Case study: How Hospic sv. Kleofáše beat its fundraising goal by CZK 70,000 thanks to early planning

Hospic sv. Kleofáše (St. Cleophas Hospice) raised CZK 367,000 during its Christmas campaign Zajiskřete pro hospic (Spark it up for the hospice) and won 79 new donors. The keys were a well-thought-out plan, an engaged team and consistent communication. Barbora Drachovská and Petra Pfeiferová went through the Na vlně kampaně (Riding the Campaign Wave) accelerator and, with mentor Lenka Stárková (Sue Ryder), took their fundraising to a new level. Read how they went about it – and let this year's campaign ripen in time.

🌟 From virtual candles to the Zajiskřete pro hospic campaign

The first campaign came about four years ago – as sometimes happens – with a minimum of time and planning, but with plenty of enthusiasm and Bára's technical talent. Thanks to it, she built a donation website with an Advent calendar. Donors could give money for hospice care and light up virtual candles in doing so. The whole thing more or less ran on its own, and around CZK 20,000 came in from social media. Given the little time invested, a great result. The following year, this idea gave birth to the Zajiskřete pro hospic campaign.

Visual of the Zajiskřete pro hospic 2024 Christmas campaign

The original goal of the Zajiskřete pro hospic 2024 campaign was to raise CZK 300,000 for the care of families with a dying loved one in their midst. In the end, thanks to amazing donors and the huge commitment of the Kleofáš team, an extra CZK 67,000 was raised on top, for fuel for trips to clients.

Planning

As the two women themselves admit, detailed campaign planning was not always their strong suit amid the busy day-to-day of the hospice. But they entered the accelerator determined to try a somewhat more systematic approach this time. Working with their mentor Lenka Stárková, then Director of Fundraising at Sue Ryder, they created a detailed spreadsheet of tasks and steps.

“Detailed planning in a spreadsheet with tasks and a timeline worked really well for us. When we found that ten different activities would land in a single week, we spread them out over time so we wouldn't lose our minds. And that proved very worthwhile. The whole process was much more relaxed as a result,” says Bára approvingly.

🗓️ Campaign plan step by step

1. Project description

2. Budget

3. Timeline

4. Tasks – responsibilities

5. Communication plan

6. Communication tools

7. E-mail mailings, UTM parameters

The goals set were not only hard – financial – ones, i.e. raising CZK 300,000 and 45 new recurring donors, but also soft ones – improving campaign planning and evaluation.

Clear accounts make good friends. Communicate numbers clearly and transparently

One day of care for one patient costs over CZK 3,000, of which CZK 1,020 has to be raised through fundraising. Kleofáš cares for around 8 clients at a time, and that is how their fundraising case is built. The CZK 300,000 from the campaign helped cover 36 days of direct care.

Specific amounts and their transparent communication are an excellent building block of a successful campaign. Donors can picture the impact their donation will have, and at the same time they build trust in the organization. Clear accounts make good friends. That applies in fundraising too.

Campaign results in numbers

🚀 Total amount: CZK 367,000 (goal CZK 300,000)
Number of donors: 195
Number of donations
- Recurring: 4 (CZK 1,200)
- One-time: 195 (CZK 361,000)
Campaign duration: 1 December 2024 – 6 January 2025 (the fundraiser on Darujme.cz was open from 4 November 2024 to 7 January 2025)
New donors: 79

📣 From the first line to the thank-you e-mail: what a successful campaign looks like from the inside

Discussions about what to communicate to donors, and how, were very thorough from the outset. What mattered was that the whole team got involved, both in those discussions and in preparing the actual texts and videos. When a nurse who cares for the dying every day writes or says a few sentences herself, it carries enormous weight with donors. It takes them straight to the heart of things. They can picture the whole situation better and connect with it emotionally, which is a key moment in giving.

If you have any materials “from the field”, whatever the field is in your case, be sure to use them as much as possible. Stories of caregivers, of the clients themselves, and also of donors can be very persuasive.

Nobody wants to hear about dying before Christmas

It is well known that the topic of dying is not exactly popular in our society in general. So how do you present it to donors, especially in the sensitive pre-Christmas period? Positively. Kleofáš bet on the metaphor of light and glow. “Maybe there is already enough of the light theme in the public space and maybe we will change it over time, but for now it works nicely for us,” Petra and Bára agree.

Their texts speak of light and hope, and they use sparklers both in their visuals and out in the streets. A bit of sparkle simply belongs to Christmas.

Kleofáš also used milestone celebrations for positive communication, both on social media and within the team. They barely had time to celebrate CZK 100,000, so quickly were donors adding more, and in the end they celebrated CZK 112,000 – but it is exactly these details that make a whole campaign authentic :). For CZK 200,000, a sparkler post was ready in advance and nothing was left to chance.

Celebrating reaching CZK 200,000. Social media post.

Another important theme of the accelerator was that success breeds success. People are more willing to join something that works. Once the campaign gets going a little, show donors the success visually too – so they can share it and celebrate it with you.

Thermometer (the so-called progress bar) on Darujme.cz

Use the thermometers on Darujme.cz – people see right there in the e-mail that the campaign is already running, and they will be more motivated to donate too. Simply take a screenshot of the current thermometer and insert it into your mailing editor as an image. (You can put a link to the donation form under it, but the main click-through will certainly come via your donate button.)

The big AHA moment. Your organization is not what matters here – speak directly to donors

Another fundamental shift in perspective was so-called supporter-centered communication, which you can read more about, for example, in this article. In short: speak directly to donors.

💡 AHA moment from Kleofáš

“Your organization is not the star of the show. Donors want to change lives – not support structures. Talk to them so that they feel it is they who make the difference.”

📝 Try changing your tone:
Before: “Support our hospice so that we can help.”
After: “Thanks to you, people can stay at home until the very end.”

“We changed the way we communicate with donors. We communicate what they can change. What they can directly do for those people, and we as an organization step back a little. Now we say – ‘You make it possible for people to stay at home.’ Before, we wrote – ‘Support the hospice so that we can help those people.’ It is really the same thing, but it lands differently with donors: they want to support that specific person or that specific family and be the driver of change themselves, and we (the hospice) are just the intermediary, who is not important in that communication. And that was our big AHA moment,” explains Bára.

Come at it from different angles, or: the multichannel campaign

There is plenty of marketing research showing how effective communication is when it runs through various channels, offline and online alike, however complicated the measurability of offline channels in particular may be.
In 2024, Bára and Petra used similar channels to the previous year, but intensified all their communication. For the first time, though, they used SMS, for example – and next time they will definitely use it again.

Campaign communication channels

🔹 Website
🔹 E-mailing
🔹 Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn
🔹 Regional bulletins
🔹 Mafra advertising
🔹 Radio spot
🔹 SMS
🔹 Meeting donors in person

To engage donors even more, Kleofáš also bet on the great power of personal encounters. On Giving Tuesday, they handed out sparklers in the streets of Jindřichův Hradec with stickers carrying a QR code leading to their Darujme.cz page. The day before Christmas, they sold little lanterns there. Both events fit beautifully into the light-themed communication and raised awareness of the hospice's work in Jindřichův Hradec. The branch in Třeboň is already well established and people know about it. In Hradec, they say, there is still work to do in this respect.

Facebook for acquiring new donors

On Facebook, the organization targets new donors above all. Donations came from both organic posts and paid ads. People coming from Facebook send smaller amounts, between CZK 200 and 300, whereas the average donation from existing donors in the campaign is CZK 1,000. So further work with these donors is on the cards. “Instagram we rather neglect 😊,” the two women smile.

Confirmed once again: mailing is king

CZK 142,000 of the total CZK 367,000 came thanks to e-mail mailings. That is almost 38%, which makes mailing the absolute winner compared to the other sources.

The Hospic sv. Kleofáše mailing list has around 1,200 contacts. Not a staggering number, then, but they are all highly engaged people. The open rate ranges between 30–35%. These are contacts gathered gradually through campaigns, or bereaved relatives who have donated before via Darujme.cz. Once again it turns out that it is not the sheer number of contacts but their quality that is decisive.

Measurement results using UTM parameters

Measuring with UTM parameters. Directly in Darujme.cz

A big change was the most consistent possible use of UTM parameters. They can be used directly in Darujme.cz.

“We didn't use them so consistently before. It really confirmed for us where the donations were coming from, and it confirmed some of our assumptions while disproving others. Most donations really did come from the newsletter; some donations came from the widget or directly from Darujme.cz. CZK 30,000 came from Facebook; organic posts and boosts of educational posts from our wall worked better. One worked beautifully – we also had a link to the campaign in it. The post was about how the hospice is funded in general. We also had a video in which a colleague, a caregiving nurse, said about three sentences with a sparkler in her hand. A few thousand came from that too,” Bára describes.

“Aren't we sending too many e-mails?” No. Send more!

“We feel we send too many e-mails – there were 5 in December – but we definitely have the potential for more. Another organization in the accelerator had 21 e-mails in a single campaign,” Bára compares. The average open rate at Kleofáš ranges between 30 and 35%.

For one mailing they also used the option of sending the same e-mail to people who did not open it the first time (resend to non-openers). This technique should be used sparingly and judiciously, but here it paid off. Several more donations came in with minimal effort.

Put the link under a button

They tested the donation link in the mailing in three different places: under the text, under the image and under a button. The button brought by far the highest conversion. So? A button. Use a button. You will find one in every mailing tool. Czech organizations most often use SmartEmailing, Ecomail or Mailchimp.

Thank-you e-mails went out to donors automatically. Automation can only be recommended. Kleofáš uses the Péče o dárce (Donor Care) system, which is also used for mailing.

Less is sometimes more – segment and communicate smartly

“We segmented our mailing nicely. We invited recurring donors to make an extra donation to the campaign, and we reminded people who donated in 2023 and invited them to repeat their donation this year. (One donor complained about why we were asking him for a donation when he is a recurring donor, but that was just one complaint; otherwise it was received positively.),” Bára sums up.

Summary: what we did differently, 2023 vs 2024

🔹 A detailed campaign plan
🔹 Involving the team from the start of the campaign – sharing the campaign's goals, progress and successes
🔹 More e-mails – 5 mailings in total to different target groups
🔹 Segmenting recipients for e-mailing
🔹 Celebrating milestones – not only publicly but also with the team
🔹 A social media posting plan and educating followers before the campaign starts

Conclusion: a story that sparkles with hope

The Zajiskřete pro hospic campaign beautifully shows that early planning, involving the whole team and clear communication with donors can work wonders. Hospic sv. Kleofáše found a way to turn even a difficult topic into a light of hope and solidarity. 🌟 Whether you are a large organization or a small team with a big heart – remember that every little flame of care that is lit can light the way for many people in difficult moments.

💙 Thank you for creating a world where kindness and dignity have a firm place.

Hospicová péče sv. Kleofáše has been providing support and help to the dying and their families in the Třeboň and Jindřichův Hradec regions since 2013. We care for the whole families of the dying and support the bereaved for a year after the death as well. We offer not only medical but also psychological, spiritual and social support to caregivers in difficult moments of their lives. We also provide other services: counseling for caregivers, respite services and a psychological counseling center.