In March of 2020, I was part of the team launching Malaria Partners International’s (MPI) most ambitious awareness building campaign to date. We set out to create a webinar series in order to accomplish several promotional goals:
Grow awareness of the fight against Malaria.
Build consideration that Malaria Partners International is in a unique position to support the fight to end malaria.
Strengthen connections between MPI and potential partners in the global health field.
My Role
As the marketing manager at Malaria Partners International I worked on several facets of the MPI webinar series. At its inception I worked with our team to develop our vision for the webinar’s implementation and its future. As we implemented the project, I lead the development of the marketing strategy to build awareness of the webinar.
Introducing the MPI Webinar Series
Networking is a crucial element to success for a global service NGO, such as Malaria Partners International. Building partnerships and growing awareness of what your organization can bring to the table. Non-profits that work locally have a community predisposed to supporting those efforts because they may directly affect people they know.
For a cause like ending malaria, it is not so cut and dry. Most people in the global north (ex. United States, Canada, Europe) may know nothing about malaria because it has been eradicated here since just after World War II. This can make it very difficult to build support because it is so distant, and they have no personal connection. Because of that, grants from other organizations such as the Global Fund, USAID, or The Gates Foundation are core sources of funding while MPI builds its audience for individual donation.
Because of that, grants from other organizations such as the Global Fund, USAID, or The Gates Foundation are core sources of funding while MPI builds its audience for individual donation.
The MPI webinar series was created to establish new connections or strengthen old ones to create something more significant in the future. Partnering with larger organizations added to our perceived legitimacy through proximity and grew our viewing audience. With the webinar series, we could reach our market at the moment of broadcast. It also created content for MPI to use moving forward across social media, at presentations, and on their website.
Voices on the Ground
We wanted to use the webinars as a chance to amplify the voices of the individuals actually doing the work in-country.
Tracking Success
As we were mostly concerned with building awareness and establishing partnerships, our primary measurements of success were unique attendees, attendance rate, and the organizations we worked with. We also paid attention to the spikes in visits to our website and an any increases in donations at the time of webinars.
While website visitations went up significantly around webinars, we did not track significant increase in donations around them. In part this may have had to do with launching the series during the COVID-19 pandemic, and people were less likely to donate to international causes anyways. But not seeing an increase in donations at the time did not bother us as it was not our primary goal and we aimed to push education and engagement over converting donors. In the future, the organization may seek to capitalize on its webinar audience to start drives for recurring donations.
