#MarketingExcellenceAwards 2020 highlight: NVPC uses humour to save local charities

First founded in 2000, the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre (NVPC) started out a national benchmarking study on volunteerism in Singapore. It then subsequently became the national body promoting and developing volunteerism and philanthropy across all sectors in 2003, working in partnership with non-profit organisations, companies and public sector bodies to facilitate and strengthen community giving efforts.

NVPC’s efforts to promote philanthropy has never stopped since, not even during the COVID-19 period when social restrictions were implemented. Aiming to continue helping communities at need, NVPC turned to the virtual space to engage and educate Singaporeans through comedy. 

Its campaign “The City of Good Show: Saving Our Charities” won a bronze award in the category of Excellence in Content Marketing. NVPC’s good work was also recognised as a finalist in the category of Excellence in Event Marketing (Virtual).

Challenge

The multitude of goodness within Singaporeans was illuminated this year when NVPC registered a record-high of SG$20 million in donations on online giving portal, Giving.sg, in April amidst the pandemic.

However, most of the donations were in aid of charities and causes directly linked to COVID-19, such as those in support of migrant workers and frontliners. Charities under the arts and heritage, disability, community, children and youth, and social services causes experienced a sharp decline in donations, some as much as 80%. Coupled with circuit breaker and social distancing measures, continuing regular operations and programmes for the beneficiaries proved an uphill task with no clear end in sight. Thus, NVPC set out to raise funds and awareness for over 120 charities through a virtual comedy series show.

However, NVPC faced challenges as it is its first time organising a virtual fundraising series. The organisation had to grapple with technical issues, as well as understand the content and show format that would appeal to an online audience. Furthermore, unlike COVID-19-related charities that were top of mind, the charities that participated in the City of Good Show were not top “priority” in terms of public attention.

Strategy

There were four key objectives for the campaign:

1. Seeding NVPC’s vision for a City of Good, where people, organisations and leaders come together to uplift those who were most in need.
2. Fundraising for 126 charities who faced up to 80% in decline in donations. Every episode would target a different category of charities, with each episode featuring at least 14 charities.
3. Providing a form of entertainment relief in an uncertain time while educating the public on the needs of charities that had fallen under the radar.
4. Doubling the impact of the donations with Tote Board’s enhanced fund-raising programme, where donations to charities were matched dollar-for-dollar up to SG$250,000.

NVPC’s target audience for the campaign was existing and prospective donors aged between 18 and 54 years old including youths, PMEBs, Singaporeans and Singapore residents who resonate with the causes/charities. The success metric used was the amount of donations raised in aid of the charities under the City of Good Show.

The media channel decided was Facebook Live. This was because according to a study conducted by Giving.sg and non-profit organisation Tech for Good, Facebook was ranked as the top social media platform that inspires people to donate.

Execution

NVPC galvanised a group of local ground-up comedians to stage a pilot episode of the City of Good Show during the circuit breaker period in Singapore. After receiving positive outcome, NVPC then partnered Dream Academy to stage a series of seven weekly episodes of the City of Good Show from 24 June to 12 August 2020 with well-known comedians as guest stars. These comedians include Selena Tan, Pam Oei, Hossan Leong, Kumar, Chua Enlai, and Rishi Budhrani.

After the pilot episode, NVPC acted upon audience feedback where 37% of those who watched the 50-minute pilot episode felt it was too long. It then trimmed the subsequent seven episodes to 15 minutes. Additionally, NVPC timed the seven episodes as a lead-up to National Day, with the final one airing just after National Day on 12 August.

To amplify the campaign, various media channels was used to promote The City of Good Show: Saving Our Charities.

1. Giving.sg landing pages

A landing page was created for each episode, with campaign cards for each charity’s Giving.sg profile. This allowed a single link to be highlighted throughout each episode, and for prospective donors to easily view and select the charities they would like to support.

2. Facebook event pages

A Facebook event was created for each episode. Since the episodes took place on Facebook Live, this would be an easy way to get word out to the prospective audience, the majority of which would have a Facebook account. Episode three saw the highest turnout of around 200 people who tuned in live and close to SG$88,000 donated through the episode.

3. Social media content on Facebook and Instagram

NVPC used its social media channels to encourage people to watch the show and donate to the charities by promoting the performers and guest star for each episode and profiling the charities that would benefit from the donations.

4. Editorial content

NVPC also worked with its content partner WhatAreYouDoing.Sg to produce editorial articles for The City of Good Show: Saving Our Charities. These articles provided an in-depth understanding of the issues faced by the charities and included a call-to-action on the importance of supporting these charities.

5. Electronic direct mailers (EDMs)

Each week, NVPC sent out EDMs to its Giving.sg database of approximately 376,000 users and database of non-profit organisations with approximately 3,700 users.

6. Advertorials

An advertorial was also placed in The Straits Times, detailing the show and containing quotes from NVPC and the performers on why they chose to work together on this meaningful project.

Results

NVPC’s media pitches to print, online and broadcast media also garnered three interview features with Pam Oei and Hossan Leong from Dream Academy, Rishi Budhrani and Kumar, and NVPC. It also had eight event listings on newspapers and online publications.

The City of Good Show was live-streamed on Facebook during the circuit-breaker, the pilot garnered over 88,000 views and raised over SG$196,000. The follow-up series then amassed an additional 581,000 views and raise an additional SG$800,000. Compared to the baseline, that is an increase of 178% in donations for the charities.

NVPC also saw that awareness of the City of Good brand jumped from 14% to 16% and the awareness of Giving.sg from 36% to 45% in three months. In total, The City of Good Show reached out to an audience of 1.08 million and achieved a total of 581,000 views. A total amount of SG$806,027 was also raised for the 126 charities, with an average increase of 178% for the charities who were initially facing a decline.