Data isn’t a nice-to-have for nonprofits; it’s a non-negotiable. Why? Data helps organizations measure the true impact of their campaigns and provides stakeholders with clear, transparent information on how funds are being used.
Here at Bitly, we know that collecting and making sense of data can sometimes feel like untangling a big ball of yarn. And our nonprofit customers are showing just how powerful and transformative it can be with the right tools in place. They’re leading the way with Bitly Analytics by turning powerful data into actionable insights that drive meaningful impact.
Discover how these nonprofits are transforming data into insights that fuel engagement, measure success across platforms, and make a profound difference. Let’s explore their stories!
Outreach optimization and effectiveness
Nonprofits like Zoé, the Australian South Asian Centre, and The Cycle Effect use Bitly to track and optimize their outreach and marketing efforts across multiple channels—from social media and email to print materials. Let’s dive into how these nonprofits are using data to achieve better outcomes and make a lasting impact.
Zoé: Improving outreach strategies
Zoé is a Brazilian nonprofit organization dedicated to caring for communities in the Amazon forest. They offer medical services and train local professionals to provide assistance in Northern Brazil, where doctors are scarce. Part of their work includes regular expeditions using hospital boats to reach remote areas, ensuring that healthcare is accessible to those who need it the most.
The team recently won the Prêmio Humanizar a Saúde 2024 for their “Expedições Médicas Zoé” project, which provides essential healthcare to remote Amazonian communities. To help promote their organization and encourage more votes, Zoé ran a WhatsApp campaign that leveraged Bitly’s API to generate unique Bitly Links for over 15,000 messages.
Thanks to the Bitly Connections platform, the team was able to track every link and see the total number of votes each volunteer brought in. Based on that data, they then created a volunteer engagement challenge, awarding prizes to those with the most votes—a campaign that contributed to their ultimate success!
Australian South Asian Centre: Focusing on the right channels
Australian South Asian Centre is a nonprofit dedicated to empowering underrepresented Indian, Pakistani, and South Asian women living in Australia. Through programs, memberships, awards, and creative productions, they showcase talent and create opportunities for these women to thrive and make a meaningful impact.
They’re using Bitly to measure and track their campaigns over time, allowing them to determine which platforms they should invest more time in. For example, they’ve used Bitly Links to share their Australia’s Stellar South Asian Women Awards nomination and ticket page across LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and email.
By leveraging powerful analytics, they can pinpoint which platforms are getting the highest engagement and learn from their findings. With these insights, they can confidently direct their efforts toward these specific channels to spread their message further.
The Cycle Effect: Tracking offline materials to see their impact
The Cycle Effect is a nonprofit organization located in Colorado. They empower female-identifying and nonbinary participants through mountain biking to build brighter futures and stronger communities.
Their programs foster a sense of belonging, promote physical and mental well-being, encourage community engagement, and cultivate leadership—all while ensuring everyone has fun outdoors. They also provide bikes, gear, transportation, bilingual coaching, and affordable programming to make it financially inclusive to those who join.
They use the Bitly Connections Platform to create QR Codes for event materials and direct mailers sent to donors. The marketing manager at The Cycle Effect shared that they now include QR Codes on event collateral, linking directly to their newsletter sign-up page—an essential tool for keeping their audience engaged.
Having QR Codes on their print materials allows the organization to connect with interested individuals at in-person events, guiding them to their newsletter with just a quick scan. The best part? Bitly Codes are trackable, which helps them see exactly how many people scanned them at the event. Tapping into the data will help them determine if the investment in printing QR Codes leads to more sign-ups, or whether they need to adjust their strategy to reach more people.
Audience engagement and communication preferences
Nonprofits rely on the Bitly Connections Platform to understand how their messages are received and adjust strategies to maximize their impact. Nonprofits such as The Legal Resource Center, Mission Bit, and Helplink Mental Health show us how they learn about their audiences’ preferences with robust analytics.
The Legal Resources Centre: Refining messaging
The Legal Resources Centre (LRC) is a nonprofit public interest law center based in South Africa that empowers individuals and communities by harnessing the law to promote social justice, championing equality, and upholding the human rights enshrined in the South African Constitution.
LRC uses Bitly Analytics to track link performance across platforms, continuously analyzing data to sharpen their messaging and amplify their organization’s impact. By extracting insights from in-depth analytics, they can adjust their strategy to create campaigns and content that genuinely connect with their audience.
Mission Bit: Keeping a pulse on online and offline campaigns
Mission Bit is a nonprofit located in San Francisco dedicated to teaching computer science to adolescents, primarily focusing on youth of color who are underrepresented in tech. Their vision is to empower and inspire young innovators to become tech leaders, equipping them to develop solutions that benefit their entire community.
Mission Bit uses short links in their email campaigns and adds customized QR Codes to their mailers. Thanks to Bitly Analytics, they can monitor both online and offline campaigns side by side, tracking scans and clicks to understand the full impact of their initiatives.
With this rich data in their pockets, they can measure performance over time, identify where their donors are coming from, and gain data-informed clarity on what’s working and what’s not, as well as how their message is being received.
Helplink Mental Health: Allocating resources
Helplink Mental Health is a nonprofit offering counseling and mental health services to Irish citizens both in-country and living abroad. Their mission is to provide low-cost or free mental health services to Irish citizens worldwide, offering support in areas ranging from couples counseling to gambling addiction programs.
This organization uses the Bitly Connections Platform to create short links to share content on their social media channels and across digital ads, along with QR Codes for offline campaigns. To tie it all together, they rely on Bitly Analytics to monitor clicks and scans.
Helplink Mental Health finds tremendous value in our user-friendly analytics feature, which anyone can pick up quickly, regardless of their background in data analysis or marketing. With clear insights at their fingertips, they can quickly identify which campaigns are making the biggest impact, helping them make smarter budget decisions and focus on allocating resources where they’re needed the most.
This clarity, in turn, allows them to share results more transparently with their board and directors, showing them exactly how funds are used and the meaningful outcomes they’ve achieved across their campaigns.
Tracking interest and understanding audience behavior
With Bitly’s tracking features, nonprofits can monitor the success of donation drives, gauge interest in the programs in real-time, and apply for grants more confidently. Let’s dive into the powerful stories of Refire Culinary and Stepping Stone House, and learn how they discovered the power behind Bitly Analytics to refine their strategies.
Refire Culinary: Monitoring student application interest
Refire Culinary, a nonprofit organization based in Tallahassee, Florida, offers a culinary training program specifically for individuals with felony convictions. Crafted by culinary experts, their curriculum is designed to equip graduates with the skills, experience, and certifications needed to re-enter society and find meaningful work in the food service industry.
Refire Culinary uses Bitly Codes to simplify the application process offline. They also create Bitly Links to share the job application page online, allowing students to apply quickly while tracking link engagement to gauge student interest in applications. Sifting through this data helps organizations like Refire Culinary identify where the clicks are coming from, revealing areas with the highest interest and allowing them to focus on the locations with the highest click rate.
Stepping Stone House: Tailoring messages to appeal to donors
Stepping Stone House is a nonprofit dedicated to ending youth homelessness in Australia by providing long-term shelter to young people at risk or already without a home. Their work goes beyond housing—offering support programs to help youth heal, reach new goals, and develop life skills, preparing them to become resilient, independent adults.
Stepping Stone House uses the Bitly Connections Platform to create professional, brand-aligned QR Codes for events, brochures, and donation drives. They track both short link clicks and QR Code scans to gain insights into donor behavior, helping them craft messages that resonate with supporters and run more impactful fundraising campaigns.
Teapot Gardens: Tracking community participation
Teapot Gardens is an arts and culture nonprofit located in Los Angeles, California. They describe themselves as a “paradise garden”—a cultural space where artists can share their talents with the next generation. They foster a love for the outdoors as a catalyst for creativity, community healing, and cultural exchange among generations of all ages, especially in those neighborhoods with no access to parks.
Teapot Gardens used the Bitly Connections Platform to help secure a participatory grant for a project they’ve championed for years: a public tea garden. They rallied their community behind their project and used Bitly Analytics to track click and scan engagement to modify their strategy based on the results.
As this was Teapot Gardens’ very first door-to-door campaign, having visibility into the effectiveness of their campaign made all the difference. With our intuitive analytics dashboard, they could see how their community was engaging with their campaign, helping them see if their message was resonating. In the end, their dedication paid off—they won the grant by a landslide!
Campaign performance across multiple channels
Nonprofits can easily track how campaigns perform across multiple channels and adjust strategies to maximize both their time and ROI (return on investment). Thanks to trackable QR Codes and short links, organizations like Changing Lives, mRelief, and FOODSPORT Foundation can monitor offline and online campaigns with Bitly Analytics.
Changing Lives: Identifying audiences’ social media preferences
Changing Lives is an organization operating throughout England, dedicated to transforming lives for over 50 years. Each year, they support thousands of people facing challenging circumstances—homelessness, addiction, domestic abuse, and more. They are a team of experts working with individuals facing these difficulties, providing holistic support and services to help them lead happy, fulfilling lives.
Changing Lives’ communications team uses the Bitly Connections Platform to track all of the links shared across their social media channels. By keeping track of these online channels with Bitly’s analytics feature, they can see which channels are getting the most clicks, where the traffic is coming from, which devices their audience is using, and how their audience found them in the first place.
With these end-to-end analytics, they have comprehensive data to work with to understand their audience’s preferences and identify the regions and platforms that need more attention for better ROI and time investment.
mRelief: Guiding individuals to SNAP benefits (food stamps)
mRelief is a women-led nonprofit leveraging mobile-friendly digital tools and community-based partnerships to connect millions of Americans to SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps. $13 billion in SNAP benefits go unused each year due to a lack of awareness and confusion about the application process, and mRelief’s tools help applicants learn they’re eligible, find the best way to apply in their area, and complete the application process with ease and dignity
The Bitly Connections Platform is a crucial part of their grassroots outreach efforts, allowing them to create trackable QR Codes for their flyers, which direct people to mRelief’s eligibility screener. This tool helps individuals determine if they qualify for food stamps and connects them to resources that guide them in creating the best application.
By tracking scans and clicks, mRelief can monitor both online and offline engagement, helping them see if these outreach channels reach those who need it the most and drive people to their platform to check their eligibility status.
FOODSPORT Foundation: Tracking engagement to determine ROI
FOODSPORT is a social enterprise and charity based in Hong Kong with a mission to make sports accessible to everyone while promoting health and active living. They tackle issues like poverty and hunger by converting all burnt calories into food equivalent-donations to local charities and underprivileged groups to serve the communities across Hong Kong and beyond.
FOODSPORT leverages the Bitly Connections Platform to track and collect feedback from various communication channels to promote their organization. By keeping an eye on audience engagement with powerful analytics, they get the data they need to measure the ROI for their promotional efforts—whether through QR Code scans or short link clicks. With this crystal clear data, they can see exactly how their audience responds, helping them assess ROI.
Drive more impact with powerful analytics
Our incredible nonprofit customers demonstrate how understanding audience preferences and adapting during campaigns can drive an even greater impact through powerful analytics. Whether you’re tracking engagement across online and offline channels to uncover actionable insights or determining which channels deserve more attention, Bitly Analytics helps nonprofits keep an eagle eye on their campaigns. Plus with insightful data they can trust, nonprofits can show stakeholders and donors exactly how they allocate resources for every campaign.
We’re truly honored to witness our nonprofit customers leverage the Bitly Connections Platform to learn from their campaigns, refine their strategies, and apply those insights to future initiatives. Thank you for giving us a glimpse into how you use Bitly to grow your organization!
Would you like to gain more visibility into your campaigns in real-time and refine your strategy on the go? Sign in to your Bitly account and get started by tracking your analytics today!
Explore other nonprofit organizations that use the Bitly Connections Platform to amplify their marketing efforts and meet their unique organizational needs.
Spotlight on Inclusion is Bitly’s initiative to support nonprofits focused on equity, inclusion, and social justice. Through this program, we’ve partnered with 250 organizations making a positive impact in their communities by offering them premium plans at no cost. The Bitly Connections Platform provides the tools these nonprofits need to amplify their work and achieve their mission-driven goals.
