The NAACP needs no introduction. For over 100 years, its work to defeat racism in our political, social and legal landscape has driven astonishing transformation — but its work is not done. The whitelash following President Obama’s presidency and the hate and division stirred up by his successor required a new kind of mobilization on behalf of people of color and the NAACP’s original founding group, African Americans.

However, the NAACP was far from maximizing the mobilization and fundraising power of its immense supporter base — one with reach in every pocket of the country. The organization needed a far more flexible digital infrastructure and fresh strategic approaches to communicating across a vast and varied demographic. When the NAACP partnered with DBT, they sought a collaborator to help create a unified message for the organization, activate donors and volunteers, and overcome internal politics and stakeholder differences to unleash the organization’s power in full at a critical time.

From late 2018 till spring of 2020, DBT helped bring the NAACP into the future. Our collaboration included:

Radical improvement of email performance: leveraging data to better engage current and prospective NAACP donors, offering member incentives to cultivate donors into members, and prioritizing engagement of a new generation of passionate, socially conscious younger donors. Highlights included re-engaging over 26,000 active email supporters, increasing open rates by 15% and click through rates by 18%, and unsubscribe rates decrease by 40%.

Message Optimization: Alums from President Obama’s fundraising teams assisted in standardizing and optimizing email messaging. From recommendations on formatting and A/B testing, to the cultivation of multiple organizational voices, to the introduction of a quality QA process, DBT equipped the NAACP with a stronger foundation for rapid response as well as day-to-day messaging.

New Digital Tools: When it comes to maximizing social impact, there is no stinting on the right tools and technologies. With leadership from the NAACP team, DBT helped the organization migrate from Blackbaud to EveryAction, including the transition of forms and creation of new custom templates on the website and email. DBT provided strategic counsel and support around the technical buildout, implementation, training and database connectivity. We also, among many technical projects, created financial intake forms so that NAACP could more easily collect membership dues from affiliates across the country.

It was our privilege to partner with one of the nation’s most indispensable racial justice organizations, and this engagement served as a prelude to our work with other, similar organizations like Advance Native Political Leadership.