World Food Program USA
Role: Deputy Director, Digital Marketing & Advertising
Timeline: March 2022 - September 2026
Challenge
The World Food Programme (WFP) is the United Nation's emergency food assistance organization and the largest humanitarian organization in the world, providing lifesaving aid to millions of people around the globe. Funding shortfalls, conflict, and natural disasters were putting lives at risk.
As WFP's fundraising arm in the US, World Food Program USA needed to scale digital revenue and grow its donor base significantly over the next several years to fill in urgent funding gaps. The challenge was building a comprehensive paid media program that could drive both new donor acquisition and recurring revenue growth while keeping CAC and ROAS in check.
Strategy
I led a team executing a paid media program with an annual budget of up to $8.5M focused on generating revenue, acquiring new sustaining donors, and cultivating and upselling existing donors. The strategy involved aggressive testing and consistent optimizations across channels to identify scalable acquisition opportunities and grow long-term donor value.
Key strategic initiatives included:
Channel & Format Expansion: Consistent channel testing beyond the two pillars of Google and Meta, as well as testing within those channels, like Performance Max and Demand Gen, unlocked consistent growth and allowed us to reach new audiences while maintaining a positive ROAS and reasonable CAC.
Display & Native Advertising: Through systematic creative and targeting testing, we identified winning combinations that could scale profitably. We placed an emphasis on contextual targets focused on international news.
TikTok Innovation: Built our TikTok presence from scratch using short-form, educational creative that resonated with younger audiences, focusing on low-dollar donors with high lifetime value potential.
Sustainer Program Growth: Partnered with web and analytics teams to test creative variations and upsell strategies that converted one-time donors to monthly givers.
Results
Digital ads are now a critical source of revenue and donors for the organization. In 2020 and 2021, the ads program brought in just over $4 million annually. That number is now over $14 million, a 252% increase.
Display & Native: Scaled from $9.3K in revenue (2020-early 2022) to over $1.2 million in the next two years through creative and targeting optimization (13,000% increase).
TikTok: Generated over $1 million in revenue from younger, low-dollar donors, successfully reaching the next generation of supporters.
Sustainers: Increased ads-acquired subscription donors by 130% and monthly recurring revenue 141% through systematic A/B testing, checkout optimization, and upselling existing donors.
Fundraising ads for Instagram & TikTok
+252%
Annual Ads Revenue (2026 vs. 2022)
$1.2M+
Display & Native Revenue
$1M+
TikTok Revenue
+141%
Monthly Recurring Revenue