Disaster Response in Action

Challenge

Emergency response fundraising is a race against time. When a crisis hits, there’s a narrow window where donor intent peaks – but acting fast enough to capture that urgency isn’t always easy. Too often, valuable time is lost building campaigns from scratch, designing new creative, and waiting for approvals. By the time campaigns are live, the moment has passed, and with it, a significant portion of potential revenue.
CRS partnered with Further to develop a disaster response strategy that gets campaigns into market quickly, without sacrificing quality. Our goal was simple: create a process that allows CRS to activate omnichannel ads within hours of an emergency hitting the news cycle, capturing revenue before urgency starts to decline.

Strategy

Tapping Further’s experience in rapid response fundraising, we built a three-phase framework designed for speed to market.

Phase 1: Campaign Kickoff

We pulled from a set of pre-built, pre-approved templates to utilize across Meta, Search, and SMS – designed specifically for rapid response. From there, we quickly adjust the copy and creative to reflect the specific emergency.

Phase 2: Approve & Launch

With our campaign structure already in place, campaigns are routed for expedited review and approval. Everything is set up to launch within 24 hours, getting ads live during the peak urgency window when donors are most motivated to give.

Phase 3: Optimize & Refine

Once live, the team closely monitors performance. We optimize ads in platform and refresh creative as new updates, images, or information becomes available, keeping the campaigns relevant and impactful as the response evolves.

The Results

Ads were in market within hours of the headlines hitting.

37% of total gifts and 29% of total revenue came in during the first 72 hours.