Colel Chabad:

Multi-Channel Digital Fundraising at Scale

When a 236-year-old humanitarian organization wanted to bring its donor outreach into the digital age, Colel Chabad partnered with Optidge to reinvent how it inspires and sustains giving.

What we delivered:

  • Built an integrated paid media and SEO strategy tailored for Jewish giving cycles and year-round support.
  • Activated paid search and paid social campaigns with creative and targeting designed to engage both long-time and first time donors.
  • Strengthened organic visibility with optimized content and technical SEO fixes.

The result: Colel Chabad turned its digital presence into a modern fundraising engine that attracts new donors, grows recurring giving, and earns industry recognition; culminating in a Crystal Award finalist honor for Best Non-Profit Marketing Campaign.

The Situation

Colel Chabad has provided food, healthcare, and critical social services across Israel for more than two centuries. But as online giving became a primary channel for charitable support, leadership realized their traditional donation model could not keep pace with donor expectations.

To continue serving the most vulnerable, Colel Chabad needed a scalable, measurable, and seasonally agile digital fundraising program that could reach a global Jewish and philanthropic audience.

The Challenge

Colel Chabad turned to Optidge for a solution that could meet the following demands and build long-term donor relationships:

  • Seasonal urgency: Key giving windows, High Holidays, Chanukah, and other cultural moments, demanded rapid campaign launches and fast pivots.
  • Global, diverse donor base: Messaging had to resonate with audiences spanning multiple countries, languages, and levels of familiarity with Colel Chabad’s mission.
  • Measurable ROI: Stakeholders required clear evidence that every marketing dollar was producing real impact.

The Optidge Approach

Paid Search: Precision Meets Scale

The paid search program became the engine of rapid, high-intent giving. Optidge architected the account around donor intent and holiday rhythms:

  • Granular campaign structure: Separate evergreen donation campaigns ran alongside seasonal pushes for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Thanksgiving, and Chanukah.
  • Smart bidding and keyword strategy: Combination of branded protection, competitor targeting, and Jewish-holiday keyword clusters ensured Colel Chabad stayed visible to both loyal supporters and new prospects.
  • Performance Max and Demand Gen: Leveraged Google’s full ecosystem (Search, Display, YouTube, and Discovery) to capture audiences at different stages of the giving journey.
  • Live budget optimization: Daily monitoring and bid adjustments ensured that as costs or opportunities shifted, spend always flowed to the best-performing campaigns.

This disciplined structure turned paid search into a real-time fundraising driver, keeping acquisition costs low while maximizing seasonal spikes.

Paid Social & Storytelling

To complement high-intent search, Optidge ran Meta prospecting and retargeting campaigns featuring family-centered creative and emotionally resonant calls to action. Dynamic content and recurring giving prompts encouraged donors to become monthly supporters, strengthening lifetime value.

SEO for Sustainable Growth

In parallel, Optidge implemented content and technical SEO enhancements—from persistent donate CTAs to optimized seasonal blogs—so Colel Chabad could continue reaching donors organically long after paid campaigns ended.

The Results

The integrated paid search, paid social, and SEO program didn’t just meet expectations, it redefined digital fundraising for Colel Chabad. These results earned Colel Chabad a coveted spot as a Finalist for the 2025 AMA Crystal Award for Best Non-Profit Marketing Campaign, while providing a sustainable digital model that will power giving far beyond one fundraising season.

Highlights:

  • An overall return on ad spend (ROAS) of nearly 12:1, with paid search holiday campaigns topping 15:1 at peak in Q4 2024.
  • 25% of donors set up recurring gifts, creating a strong long-term revenue stream
  • SEO-driven content contributed several hundreds of thousands of dollars in organic revenue during the same period

Takeaways

The integrated strategy delivered more than impressive metrics; it redefined how a centuries-old nonprofit engages the world:

  • Modern fundraising engine: Colel Chabad now runs a repeatable, year-round digital program capable of scaling up or down with each giving season.
  • Global donor reach: Paid and organic channels now bring in first-time and recurring donors from around the world, strengthening financial resilience.
  • Industry recognition: The campaign’s creativity, measurable ROI, and community impact earned a 2025 AMA Crystal Award finalist spot.

Perhaps most important, the new system leaves Colel Chabad better equipped for the future with a donor base that is broader, more engaged, and more sustainable than ever.

Colel Chabad’s journey shows how strategic paid media and SEO can multiply impact for mission-driven organizations. With the right mix of precision targeting, emotionally compelling creative, and agile optimization, even the most historic nonprofits can thrive in the digital era.

To learn more about Colel Chabad, visit their site at https://colelchabad.org/.

What’s next?

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