CASE STUDY

Building an integrated marketing engine for a nonprofit social enterprise

A young chef preparing salads and plating desserts in a busy kitchen with multiple plates on a large table.

Photo credit: Emma’s Torch

CHALLENGE

Emma’s Torch is a nonprofit social enterprise whose mission is to empower refugees, asylees, and survivors of human trafficking through culinary education. Program participants gain work experience at one of Emma’s Torch’s social ventures: cafés, catering, and packaged foods.

The organization needed to communicate effectively with vastly different audiences: major donors, individual supporters, café customers, catering clients, corporate partners, and program participants. With no in-house marketing team, Emma’s Torch needed an integrated partner that could coordinate messaging across all stakeholders while driving results both for the nonprofit and social venture sides of the organization.

SOLUTION

November 2022 - Present

Mariner11 became Emma’s Torch’s fully integrated, outsourced marketing partner. We developed a comprehensive strategy that unified their nonprofit mission with their social venture operations, creating tailored messaging for each audience while maintaining brand consistency. Our approach scaled with the organization’s growth, leveraging owned channels and cross-platform coordination to help them exceed both fundraising and business goals.

✔ Cross-Channel Brand Coordination

Developed unified messaging frameworks that maintained brand consistency while tailoring content for distinct audience segments across fundraising, café, and program communications.

✔ Email Marketing

Transformed ad-hoc email usage into a sophisticated, segmented email program. Consolidated contacts from across the organization and created distinct audience segments. Developed a consistent cadence of two monthly campaigns to stay top-of-mind with different audiences. Leveraged the cafés’ software, Toast, to create automation flows that increased customer loyalty and generated sales.

✔ Social Media Management

Actively managed Facebook and Instagram, creating regular text, image, and video content. Launched the brand’s LinkedIn presence, turning it into the highest-performing social channel for the brand. Ran a year-long content campaign for the Executive Director’s personal LinkedIn page, resulting in follower growth and new donor conversations.

✔ Integrated Fundraising Campaigns

Executed full-scale marketing support for fundraising initiatives, including annual giving campaigns, gift box promotions, and matching gift drives. Designed all the print collateral, coordinated messaging across email and social media, and managed campaign timelines and logistics.

✔ Annual Reports

Wrote and designed the annual reports combining compelling storytelling with data visualization to demonstrate organizational impact. These reports serve as key stewardship tools for major donors and grant applications.

✔ Print & Collateral Design

Designed comprehensive print materials for café operations, fundraising events, and donor stewardship, ensuring seamless brand experience across all touchpoints.

Group of diverse people smiling in front of Brooklyn Public Library with a large sculpture and green trees.

A promotional flyer for Emma's Torch featuring a scenic coastal road during sunset, with text about cafe offerings like pretzel bites, biscuits, and granola, and images of snacks and tea.

Group of four diverse people wearing black Emma's Torch T-shirts and matching caps, standing outdoors and smiling, in front of a building. The cover of Emma's Torch 2024 Annual Report features.

RESULTS

$626K

Excess fundraised above campaign targets in 2022-24

2x

Funds raised above goal for summer 2024 matching campaign

531%

Increase in CRM contacts since Nov. 2022

40+%

Average email open rate (nonprofit benchmark = 20%)

10%

Avg. LinkedIn engagement rate since Autumn 2024 (benchmark = 3%)