With over $30M raised, one of the world's most successful online campaigns
The United Nations Foundation was created by Ted Turner’s $1B donation to support the important work of the UN. Nothing But Nets is one of their most successful campaigns - an exciting web-driven grassroots effort to help save lives by preventing malaria, the leading killer of children in Africa.
While the UN Foundation had been working with the United Nations to 
fight malaria for years, it was a simple column that sportswriter Rick Reilly wrote about malaria in Sports Illustrated — challenging each of his readers to donate just $10 for the purchase of an anti-malaria bed nets — that led to the idea of more formally creating the Nothing But Nets campaign. That one column raised over $1M in only a few weeks.
The message is the navigation
Communicopia was asked to develop the digital campaign strategy to formally re-launch the campaign. We saw the campaign's power was its simplicity, so we chose to "bake in" the key messages - Malaria Kills; Nets Save Lives; It's easy to Help - into the very navigation of the site. When you work at Internet speed, you can't assume people will read your "about us" page, or read your catchy tagline - by making the message the actual navigation we helped reinforce what made this campaign so unique at every step of the user's experience.
In record time we then created a sporty design, built the site in what was at the time the still new open source CMS Drupal, and managed the tech vendors (our partners at Artez) to power the online community and “friendraising” features. Finally we called in our long time design partner Biro Creative to create the stunning Flash movie that became the centerpiece of the site.
From $5M to $25M in 2 years
The UNF’s original goal with this site was to raise $5M US. What happened after the launch amazed us all. Many of us are asked to "create" viral campaigns, which any logical mind will know is impossible to do. There are things you can do to increase the odds people will really take to your campaign, but the reality is, "going viral" is usually a combination of an excellent core product, timing, hard work, and also a lot of luck.
About 2 years after the launch, NBN had raised over $25M - the most ever for a grassroots fundraising campaign done by the UN. And it's still going, as of early 2010, nearly $31M has come in. One of our favourite stories was one very special $1M gift that came in from an email!
It's all about partners
One attribute that made NBN unique was how the UN Foundation made meaningful, deep relationships with strong, and kind of unusual, partners like the National Basketball Association’s NBA Cares, the United Methodist Church, and Sports Illustrated. The UNF wasn't so interested in it being seen as "their brand", which created space for the partners to make it their own, and really get behind it.
From a high profile launch at the White House, to being seen at 16 concurrent NBA half-time shows, to rolling out to the Methodist's multi-million strong membership, to being one of the 6 charity partners at the first American Idol "Idol Gives Back" (and raising $6M in one night), the campaign built an incredible momentum because so many different groups and individuals felt a sense of ownership, and invested their own reputational and organizational capital in ensuring it succeeded.
Together, we are covering Africa with life-saving bed nets. Visit the Nothing But Nets campaign site, watch the Flash movie, and buy a net today at www.nothingbutnets.net.
Communicopia remains engaged on a monthly strategic retainer to support the site's growth.
May 2007 Update:
We are excited to announce that Nothing But Nets was honoured with the web's highest achievement - a Webby Award for world's best charitable website, in the People's Voice category.