Case Study
ISLA
The Ripple Effect
A full Ramadan fundraising campaign, built from zero in 6 weeks.
The Challenge
ISLA supports 420+ Islamic schools and 100,000+ students across the country. They produce research, run a national leadership retreat, and build toolkits that individual schools could never create alone.
Ramadan 2026 was coming up fast. ISLA had a $110,000 fundraising goal but no campaign in place. No email sequence, no coordinated social content, no donation page, no content calendar. Their small team didn't have the bandwidth to build all of it in time.
They brought us in to own the whole thing: theme, copy, visuals, infrastructure, and delivery. Six weeks to go from a blank page to a live campaign.
What We Built
Everything ISLA needed to run Ramadan, from strategy through execution.
ISLA's first coordinated Ramadan campaign launched on time Feb 18 and ran through the full Ramadan period.
The Campaign Playbook
Every campaign starts with a playbook. This is the strategic document we build before writing a single email or designing a single graphic. It gives the entire team a shared language, clear targets, and a phased plan they can follow without needing us in the room.
The Campaign Dashboard
We built a central site where the ISLA team could access every campaign asset in one place: emails, social posts, WhatsApp messages, the content calendar, and donation page copy.
Campaign overview with stats, calendar, and phased timeline
Every email, social post, and WhatsApp message mapped to a date
The Email Sequence
The campaign ran from launch day through Eid. Weekly story-driven emails gave way to a faster cadence during the Last 10 Nights, when giving peaks. Every email was written, designed, and loaded into Constant Contact ready to send.
Launch email
Weekly: Toolkit impact story
Last 10 Nights: Night 21
Eid: "We did it"
The Annual Report
ISLA originally asked for help polishing their existing Canva-based annual report. After reviewing the draft, we proposed something different: a dedicated one-page website that could tell the story better than a static PDF.
The Executive Director hadn't expected it. "The landing page for the annual report looks incredible," she said. In a follow-up call, she explained why: "The website tells the story better." Unlike the Canva link, the site allows tracking visitor behavior, embedding hyperlinks to school membership directories and corporate partnerships, and adapting to any screen size.
We made the visual identity consistent (the original had four different ripple variations and mixed imagery), gave specific formatting recommendations to their developer for the PDF version, and delivered the whole thing as a proof of concept that changed how ISLA presents their impact to donors.
Annual report landing page with "The Ripple Effect" theme
Letter from Dr. Shaza Khan, one of several chapters
Three organizational pillars with supporting descriptions
Staff profiles, partners, and board of directors
Impact numbers across programs, resources, and membership
Month-by-month 2025 year in review
The Donation Page
We built the donation page on theisla.org with Bloomerang integration, custom impact tiers, and campaign-specific messaging. The page ties directly into the "Ripple Effect" theme and gives donors a clear path from reading a campaign email to completing a gift.
View the live donation pageLive donation page with Ramadan campaign messaging and Bloomerang integration
How We Worked Together
Strategy First, Then Execution
We started with a campaign playbook before writing a single email. The playbook laid out the theme ("The Ripple Effect"), a three-phase Ramadan timeline, donor personas, and the messaging framework. Everything that followed traced back to it.
One Visual Identity, Everywhere
We created a consistent look (concentric water ripples on a cyan-to-purple gradient) and applied it across every email header, social post, and banner. The artwork was generated with AI and reviewed with the client for accuracy and representation.
Close Collaboration, Fast Turnaround
The Executive Director gave detailed line-by-line feedback on every email. We turned revisions around same-day, adjusting copy, regenerating images, and updating the live dashboard so the team always had the latest version.
Beyond Marketing
The scope expanded naturally. We sourced and compared print vendors for a direct mail campaign, built the donation page on their site, integrated Bloomerang, coordinated with their web developers on domain and analytics setup, and turned a simple annual report polish request into a full interactive website. We also designed an iftar flyer with WhatsApp-ready messages, provided UX recommendations for their job listing emails, wrote an urgency strategy document, and built the board activation playbook. None of this was in the original proposal.
Six Weeks, Start to Finish
Discovery and Strategy
Proposal accepted, kickoff call, campaign playbook written. Landed on "The Ripple Effect" as the theme. Defined donor personas and mapped out the full Ramadan timeline.
Creative Production
Wrote the full email sequence, generated all the campaign artwork, built the interactive dashboard. Delivered the first round to the client for review.
Feedback and Iteration
Detailed feedback from the Executive Director on copy, imagery, representation, and giving levels. Built the board activation playbook. Turned revisions same-day.
Infrastructure
Built the donation page, integrated Bloomerang, managed direct mail vendor selection, and coordinated with ISLA's web team on domain and analytics setup.
Deployment
Every email loaded into Constant Contact. Social posts delivered. Campaign dashboard live. Full handoff to the ISLA team for Ramadan launch on Feb 18.
Thank you for creating such a comprehensive, connected campaign. The language is compelling and powerful.
Dr. Shaza Khan
Executive Director, Islamic Schools League of America
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Social Media
Instagram and Facebook carousel posts timed throughout Ramadan. Each one told a piece of the ISLA story (the schools, the educators, the research) with a unified visual identity built around the water ripple motif.