Pursuant helps Washington National Cathedral

Turn Visitors Into Donors

Pursuant developed a microsite for The Washington National Cathedral that helped them cultivate visitors and convert them to donors.

Client Profile

The National Cathedral is called to be the spiritual home for the nation. It is a catalyst for spiritual harmony in our nation, renewal in the churches, reconciliation among faiths, and compassion in our world.

Challenge

The Cathedral has 400,000 destination visitors and worshippers annually. They needed better ways to capture email addresses and a welcome series to turn visitors into donors. The Cathedral also served as the official site of the 9/11 10-year memorial. They needed a website to drive traffic, solicit donations, and allow people to tell their stories.

Solution

Pursuant built a microsite for the 9/11 centering around “A Call to Compassion” that would cultivate visitors with a soft ask that didn’t capitalize on the 9/11 memorial to raise money. The site also engaged visitors by allowing them to share their story, and more than 400 did.

Pursuant also designed a welcome series to provide consistent communication with site visitors as the anniversary drew closer. Since the website did not make a hard appeal, the donors were cultivated and converted after the fact through email.

On August 23, between the initial engagement and the anniversary, the DC area was hit by an earthquake and the Cathedral sustained significant damage. In a matter of hours, Pursuant had an additional multichannel strategy that acquired names and email addresses, made an appeal to help repair the Cathedral, and converted visitors to donors.

Results

The “A Call to Compassion” site received 59,000 visitors and 145,000 page hits. 493 people submitted their 9/11 story, and 6,103 email addresses were acquired in three weeks.

The multichannel strategy for earthquake response generated 848 gifts, averaging at $118 each, with no direct asks. 50 percent of the donations came from first-time donors.

Client Quote

“Hiring Pursuant’s integrated service teams not only resulted in more donors and dollars, it also saved us at least 10% in expenses and countless hours of work managing several disconnected vendors. Pursuant knows how to get the job done, and their depth and breadth of service is second to none.”

Steve Schwab, Director of External Relations

How we can help you generate better fundraising results? Let us know.