Arche Zürich supports people in difficult life situations, with a particular commitment to families, children, and socially disadvantaged individuals. Its services and projects deliver practical, everyday help, and bring people closer together by fostering stability and a sense of community.

The Situation

For many non-profit organizations, the final weeks of the year are the single most important period in the entire fundraising calendar. And this is exactly when it's hardest to stand out. Countless charities are fighting for the same attention, and every day people are flooded with emotional pleas and calls to give.

Arche Zürich, too, faced the challenge of making its message visible in this environment without coming across as interchangeable or overwrought. What was needed was not a conventional donation campaign with generic messaging, but communication that moves people emotionally, stays credible, and reaches them in a lasting way.

There are many NGOs in and around Zürich, and Arche Zürich has spent years watching how they position themselves at this time of year. For its end-of-year campaign, the Arche had one goal: to bring in as many donations as possible. And it wanted to reach that goal with a calm, fitting tone rather than a loud appeal.

The Challenge: A Message People Believe In

A fundraising campaign in the social sector works differently from regular advertising. Reaching a lot of people isn't enough. What really matters is whether people trust the organization, because they give where the message feels honest.

For the Arche, that meant something specific. The campaign had to move people, but without making anyone feel guilty. Instead of dramatic images, we wanted a calm, family-focused look that fits the work the Arche actually does.

There was also a practical side. A campaign today runs across many channels at once, from search ads to social media to video. These pieces shouldn't just run side by side. They should fit together. Anyone who sees an ad and then lands on the website should know right away that both belong to the same campaign.

The Solution: From Persona to Finished Campaign

Together with Arche Zürich, W4 built the whole campaign. The first step wasn't an ad. It was a simple question: who actually donates, and why?

Personas and Pain Points In a deep-dive, we created four donor personas, from the well-off interior designer to the foundation manager to the young first-time donor. As different as these people are, one thing connected all of them: trust. Where does my money go? Does it really help? Who is behind the organization? Can I believe in them? These questions became the starting point for everything else.

The Message From these questions, we shaped the campaign's message. It wasn't meant to ask for pity. It was meant to build trust and show the Arche as a reliable partner for families in Zürich. Building on this, our team developed three creative concepts, all with the same goal: making that trust visible. The "Lifeline" (Lebenslinie) concept shows a video of a single line. It runs along calmly, turns rough and jagged when life gets hard, and finally settles into the shape of a family. It's a picture of support when it matters most.

An Anchor of Trust Arche Zürich already had a well-known line, "Here for our community since 1980," and we brought it into the campaign together with the ZEWO certification mark. The founding year says a lot on its own: experience, steadiness, and reliability. These were exactly the values the personas cared about most. That made the line a strong anchor of trust across every channel.

Production and Visuals For the campaign, we could draw on a set of professional images provided by Arche Zürich. From these, we built the visuals and the video for YouTube and Performance Max. We shaped the look, the text, and the ads together with the Arche, always around the personas and the main message.

A Campaign That Works as One One key goal was for the campaign to feel like a single whole across every platform. It ran on Google Search Ads, Performance Max, YouTube, Google Display, and Meta. Google Search reaches people who are already looking for a way to donate, while Performance Max, YouTube, and Meta bring in new audiences. The same images, the same message, and the same tone ran on all of them. A landing page tied everything together and led straight to the donation form, so anyone coming from an ad knew right away that it all belonged together. To make this work, we did keyword research, wrote the ad copy, and adapted each format to its platform.

The Result

The campaign went live at the end of October and ran through November and December, the weeks when people actually give. It was a real success. The Arche saw strong donations come in, and Performance Max and YouTube brought in extra donations and new contacts on top of that. The direction worked just as well. Focusing on families and children instead of casting a wide net paid off, and the Arche was happy with the strategy, the work, and the result.

Conclusion

We look back on this project with real pleasure. Arche Zürich has done important work for more than four decades, and we were able to help it reach more people during the most important time of the year and beat its fundraising goals. From the first persona to the last ad, we built a campaign that holds together and reached exactly the people who mattered.

Are you planning a fundraising campaign and looking for a partner who starts with the strategy, not the ad? We'd be glad to help.