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For the Shmitah year 5782, Keren Hashviis approached us to create a brand-new division of their organization. The goals of this new women’s division:
1. Launch a new Shmitah fundraising campaign, targeted at women
2. Serve as a source of emotional and financial support for Shmitah farmers’ wives
We were creating an organization from scratch, and, due to the time limitations of Shmitah, had just a few months to do it! That meant building a team and infrastructure, branding and devising a misson statement for the new organization, creating awareness about our new campaign (and differentiating it from the Keren Hashviis campaign), and running fundraisers and events targeting our two separate populations: donors and the farmers’ wives.
In addition, we had two different target donor audiences who were at very different stages of the awareness funnel:
1. Anglo Israelis, who were already Shmitah-aware but needed to understand how the N’shei Keren Hashviis campaign was different than Keren Hashviis.
2. The international frum community, the majority of whom were not Shmitah-aware and thought of the mitzvah – if at all - as something that applied to Israeli farmers and had no bearing on their lives.
We needed to educate them all about the campaign and convince them to donate, to reach our goal of over $1 million.
Whew!
Here’s the step-by-step process we used to accomplish our goals:
A. Create mission statement and brand.
We started by developing a clear mission statement and set of goals for the N’shei Keren Hashviis. Once this was developed, we worked to create a package of marketing material that defined what the N’shei Keren Hashviis was and explained why a separate fund for household expenses was necessary. We created the branding for the new organization, with a logo and brand colors that were visually related to Keren Hashviis but in a softer, more feminine version.
B. Spread Awareness
Our next step was to spread awareness by reaching out to the public about the campaign. To do this, we harnessed the powerful force of personal connection, by creating opportunities for women to connect with the farmers’ wives.
How we did this: We used a two-pronged approach of in-person events followed by media dissemination.
Women emerged from our events highly connected and motivated to help out the cause. They were then encouraged to spread the message to their friends and families, using prepared marketing content: emails, videos and WhatsApp posts. In this way, awareness of the NKH campaign was spread quickly, via organic messaging.
C. Donations and Emotional Support for Farmers’ Wives
Once the awareness campaign had reached a critical mass, we transitioned to the next phase, which targeted our two primary goals:
- Fundraising
- Providing emotional support to farmers’ wives
For this phase, we:
1. Shifted to larger-scale events, both in Israel and internationally.
2. Targeted new populations, such as seminary girls.
3. Used our large email list, amassed during our awareness phase, to send out targeted fundraising emails.
4. Ran a large global 4-day campaign during the Nine Days, From Galus to Geula.
Branding
Website
Fundraising
Telemarketing
Email marketing
Trip planning
Production of the big event in Binyanei Hauma
Production of all international events
Mishpacha articles
Digital articles
International advertisements
Print materials
Video production
Original music composition
Call center
2-day international fundraising campaign
Interactive experiential call center
Farm trips
The N’shei Keren Hashviis campaign was wildly successful. We:
- Created a new phenomenon of farmers’ wives who were motivated and enthusiastic about keeping Shmitah. During previous Shmitahs, many farmers had dropped out in the middle because of pressure from their wives. For the first time - - this year, this didn’t happen; the wives were enthusiastically on board.
- Made N’shei Keren Hashviis into a recognizable brand name. Thanks to our highly successful marketing campaign, today the N’shei Keren Hashviis is a recognizable brand in the frum landscape.
- Ran super-inspiring events with farmers that became sought after across the world. As the year progressed, women in the U.S., England, South Africa, Switzerland and Belgium were reaching out to us asking to bring our event to their community.
The highlight of the year was our historic Binyanei HaUmah mega-event in honor of the farmers’ wives, which drew over 4,000 women both in person and on livestream and was a turning point for many of the farmers’ wives’ attitudes towards keeping Shmitah.
- Raised close to $1.3 million from nearly 6,000 donors.
