The $7.4 Million Christmas Breakthrough: Bush Heritage's Innovative Land Conservation Appeal

This article was initially published on Fundraising & Philanthropy Magazine.

Last Christmas, Bush Heritage was presented with a unique opportunity to protect hundreds of thousands of hectares of land and restore it for future generations. This was in the form of acquiring a 235,000-hectare property in South Australia’s Painted Desert, with a price tag of $7.2 million. 

But the challenge was doing it in the busiest season of the year, the fundraising peak of Christmas, during a cost-of-living crisis. For Bush Heritage, acquiring the largest piece of land in their history, required a campaign that stood out amidst the festive noise. They needed to position land acquisition as an exciting opportunity that not only cut through the clutter, but also resonated with donors at Christmas. 

They knew that existing donors alone wouldn’t be sufficient and identified the need for the campaign to attract new, younger donors who are passionate about climate action and resilient landscapes. To achieve this — and achieve it fast — Bush Heritage included paid digital as a key tactic in their fundraising mix, something they had never done at this scale before.  

Before any donations could roll in the door, the first step was enlisting the services of ntegrity — a digital fundraising agency specialising in NextGen fundraising. The ntegrity team dived into research to better understand audiences and their motivations at Christmas. The findings revealed insights into Australians’ holiday giving behaviour, and crucially, a growing public interest in supporting First Nations peoples and cultures. 

Based on this, they were able to craft a value proposition that met both sentiments. And so, Bush Heritage launched their campaign with a simple but powerful call: ‘Give to Country this Christmas’.

This strategic approach paid off spectacularly. Bush Heritage outperformed their target and raised $7.4 million total, with paid digital playing a key role supporting the overall campaign ask in market and in attracting new donors directly. This was more than enough to cover the property’s purchase and ongoing conservation costs! 

So how did the campaign achieve such incredible results despite the odds?

Here are some key strategies that drove its success: 

1. Positioning the cause in your creative

Bush Heritage’s campaign had a clear value proposition:

‘Donate to Bush Heritage to support interconnected conservation, grounded in science & culture, that will build climate-resilient ecosystems and protect wildlife for future generations.’

To bring this to life, Bush Heritage and ntegrity positioned the land acquisition as a way to ‘Give to nature’ for Christmas. To further emphasise their connection with First Nations people, they landed on the overarching concept of ‘Give to Country this Christmas.’

This idea resonates for several reasons:

• It aligned perfectly with the holiday spirit of generosity.

• It offered a sense of positive action and hope in a landscape often dominated by climate-related despair. 

• It resonated with audiences wanting to support First Nations work in meaningful ways.

Once the fundraising proposition was refined, Bush Heritage ensured the creative execution remained authentic and compelling. Recognising the land’s importance, they shot on location – capturing raw, unfiltered imagery that highlighted its beauty and ecological significance. This footage and stills became the foundation of their campaign, showcasing the area’s natural beauty and ecological significance.

2. Segmenting audiences by their motivations

Bush Heritage knew they could reach a larger audience if they could successfully stitch together differing motivations. To ensure their appeal would be noticed, Bush Heritage created key messages to resonate with various segments. 

This included:

• Protecting and regenerating land, which spoke to a broad audience. 

• Wildlife protection, targeting those passionate about preserving Australia’s unique species.

• And Climate-resilient landscapes, speaking to climate activists.

These key messages were seamlessly reflected in the campaign’s visual creative and call-to-action. 

3. Using a multi-channel strategy with digital playing a key role in broad awareness and narrow acquisition

The Give to Country this Christmas campaign was driven by a multi-channel approach that included telemarketing, direct marketing, and owned channels — social and email — as well as tailored asks for middle and major donors. 

The role of digital was twofold. Firstly to support the entirety of the campaign’s key initiatives — digital was the most cost effective way of reaching all of Bush Heritage’s existing audiences and informing them of the campaign. Secondly, reaching and acquiring new audiences to support the campaign.   

4. Testing and optimising 

A key element of Bush Heritage’s strategy was embracing constant testing. With ntegrity’s support, they activated paid channels such as social media, Google Ads, and Display, and developed a testing framework across creative assets.

One such experiment deployed a testing matrix on Meta to experiment with donation amounts via dollar handles and tailored messaging for different audiences on creative. Testing revealed that higher donation amounts outperformed the standard, lower fundraising asks — a key finding that wouldn’t have been discovered without testing. 

Paving the way forward

Taking a large land acquisition campaign to the market on digital channels is not a well-trodden fundraising approach. In many respects, the approach used by Bush Heritage was unique, it was bold and innovative — but based on solid research, audience knowledge and best-practices. 

The success of the Christmas campaign provided solid learnings such as: what messaging resonates with different audiences, the value of testing on digital, and the impact of urgency in driving last-minute donations. These learnings were integral in the planning for the next major campaign, EOFY 2024. The campaign had an equally ambitious target – acquiring  a 762-hectare property in Western Australia to create a 4000-hectare wildlife corridor in one of the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots.

With the confidence and insight from Christmas, Bush Heritage were able to raise over $4 million at EOFY where $2.9 million of this revenue came from the public campaign –  the highest revenue ever raised in their 34-year history and a 115% increase on the public campaign revenue from Christmas 2023. These outstanding figures were both a collaborative effort result of Bush Heritage’s foresight in the need to drive donations via digital, the incredible support of donors, and dozens of people across Bush Heritage. 

The results from both campaigns didn’t just exceed all previous Bush Heritage records and provide confidence that this is a successful approach to raise funds. It also resonated strongly with the public and their donors – securing two vast landscapes that will now be protected and cared for into the future and helped Australians to see Bush Heritage in a new light.