DARK HORSE COMMUNICATIONS

The successful community campaign to save the Abbotsford Convent is the stuff of folklore. Restoring the site to its former glory however, was something else again – with an eye-watering price tag attached.

12 Beautiful Things about the Abbotsford Convent explained why it was worth it, speaking to all the treasures that had already arrived, and the grand vision for all that was still to come. This tax time direct mail campaign targeted the base of the Convent’s donor pipeline, and thus the future success and sustainability of fundraising efforts.

Design by GOZER STUDIO

Trust and Foundation fundraising at Arts Centre Melbourne had been a tale of mixed fortunes, and work here included addressing the misconception that grants monies may be better spent elsewhere. Not so - ACM leads the Southern Hemisphere in ‘inclusive arts’ for kids with disabilities and the neuro-diverse. It’s also Australia’s only Registered Training Organisation offering production crew training in a live performance venue.

Dark Horse secured substantial grants for both, along with support for Asia TOPA, Arts Centre Melbourne’s triennial celebration of performing arts from the Asia-Pacific region. Grant income rose by over 500% during the period in which Dark Horse was providing prospect identification and grant writing services.

Collingwood Yards is a major new contemporary arts precinct in inner-city Melbourne. Belatedly launching after pandemic restrictions in March 2021, ‘the Yards’ is today a popular hub of creative endeavour and edgy art-y community life.

Work by Dark Horse included the development of a case for support and philanthropic grant proposals that helped raise over five million dollars for this fabulous new inner-city cultural hot spot.

The Darwin Challenge is the brainchild of Charles Darwin’s Australia-based great-great-grandson, Chris Darwin. With a background in advertising and the help of some talented techie friends, Chris has issued the Darwin Challenge – to go meat free at least a day a week. It’s one of the single most powerful things we can do for planet earth. Not to mention our health.

To track the benefits and encourage you on your meat-free journey, the Darwin Challenge provides a fun, free app which tallies the difference you’re making over time.

Work by Dark Horse included a fundraising strategy, prospect research, grant applications, copywriting and a project to secure endorsements from famous vegetarians. Sir Paul McCartney’s was a high point.

Under visionary new leadership Melbourne’s much-loved ‘JewMu’ is ramping up its fundraising activity.

Dark Horse Comms completed a comprehensive review of past fundraising before devising a strategy to reboot the Museum’s multi-channel fundraising programs. Dark Horse Director Trish Pinto also providing hands on fundraising assistance, authoring grant applications for philanthropic and government sources, as well as copy for fundraising communications.

Early wins include putting Melbourne’s second Mirka Mora tram on the rails with support from Creative Victoria. The JewMu’s MIRKA exhibition the tram promotes is itself a smash hit, and fundraising at Museum is officially back on track.

Eighty-five years after first opening its doors in 1935, the National Theatre endures as a magnificent performance venue and celebrated home of creative education and training. This grand heritage-listed theatre is a treasured local landmark and cultural asset; its ballet and drama schools incomparable – unique in their offer to a new generation of Australian creative talent. Vast, ongoing feedback speaks to the special place the National Theatre holds in the hearts of many. The National is also a heritage gem in need of some serious TLC, with a serious price tag attached.

Enter Dark Horse, assisting with up-to-date fundraising collateral to take the National Theatre to ‘philanthropic market’, by identifying its philanthropic sources most likely, and articulating strategies to deploy in fundraising over the immediate and longer term.

No Smokes is an anti-smoking website and set of smoking cessation tools developed especially for young Indigenous Australians, who take up smoking earlier and at wildly disproportionate rates to the rest of the population. It’s a key reason Indigenous Australians can expect to die an average decade earlier than non-Indigenous Australians.

Work by Dark Horse Communications included a strapline (check it out, it’s deadly), website concept and content development, a communications strategy, and writing feature articles for industry publications.

Smiling Mind delivers the proven benefits of mindfulness meditation to Australian classrooms via a fun, easy-to-use free app and teacher training programs. Smiling Mind has grown like wildfire since it was established in 2012, with 6.1M downloads – and counting. Today it’s a quiet revolution in classrooms across the country, reaching an estimated 7.2M children across the country, with its goal of creating Australia’s first mindful generation now within its sights.

Work by Dark Horse Communications for Smiling Mind has included national and international Trust and Foundation prospecting, fundraising strategy development, and authoring and editing grant applications that raised $3.5M+.

Trust for Nature’s primary purpose is to protect and restore nature on private land. With more than 60% of Victoria’s natural ecosystems in private hands, Trust for Nature’s work is central to the survival of Victoria’s spectacular wild places and the native plants and animals that make their homes there.

The organisation aims not only to conserve but rehabilitate and restore ecosystems, returning life to degraded habitats and helping native wildlife flourish anew.

Dark Horse Communications assisted with a suite of thematic cases for support (designed in Word so that they’re living documents), as well as by identifying philanthropic opportunities and authoring high value grant applications.

UniMelb Arts commissions the services of Dark Horse, a stewardship specialist, to prepare impact reports on Arts programs supported by UHNW donors. This includes the wonderful Hansen histories, part of a revitalisation of the History Department enabled by the generosity of the Hansen Trust.

Focused on the 20th century, war, the Soviet Bloc, protest movements and revolutionary histories, Hansen-supported subjects are a major hit with students and a good news story for donor impact reporting.

Dark Horse Director Trish Pinto is alumna of Melbourne Uni Arts and its History Department, picking up the prestigious donor-funded JA Aird Memorial Prize for her final year politics essay (that’s now history).

Few will fail to recall the advertising campaign that accompanied WSU’s rebrand from UWS. Telling graduate stories including that of once-was-child-solider now leading human rights lawyer Deng Adut, Unlimited celebrated WSU’s rich diversity and struggletown roots. With it came a clarion call to unlock the potential of Sydney’s Greater West.

Unlimited was fundraising genius. Dark Horse Comms has assisted with several major campaigns under its banner – providing concept development and copywriting for Creating Opportunity (supporting merit and diversity scholarships), a major Science Centre and a new Medical Building.

World Wildlife Fund Australia has a vision of humanity and nature living in harmony together and needs sustained long term support to help make it happen. Amidst the largest inter-generational wealth transfer in human history, this necessarily includes a focus on legacy giving.

Dark Horse provided copy-writing and conceptual services for a direct mail Gift-in-Will pack to a pool of existing long term donors, featuring WWF-A’s successful Koalas Forever campaign.

With Tone Studio

Live4Life is a mental health and suicide prevention operating across rural and regional Victoria. It’s the only model of its kind designed specifically for rural and regional communities – where rates of youth suicide are 40% higher than metropolitan areas.

With proven effectiveness, a growing portfolio of industry awards, the imprimatur of federal, State and local governments, Live4Life is scaling Victoria-wide as fast as funds allow. Now with added urgency given what we know about the mental health repercussions of the pandemic.

Dark Horse designed Live4Life’s first comprehensive fundraising strategy and helped implement it, identifying philanthropic opportunities and authoring grant applications. The organisation has now secured $1M+ in grants and doubled its footprint in two years.