SM
ScaleFunder Case Study
UCSF Raises More
Than $141,000 for
Ebola Response
Healthcare Assistance
PARTNERSHIP ABSTRACT
Opportunity
Ebola dominated the news throughout much of 2014,
impacting not only areas of West Africa, but also the
United States. UCSF is one of the primary medical
centers in the U.S. for Ebola research, and had already
provided patient healthcare programs and care in Sierra
Leone for several years. With Ebola being the top news
story for several weeks that fall, the opportunity existed
to better fund UCSF’s clinicians and resources to treat
and prevent the spread of the virus.
Partnership:
The University of California, San Francisco, a top
university in the U.S. focused exclusively on health,
began partnering with ScaleFunder for crowdfunding
campaigns late in 2013. UCSF has been very active with
nearly two dozen of those projects in the first 15 months.
Opportunity
In the fall of 2014, you could not turn on the news
without hearing a story about the Ebola virus, an
epidemic which became the largest in global history.
For many years prior, the University of California,
San Francisco’s clinicians and researchers had been
volunteering to provide healthcare and training in West
Africa. One of those, Dr. Dan Kelly, was directly involved
in providing front-line leadership in Sierra Leone to fight
the epidemic.
The combination of a top clinician like Dr. Kelly, who
was actively and enthusiastically working to eradicate
a health-related issue that was all over the news, plus
UCSF’s fundraising work and resources generated an
opportunity to receive a $50,000 challenge match if
UCSF could raise $50,000 from other donors.
In addition to the ScaleFunder platform, the direct
partnership with the primary clinician, Dr. Dan Kelly, for
the Ebola support project paid significant dividends as
he utilized the updates tab found on the ScaleFunder
platform five times during the campaign period.
Results:
UCSF exceeded its initial Ebola response campaign
goal by more than 41%, generating $141,190 from 514
With the past success of previous crowdfunding
campaigns at UCSF, it was determined that the
ScaleFunder platform would once again be the best way
to generate the kind of grassroots response necessary,
especially through the clinicians’ own networks, to
achieve the goal while Ebola still remained at the
forefront of the public’s and media’s minds.
donors. In addition, the campaign success included two
realized matching gift challenges; significant social media
exposure; heavy usage of the platform’s update feature;
and a leveraging of the opportunity to cultivate some
newly-acquired donors for major gifts.
To learn more and to schedule an online demo
with ScaleFunder, visit www.scalefunder.com.
© 2015 Ruffalo Noel Levitz, Fundraising Management | 2015 University of California, San Francisco ScaleFunder Case Study
1
SM
Partnership
The University of California, San Francisco, a top
university exclusively focused on health, began
partnering with ScaleFunder for crowdfunding
campaigns late in 2013. UCSF has been very active
with nearly two dozen projects in the first 15 months.
In addition to the Ebola response support, UCSF has
conducted crowdfunding campaigns related to (among
others) neuroscience and cancer research.
The partnership between UCSF and its own clinicians
like Dr. Kelly proved to be very important in this case.
Their personal networks and contacts throughout the
world (including impacted areas in West Africa) gave the
campaign a significant boost in not only gifts, but also
exposure to other new, potential donors as UCSF knew
donors to this crowdfunding campaign would most likely
be newly-acquired donors to UCSF. As the campaign
progressed, many other members of the UCSF faculty
became interested in supporting the effort.
Overall, UCSF’s partnership with the ScaleFunder
platform generated more than $820,000 from 14,000
donors in its first 15 months.
Results
UCSF’s incredible results included not just exceeding
dollar and donor expectations, but also two different
matching gift challenges as well as an ability to
significantly grow the donor’s relationship with UCSF
with an eye toward major gifts.
Overall, UCSF generated $141,190 (including the multiple
matching gifts) on an original total goal of $100,000 –
surpassing its dollar expectations by 41%! The campaign
utilized only four recommended levels ($50, $100, $500,
$1,000), with all of those levels solely symbolic. None of
the levels included direct perks for the donor.
SUCCESS AT UCSF
$820,974
Through a combination of offline and online gifts for projects
on the platform, UCSF has raised a total of $820,974. This
is made up of $400,344 from projects that have closed and
$420,630 of projects that are still currently active.
13,996
23
12,156
1,840
TOTAL DONORS
(both offline and online)
TOTAL CROWDFUNDING PROJECTS
FROM CLOSED
PROJECTS
FROM ACTIVE
PROJECTS
The campaign started on August 13 with a goal of
$50,000 coming from general donors in order to
realize a $50,000 matching challenge gift from a
single anonymous donor. After hitting that goal, UCSF
increased the goal by another $25,000 – which they hit.
That led to the ability to increase the goal and extend
the campaign through calendar year end thanks to an
unforeseen matching challenge. A large company saw
the UCSF Ebola crowdfunding campaign and offered to
promote it to their employees with their own 1:1 match
plus an additional corporate gift.
© 2015 Ruffalo Noel Levitz, Fundraising Management | 2015 University of California, San Francisco ScaleFunder Case Study
2
SM
In addition to direct email contact between Dr. Kelly,
UCSF clinicians and their personal networks, social media
was a significant factor for success. The video contained
in this campaign was viewed nearly 2,000 times while
the campaign’s facebook and twitter share buttons were
utilized 210 times. Those 210 shares clearly had an impact
as the campaign page was directly accessed more than
2,100 times via a facebook or twitter link.
The updates feature on the platform was utilized five
times during the campaign, two of which came early in
the campaign and the third when the dollar goal was
increased to $125,000. Those first three updates, all from
Dr. Kelly, clearly motivated action with an average of 22
gifts received within a single day of each posting.
About the Ruffalo Noel Levitz
ScaleFunder platform
ScaleFunder makes it easy to leverage online fundraising
efforts to engage with supporters, motivate prospects,
and acquire new donors. ScaleFunder features a
custom branded platform for your organization;
enables supporters to see and feel the impact of their
gift; dynamically showcase projects and the impact of
giving; an easy ability for donors to share the campaign
through social media; and the inclusion of tiered giving
impact levels. All of this is integrated with your payment
processing system to deliver funds within your existing
business process framework.
Finally, the institution also decided to run wealth
screening on the 514 donors to the campaign, which
resulted in identifying several new major gift leads.
“
Dr. Dan Kelly was instrumental to the success of crowdfunding for UCSF’s Ebola
emergency response in Sierra Leone. He communicated frequently among his robust
social and professional contacts, used growing media attention to focus on the
campaign, and partnered with Development to leverage major gifts for matching gift
opportunities. Because Dr. Kelly was in Sierra Leone blogging about the experience
while he was leading bio-containment efforts, he told donors and friends how their
gifts—large and small—had helped the UCSF team to train local health workers in
effective Ebola transmission tracking and infection prevention and control.
“
Megan Smith
UCSF Senior Director of Annual and Special Giving
© 2015 Ruffalo Noel Levitz, Fundraising Management | 2015 University of California, San Francisco ScaleFunder Case Study
3