Seeing Success: How Vision Australia's '100K Your Way' Campaign Achieved 54% Growth in a Competitive Market

In the last few years, the number of peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising campaigns has multiplied, but overall revenue has not kept pace. Despite this seemingly stale picture, Vision Australia's '100K Your Way' has achieved year-on-year growth — three years in a row. 

In 2022 — the campaign's pilot year — it registered 253 participants and raised $22,334. Fast forward to 2024, and those numbers skyrocketed to 982 registrations and $123,383 in revenue — representing a staggering 450% increase in fundraising and 288% increase in participants over just two years.

While the campaign mechanism is not unique in a market filled with runs, walks, and rides, it has seen exponential growth since its inception. This success is due to a focus on taking strategic insights from the data and turning them into powerful tweaks and optimizations to drive growth.

Here’s a look under the hood at the insights and strategies that have enabled its steady growth over two years.

1. Be flexible with name change

At the heart of this campaign has always been a focus on mission and accessibility. The campaign demonstrates that for someone who is blind or has low vision, the everyday task of commuting to work can be a challenge. 

But it took some finessing to find the right name. 

The campaign originally launched under the banner of 'Choose Your Own Path’, but after a slow start in year one, it was clear this name was too nuanced, complicated, and didn’t connect immediately with the audience. So, in year two, we made the big call to rename the campaign ‘100k Your Way’ — a clearer way to show it was a physical challenge and accessible to all. From there, the campaign received a 251% increase in revenue from year one to year two.

2. Focusing on the right audience

Health and fitness audiences tend to have high sign-ups but lack fundraising motivation, whereas cause-driven audiences have the latter in abundance. Our own analysis of the data reflected this. So, in 2023, we tightened our targeting and refined our creative to speak directly to cause-motivated audiences which proved effective — that group became the top fundraisers in 2024.

One of the other most significant insights was the increased potential of fundraising by teams. In 2023, teams out performed individuals, driving an impressive 89% more revenue. So in 2024, we again tightened our ad targeting, creative and messaging to speak directly to teams — this again paid off, with teams raising 229% more revenue than individuals, with a 57% higher activation rate.

3. Testing, learning, and optimising channels

Running a yearly campaign allows you to test, learn, and then integrate those learnings into future campaigns. In 2023, Meta and Search proved to be the strongest performing channels. So, for 2024, we refined our creative and targeting on Meta, while on search we expanded prospecting terms to align to cause-based motivations. As a result, prospecting terms drove 71% of registrations on search. 

Learning from 2023, we also found that the 'urgency' phase — which typically happens in the campaign’s final week — was critical for sign-ups, with 42% of registrations coming in the last week. We mirrored our efforts towards that insight for 2024, switching up creative and putting more media budget behind this stage to drive results. As predicted, our ‘urgency’ phase efforts yielded the highest average donation value and the lowest cost-per-acquisition across the whole campaign period. 

4. Building an internal fundraising culture

A common challenge for service-based non-profits is engaging a large portion of staff in fundraising efforts, as they are often focused on delivering services. In 2024 alongside our renewed focus on teams, we recognised this untapped potential within Vision Australia’s own 800-strong team and turned communication efforts towards driving engagement among staff members, leveraging their mission focus to boost fundraising efforts. Vision Australia organised initiatives to actively engage all staff members such as lunchtime walks and events at various office locations and service hubs. The result? A fully engaged organisation with two internal teams ranking among the campaign's top twelve fundraisers.

"How do you eat an elephant? Small bites at a time."

- Ian Finlayson, General Manager of Fundraising, Marketing & Communications at Vision Australia

The '100K Your Way' campaign highlights that even in a tough financial climate, gradual changes can lead to significant growth in P2P fundraising. Vision Australia implemented these strategic moves over two years, focusing each year on different aspects of the challenge. They set realistic campaign KPIs, enabling stretch targets once initial goals were surpassed. Additionally, they emphasised personal stewardship, with personal thanks and encouragement from the team complementing marketing automation. These efforts show that clear messaging, targeted audiences, and a strong internal fundraising culture can achieve remarkable results.