GILDA’S CLUB TWIN CITIES

Gilda’s Club Twin Cities, the Minnesota arm of the national nonprofit, was preparing for their annual fundraising breakfast. Historically, these ‘Imagine a Place’ breakfasts have been GCTC’s biggest fundraising events, year over year. This year was special, though: GCTC was also celebrating their five-year anniversary — a significant milestone in the nonprofit space! They needed signage and other collateral for the event, but (as is true for many cause-driven organizations), they also needed to make every dollar count.

Opportunity

Create a cohesive array of collateral for the fundraising breakfast, including promotional materials, a signage system, an event program, table cards, and a sponsorship form.

Strategy

We started this project the way we start every project: by learning about the client. Before we get to work, it’s important for us to develop an understanding of the organization — what do they do? Why? What are their objectives and needs?

For Gilda’s Club, this meant taking a field trip! We needed to see the clubhouse for ourselves in order to truly understand and appreciate what it means to Minnesota’s cancer community and what makes it such a special place. What we learned is that while cancer may be scary and lonely, Gilda’s Club is precisely the opposite. GCTC provides support, resources, activities, and community to anyone whose life has been impacted by cancer.

Since this year’s fundraising breakfast was also a celebration of GCTC’s five-year anniversary, the organization’s leadership wanted to put a festive twist on the traditional ‘Imagine a Place’ theme, and chose ‘Celebrate a Place’ instead. With this theme in mind, we worked with the GCTC team to design event collateral that matched the energy of the clubhouse itself: warm, welcoming, and compassionate.

Results

GCTC hosted over 800 attendees at their 2019 Celebrate a Place breakfast and raised $275,000, exceeding their fundraising goal by $75,000. Thanks to our connections with local print shops, we were also able to save them over $1,000 on printing costs.  

In the months following the event, we have been thrilled to continue working with Gilda’s Club Twin Cities — we are currently partnering with them to develop key pieces of collateral for year-round use, including business cards and a tri-fold that tells their story.