Linnea Wedenberg & Erika Garmelius: How to reach out without spending a dime

The Swedish Canine Welfare Association (Hundstallet) has 116 years of experience with canine welfare and raising funds to rescue, rehabilitate and re-home dogs in Sweden. With more dogs needing help, its purpose has had to evolve to include a greater focus on increasing awareness and on proactively working for a better life for all dogs in the country. Pro bono collaborations are helping. Linnea Wedenberg and Erika Garmelius explain how they’ve successfully attracted this kind of support. 

The Swedish Canine Welfare Association is not eligible for any aid from the state and solely relies on support and contributions from the public. For us, as for many other organizations, the loyalty of our donors is vital for our continued work. How we put their money to use is a constant consideration especially when it comes to new projects that we have not tackled before.

In 2023, there was an addition made to our bylaws, meaning our purpose changed for the first time since the organization was founded in 1908. In addition to our core values, i.e., rescuing, rehabilitating and rehoming dogs, we also had to start increasing awareness and understanding of a life with and around dogs, and proactively working to minimize the number of dogs needing our help.

This opened several new doors for us to spread our message and to inform many more people about how wonderful life with dogs can be and how we can help if things do not go as planned. Pro bono campaigns with likeminded influencers were one of the ways we believed we could reach a wider audience, while also being mindful of our donors’ contributions.

Raising awareness through new channels

The Swedish Canine Welfare Association managed to help and care for 831 dogs in 2023: an increase of 45% compared to 2022. What happens in society also affects our dogs and we need to inform and spread knowledge about dogs in general. To reach out, we believe in doing so in creative ways while showing seriousness. The goal of our pro bono campaign was to increase followers and awareness of our organization and of all the benefits of sharing a life with a dog. We decided to try reaching people outside of our target audience through influencers using their social platforms, and through nonpaid collaboration, which creates higher credibility and a genuine feeling.

“I am so happy and proud to work pro bono with The Swedish Canine Welfare Association in their mission to give all dogs a second chance. With my Instagram account of over 1 million followers, I’ve had the privilege of using my platform for a cause like this. All to raise awareness and spread the word about The Swedish Canine Welfare Association’s incredible work. Posting, sharing and engaging contribute to the greater goal of giving these animals the love and care they deserve”, says influencer Therése Lindgren.

In our first campaign we sent out over 100 invitations to a diverse range of influencers who all shared an interest in dogs. In that way, we were able to reach many different target groups. Out of 100, 12 influencers joined the campaign. All made one post on Instagram where they told their followers about their experiences with dogs and informed them about The Swedish Canine Welfare Association. It was especially important that all posts were personal and unique. With many reminders and persistence, we managed to get a media value of about SEK 1 million.

Thanks to that first campaign, it has become easier for us to find more collaborators who want to help spread awareness about dogs who need new homes and canine welfare. In fact, during 2024, our media value from pro bono collaborations with influencers and other media channels reached around SEK 3 million.

It’s been a learning curve. Here are some pointers that we’ve picked up along the way:

Three pointers for successful pro bono collaborations

• Patience, patience and even more patience! Contact a lot of potential collaborators and influencers.
• Keep in mind that it may take time to reach the right type of influencers you wish to work with depending on how well known your organization is.
• Make sure you have plenty of time! Pro bono campaigns take a longer time to both find the right people, to get the yes to collaborate, and to reach the goals for the campaign than with paid campaigns. Expect it to take twice the time it would take with paid collaborations, again with it in mind that it may take a longer or shorter amount of time depending on how well known the organization is.
• Bonus tip and a reminder! Make sure the influencer or collaborator marks the work they do for you as pro bono. It makes it clearer for the donors that the influencer/collaborator is not getting paid to do this and depending on the laws of the country you’re in this may also be important for the influencer to avoid any financial issues.

Linnea Wedenberg

About Linnea Wedenberg

Linnea is responsible for the fundraising strategy, implementations, marketing and campaigns and has been working with The Swedish Canine Welfare Association for six years. During this time, the turnover increased from 40.7 million SEK (2019) to 94.4 million SEK (2023).

Erika Garmelius

About Erika Garmelius

Erika is head of communications and responsible for The Swedish Canine Welfare Association brand. She has been working for the non-profit organization for about five years. During this time, the non-profit organization has increased awareness by 12% compared to last year. In addition, engagement on their social media has increased significantly. As a result of solid work with public relations, the value amounted to SEK 66 million for 2023.