The goal of the declaration page was to attract new supporters to the cause and prime them for taking actions in the fight for the fur ban. Signing up = declaring to participate in making the fur history. 

We have introduced key changes when working on the declaration page:

• Less informing, more empowering – we made sure to use supporter-centric language, highlighting the supporter's role in consigning fur to the history. 

• No opt-in checkbox – opt-in was assumed as the default, because declaration signature was treated as newsletter sign-up, not as a petition signature. For new supporters, confirming the email (double opt-in) was still necessary.

• Better follow up – right after signing, the supporters were redirected to the Typeform questionnaire, where they were asked about their values and approach to fighting for the animals, and then asked to make a monthly or single donation.  Automated emails reminded supporters about responding to the questionnaire and about finalizing their donations. See the video below to learn more about Typeform.

In total, 1,19% of people who signed-up under the declaration became monthly donors. The total estimated donations in 5 years period is 366 400 € (one time donations + monthly installments, after taking attrition rate and agency fees into account). 

After extracting the 92 250 € spent on Meta ads (incl. VAT), the campaign's balance is estimated at +274 150 €. This wouldn't be possible if the telefundraising capacity hasn't been built before the most intense moment in the campaign. Typeform questionnaire and automated journeys acted as an additional donation booster, covering 22,5% of cost per signature in a yearly perspective.

In the 1st half of 2025 we used the simple write-to page to guide supporters through writing and sending emails to the companies that were not clear on their cage-free commitment completion. Additionally, we used a simple mechanism of confirmation buttons in emails to ask supporters for social media comments and other online actions related to both cage-free and fur ban campaigns. This meant that we had a group of a few hundred people we could try to pull in closer to the organization. 

We started out at the beginning of April 2025. We invited supporters who either completed a few different actions or were monthly donors and completed at least one action. This early start gave us a rough idea of what to expect: how active people will be and how time-consuming managing the community will be (if you're curious: much more time-consuming than we thought). At the time, we had no idea how helpful the community will be in the fight for the fur ban! 

At the peak of fur ban campaign:

• We had 162 people added to the community.

• People from WhatsApp community sent 3 310 emails to the lower house of the Parliament, 1 339 emails to the upper house of the Parliament, and 20 letters to the President. People regularly completed smaller actions, such as commenting on social media.

• A couple of people joined demonstrations in Warsaw and were among the most reliable and engaged participants.

• The community became a support network we could rely on, for example during pre-launches or the hottest moments in the campaign.

We had laughed together, cried together and fought together. The intensity of the campaign made the community come together. People consoled or motivated one another, sometimes even dealing with personal tensions without intervention from the community manager. One community member, a gray haired lady called Beata, became a well-known person among all activists for her strong motivation and deep care for the animals.

The goal of the website was to guide users through the process of writing and sending emails to the Special Commission members and its' President, to urge them to start working on the fur farming ban proposal and start the legislative process. When this pressure campaign started, the bill was sitting in the Commission for around a year.

This website used a few conversion-boosting techniques:

• Pre-filled sign-up form fields for existing supporters coming from emails

• If all of user's data was already in the database, the sign-up form was skipped entirely

• Automated emails – reminders about unfinished actions (see Resources & Materials for email examples)

Additionally, donation asks were incorporated into the user flow in the form of pop-ups, highlighting different engagement opportunities. The website displayed either monthly or one-time donation ask based on supporter status: active monthly donors were asked for a one-time donation, while everyone else was asked for a monthly support.

The goal of the website was to guide users through the process of writing and sending emails to multiple politicians, asking them to vote in favor of the fur farming ban.

The advanced version of the write-to page was necessary to handle sending emails to 460 politicians from the lower house of Polish Parliament.  The new website preserved important features from the simple write-to (pre-filled fields, recognizing donor status, automated reminders), and added new functionalities:

• Dynamic prioritization of the politicians, based on the priority assigned to the politician and number of emails already sent to this politician

• Complex user journey allowing for personalized selection of politicians (by political party or from the list of all politicians)

The website was developed by external partner: GreenPanda. Estimated cost of development was 19 000 €.

Impact

• 339 votes FOR the ban (including 100 votes from the opposition) – enough to potentially overrule the presidential veto. 

• 78 votes AGAINST the fur ban.

•  A significant indicator of success was politicians publicly thanking people for their emails during speeches, directly acknowledging the campaign's influence (see the video below as an example).

The goal of the website was to guide users through the process of writing and sending a traditional handwritten letter to the President of Poland, asking him to sign the fur farming ban.

After submitting the letter, the user can opt-in for a reminder at a specific time (via transactional email), or let us know that they have sent the letter in post office. Additionally, donation asks were incorporated into the user flow, highlighting different engagement opportunities.

The website was developed by external partner: GreenPanda. Check Resources & Materials for the developer brief. Estimated cost of development was approximately 11 000 €.

Action takers

When I started the campaign summary, I expected much more overlap between the groups of supporters who completed different actions. In the end, only 447 people took all 3 actions (emails to the Commission, emails to Parliament and the letter to the president). There was a bigger overlap between people who did both of the email actions: 1 200. This might indicate that it's a good idea to continue attracting new supporters throughout the campaign in order to make the pool of potential action takers bigger. People who took action before are likely to engage again, but you probably shouldn't rely solely on them, especially in a longer campaign.

Costs and donations

From the breakdown of costs and donation income we can see that although the campaign didn't "pay for itself" in the short term, in the long term the ROI should reach around 250%:

Costs: 125 150 € total

• 95 150 € for ads, incl. VAT (declaration and mobilization pages)

• 30 000 € for developing 2 websites on a short timeline

Estimated donations in 1 year: 50 800 € total | BALANCE: -68 600 € 

• 18 300 € from the write-to and letter-writing pages

• 32 500 € from Typeform after declaration

• Telefundraising starts generating profit after approx. 1,5-2 years

Estimated total donations in 5 years: 321 000 € total | BALANCE: 195 850 €

• 39 000 € from the write-to and letter-writing pages

• 282 000 € from the declaration and fundraising funnel

While these results need to be taken with a grain of salt, because they are based on estimations (such as assumed standard donor attrition rate), they highlight 2 important insights:

1. Having proper fundraising processes in place allows you grow when the campaign is at its' peak.

2. It really does make sense to ask for monthly donations on the write-to pages!

...if you care about the long-term sustainability and your next campaigns, that is ;)

Proper UTM tracking is a challenge

Knowing where exactly did your action-takers, donors and supporters came from is the key to scaling up your campaign and growing rapidly (and sustainably). Without it, proper cost-effectiveness analysis is near impossible. Unfortunately, there are many things that can go wrong:

1. Norms and habits – establishing a new norm of tagging each link, and doing it consistently, will take time and require constant reminders at the beginning.
   👉  Make sure to talk with your team members to get aligned on why the tagging and tracking is important. On your daily/weekly calls or meetings, spend some looking at the results together. Notice if there are any gaps in the data. Correct the course before the campaign is finished and you realize 50% of your conversions come from unknown sources ;)
   👉   Simple tools can  help you and your team stay consistent with the  tag naming convention.  Here is an example of simple spreadsheet  that makes the tagging easier by listing limited source and medium tags allowed.

2. The technical setup – be prepared  for things to NOT go well from the start. Especially if you're on a short timeline!
   👉 Here's a simple guide explaining how the UTM scraping can work on your website. Make sure that the developer(s) you're working with know how important implementing this feature is to you. 

Coordination is a full-time job

When you're overseeing and coordinating the whole mobilization aspect of a robust, long-term campaign, you won't have time for anything else. If you do – you're probably not spending enough time on talking with your team members, reviewing the campaign progress and strategising for the next steps. At the peak of intensity of our mobilization campaign, I was overseeing 2 teams (internal/community mobilization + public mobilization, 11 people total). At the same time, I was responsible for the advanced write-to development, being in constant communication with GreenPanda, preparing website content, testing and providing feedback. When the website launched, I was focused on catching the bugs that we didn't see before and putting out the flames, rather than overseeing and advising my team. I believe it led to lost opportunities for scaling up the campaign, as I explained in "Advanced write-to page" section.

Flexibility over rigid structure

As I described in the introduction to this deep-dive, in mid-2025 the whole organization shifted focus to increase chances of winning the fur ban. It wouldn't be possible if not for an agreement to think outside of the traditional structural setup of the organization, such as having separate campaigning, marketing and fundraising teams. Instead, we first asked what kind of people do we need to win the campaign, and then built a new temporary structure based on that. This structure was flexible and people changed roles during different phases of the campaign. 

If you're curious, here's how this temporary structure looked like (I do not recommend copying it though – you have to figure out for your own what is best for your group and campaign!):

• Strategy trio: Ola Bujalska (me, responsible for mobilization), Marta Korzeniak (responsible for public communication, such as media and social media targeted at politicians), Ilona Rabizo (responsible for political outreach and relationship)

• Each of us had a team of people working on one aspect of the campaign:

  • internal/community mobilization team (Slack, Discord, WhatsApp) and public mobilization team (newsletters, social media with mobilization CTAs, ads, influencer collabs)

  • political outreach team (contacting the politicians, attending meetings, research, setting goals for the mobilization team)

  • public communications team (media and social media catered for political impact)

People respond to what's relevant

Looking at the timelines of all mobilization websites uncovers a simple principle – people respond to the relevant real-world events and campaign breakthrough points. And if you aim for your campaign to be successful and have the breakthroughs, you should be ready to ride this wave of increased engagement. We did have experienced moments of increased engagement in our campaigns years ago, but with under-optimised websites and lacking fundraising processes, we were not able to grow along of having the impact. Which then made our potential for future impact weaker in return. 

The capacity for growth and impact needs to be built proactively, and in the moments when it doesn't seem that much necessary to have. Because when you need it – it's already too late. It takes years to build, and effort to maintain. That's the cost you want to pay, because if you make it just right, you begin a positive feedback cycle of continuous growth and impact. We're just at the beginning, but at the end of 2025 we could already see the change in our growth-related numbers, and it makes me optimistic about upcoming cage-free mobilisation campaigns in 2026.

If you only take one thing from this deep-dive, let it be this:

The capacity you've built yesterday can be your saving grace tomorrow. 

And if you keep growing while impacting, your impact potential will be greater in the next campaign; and then, during your next campaign, you'll grow some more; and then... you get the idea. The positive feedback loop is put into the motion. You are ready for gaining growth in the peak moments of your campaign, because you have reliable systems set up. You can be more flexible – you can launch campaigns and gain impact quickly, because you have all the tools under your belt.

Capacity building becomes the response to uncertainty, instead of something to be figured out after we know for certain what will happen in the campaign or organization as a whole. Because you know you will need it – sooner or later. The fact that the world is full of uncertainty means that you need more resilience and flexibility, not less – and building it requires proactive effort.

I keep asking myself: how would the fur ban campaign look like if we didn't launch the declaration page back in 2024? What if we haven't started building the Animal Defenders community in April 2025, not suspecting we'll need it so soon? What if the fur ban write-to page was our first one ever, and we couldn't build on the things we learned from previous ones?

We might have won anyway: mobilization was just one of the complex web of actions that led to impact. The political outreach and public communication teams were working relentlessly on making the ban happen. But I'm quite certain about one thing: we wouldn't have grown so much, and perspectives for mobilization campaigns in 2026 would be different. 

UTM scraping guide: [PDF]

URL builder for tagged links: [spreadsheet]

Declaration page and Typeform: [video guide], [Translated questions from Typeform]

Simple write-to page (misjadlazwierzat.pl):

• mobile screen recording – user flow

• best emails:

  • Name, this is a difficult message for me (story from the new investigation)

  • Their eyes are begging for help. You have the power

  • Name, this day have not happened  

Advanced write to page (czasdzialania.pl):

• user manual – video instruction

• best emails:

  • We have a conviction for fur farmer (story about intervention and convicted farmer)

  • The vote on the fur ban is getting closer and closer

Letter-writing page (listydoprezydenta.pl):

• Website brief for the developers: PDF

• User journey:

  • flowchart for developers

  • mobile screen recording 

• Best performing emails:

  • How often do you get letters?

  • URGENT: The bill have just left the Parliament

  • It's the last step, Name. Do it before it's too late

• Transactional emails: 

  • Double opt-in

  • Confirmation of form submission

  • Reminder about sending the letter via post office