The Wildlife Sanctuary of Northwest Florida needs a new home. University of West Florida <a href="https://bitcomme.com/smarterx-launches-marketing-ai-month-to-expand-access-to-practical-ai-education/” title=”SmarterX Launches Marketing AI Month to Expand Access to Practical AI Education”>marketing students are pitching in/WEAR
The sanctuary — located on North S Street in Pensacola– has suffered from major flooding over the years.
“Every rainstorm there’s kind of a drum of anxiety within our staff,” said Leah Schultz, development coordinator, Wildlife Sanctuary of Northwest Florida. “Within the last decade, five floods have entered our building, the worst being six feet of water on property and four feet inside of our building.”
Now they want to raise money to move out of the flood zone.
UWF students conducted a capital campaign feasibility study to determine what would motivate potential donors. The group designed a survey for residents across Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.
“This was some research to basically confirm that they would have the potential to fund their new location,” said Dr. James Mead, Chair of the Department of Commerce and a Professor of Marketing at UWF. “We were essentially trying to see how they could best communicate with their potential donors and the community at large in helping fund that.”
They found prior donors are more likely to donate again, while story-driven messaging focused on the animals could prompt high value gifts.
“More people responded that they were more likely to donate whenever they felt like they were having an impact on the animals life, whether that be though the rehabilitation process or the hospitalization here,” said Ashley Alexander, UWF student and the communications/marketing intern at the NWFL Wildlife Sanctuary. “People were more likely to give because they were helping the animal.”
“We know that we are really well community-supported,” Schultz said. “But we needed a financial idea of what we could aim for for our facility since it is going to be a new build. What’s in our community’s capabilities?”
“Moving to a new facility is going to do a lot of things,” she added. “One, it’s going to guarantee our staff’s safety, but two, we’ll be able to expand the amount of intakes that we get without worrying about it anymore.”
The Wildlife Sanctuary’s capital fundraising campaign will launch next year. The sanctuary is not just relying on donors, but also applying for grants to help them cover the cost to move to a new 10-acre property.
“As we’ve gone through this process, we’ve had alot of community partners step up to work on this,” Schultz said. “Especially everyone knowing how long it has been in talks for. We are just really grateful for the community partners that have helped us — UWF being one of them.”
The sanctuary is still waiting to hear back on grants.
No decision has been made on a future property.
