Garden Organic

Heritage Seed Library Appeal 2009

The challenge
As consumers we are losing many of our native vegetables due to EU Government regulations instituted in the 1970’s. Over the last 100 years 90% of UK vegetable varieties have disappeared. They’re the odd, the funny-shaped, big, small and beautifully-coloured varieties prized by growers – but not supermarkets.

Garden Organic is the UK’s leading organic growing charity and has been at the forefront of the organic horticulture movement for 50 years. It is dedicated to researching and promoting organic gardening, farming and food.

Garden Organic’s Heritage Seed Library aims to tackle the vegetable ‘monoculture’ by categorising, preserving and distributing seeds of endangered vegetables to help maintain the rich biodiversity of vegetable produce.

Objectives
Our objective was to raise one-off cash donations totalling £35,840.00 by May 2009 with a target donation average of £30.00, to help Garden Organic ensure rare seeds are preserved and protected for future generations.

Strategy
We targeted 28,403 existing Garden Organic supporters with a direct mail pack in January 2009. We asked them to help Garden Organic protect the biodiversity of the UK with a one-off cash donation – before it was too late and more seed varieties were lost forever.

What's good about it?

The campaign generated £40,235.50, with a response rate of 4.41% (1,253 responses out of 28,403 mailings). It exceeded the overall target of £35,840.00 by £4,395.00, with an average donation that was £2.11 above target.