKE ROOM TO HOPE – Provided information and statistics about understanding the need and specifically how the facility will help.

3. MAKE ROOM TO GIVE – Provided a call to action to give money toward the campaign and provided updates on the progress towards achieving the $500,000 goal.

IMPLEMENTATION

We created a dedicated microsite as the core of the campaign. The site was designed to keep visitors engaged with monthly milestone events that highlighted specific asks as we progressed towards our goal. The microsite also served as a way to keep donors and potential donors interested in the campaign and with Green Chair.

The campaign was promoted through multiple channels to drive traffic to GCHomeforGood.org. The milestone events were used as a touchpoint to reach out to donors and communicate the need. We used email and social media to promote awareness of the milestone events and encourage donations:

- Valentine’s Day – We created a day of giving on February 14 to honor the donor’s valentine, and donors received a pack of special greeting cards.

- St. Patrick’s Day – We created an open house event to honor volunteers and those who were making the renovation happen.
- Fitted Sheet Challenge – This event was promoted via Facebook, where participants posted videos of themselves competing to fold a fitted sheet, and bringing awareness to Green Chair and its fundraising.

We updated several Green Chair materials to help pull everything together, including their giving brochure, new development brochures, donor appreciation display concepts and more.

For the Grand Re-Opening Campaign, we developed a unique three-dimensional invitation resembling a green chair in a home setting as well as other supporting materials. Press releases and regular updates were also delivered. The Make Room logo and heart artwork were used on a variety of specialty promotional items for giveaways and sales within the retail portion of the charity, Shop at Green Chair.

RESULTS

Our work created a sense of action that felt like a movement around an organization and brought energy and life through a very positive and exciting message. The Green Chair Project’s Make Room Capital Campaign’s goal of $500,000 was reached during our involvement, and their grand re-opening was highly successful, with great news coverage and many attendees.