Client Success Stories

Wells Enterprises

The Need for True North 

Wells Enterprises is the company behind Blue Bunny Ice Cream, Bomb Pop, and Halo Top – a 5,000-person, 100-year-old company built on creating happiness for humankind. But despite its long, rich history, the company was missing a set of core values to help guide its growth and decision-making.

Our Work 

Using a version of Meridian adapted for the size of the two billion-dollar company, the Plenty team conducted listening interviews with dozens of team members and reviewed thousands of points of survey data before bringing twenty-four executive leaders together in Park City, Utah. From the owner to the CEO to the CMO, CTO, and plant managers, the cross-functional team poured over data – and emotion – to articulate the essence of what makes Wells great.

Our Impact 

As often happens, the timing of the process was uncanny. In the middle of the Meridian process, Wells was approached and ultimately acquired by Italian giant Ferrero. Impressed by the strong culture emerging from Meridian, Ferrero has committed to fostering the growth of Wells and its brands – and to keeping its entire management team intact.

Fred Hutch Cancer Center

STRATEGY • FUNDRAISING • CULTURE

The Need for Growth

Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle, an internationally renowned nonprofit committed to making life beyond cancer a reality, needed an organizational-wide engagement strategy to raise the critical funds required for its groundbreaking research and care.

Our Work

Over two years, the Plenty team used Meridian, our strategic planning process designed to help a cross-functional team of leaders clarify their audience, align around growth goals, and infuse their work with passion. Conducted partially over online meetings during the COVID pandemic, we adapted the Meridian model to connect the minds and hearts of a distributed team working remotely – and ultimately enjoyed meeting in person onsite. We continue to be their executive coach and advisor today. 

Our Impact

In Its first year of implementation, the strategy borne of Meridian has helped the Fred Hutch team realize incredible growth. This year's Obliteride, the largest peer-to-peer fundraising and engagement campaign, concluded in August 2023 with historic levels of participant and record revenue – with more growth to come!

Maker's Mark

STRATEGY • FUNDING

The Need for Conscious Impact

When iconic brand Maker's Mark decided to deeply integrate social impact into their growth strategy, they turned to Plenty to help them create, align around, and build out the approach. 

Our Work

Over a nine-month engagement centered on Meridian, our strategic planning process, we led Maker's Mark executives, distillers, partners, and agencies in a series of thoughtful, iterative, and heart-centered discussions about the core essence of the brand and where it could most make a difference in the world.

The extensive engagement included a four-day offsite with the core project team at HeartSpace, our retreat center in Park City, Utah, as well as several in-person discovery sessions to uncover opportunities with the distillery in Loretto, the U.S. headquarters in Chicago, the parent company in Japan, and throughout the supply chain.

Our work concluded with a sustainability workshop back in Loretto, helping the team ground their vision with ways to change and improve their production and shipping process to be more in harmony with nature.

Our Impact

As Maker's begins its 2024 campaigns, we're excited for the public to see what we've seen first-hand: the incredible passion and commitment that the Maker's Mark team has to honoring its legacy by improving the world around us.

Cruzan Rum

STRATEGY • FUNDING

The Need to Grow For Good

In the aftermath of the destruction caused by Hurricane Maria, Cruzan Rum, producer of some of the world's finest aged rums, came to Plenty to do something urgent, meaningful, and lasting. While they wanted to include a charitable component in their work, they were concerned their needs and impact would become lost in the existing philanthropic space. 

Our Work

Over the course of six months, Plenty used Meridian to create the Island Spirit Fund, a bespoke nonprofit entity designed to support disaster relief efforts in the U.S. Virgin Island and across the United States, helping rebuild and renew communities impacted by storms of all kinds. Working in conjunction with the Cruzan team and their outstanding agency partners, we helped craft the structure, strategy, messages, and campaigns to build the effort, including creating a blended model of funding made of for-profit commitments and non-profit donations.

Our Impact

In a few short years, the Island Spirit Fund has already raised over $6M to support direct relief on the ground in St. Croix, at far less of an overhead cost compared to deploying funding through large existing entities. And the language that began as words on flip charts in HeartSpace is literally be emblazoned on every bottle of Cruzan. How cool is that? Learn more at https://www.cruzanrum.com/island-spirit-fund.

Wounded Warrior Project

STRATEGY • FUNDING

The Need for Innovation

When Wounded Warrior Project, an innovative $400 million nonprofit, needed to create a new experiential peer-to-peer fundraising campaign to repair its brand, extend its reach, and engage its constituency, it turned to Plenty.

Our Work

Using Meridian, Plenty's strategic planning process, Plenty and Wounded Warrior Project created and launched Carry Forward, a nationwide fundraising and marketing campaign.

After participating in Plenty's process, the trust of the leadership grew so deep that we were ask to manage facilitation of their overall branding and strategic initiative, resulting in Plenty coordinating efforts and deliverables across a wide set of agencies, including Interbrand, Bridgespan, and LeadDog.

Our Impact

In its first year, Carry Forward exceeded expectations – and projections – at every level, surpassing financial goals, attracting national corporate partners, receiving coverage from national media outlets, and perhaps most importantly, revitalizing and reenergizing a staff that had grown weary from scandal. Amazingly, the brand new campaign was ranked 4th-best 5K in the nation in a national survey. Now in full implementation, Carry Forward is expanding at the rate of 33% per year.

World Wildlife Fund

STRATEGY • FUNDING

The Need for Outreach

World Wildlife Fund, a leading global environmental agency, needed a way to mobilize both grassroots and corporate constituencies and introduce its important work to a new generation of supporters. 

Our Work

Plenty helped the World Wildlife Fund through the entire creation and implementation process. We surfaced and identified potential segments, crafted personas for concept design, align the team on event ideas and opportunities, created the brand of the event, choose vendors, and launched the Panda Paddle. The Panda Paddle is a nationwide stand-up paddling festival that leverages both a growing activity and connects constituents directly to the mission of the organization: to protect protect the oceans, rivers, animals, and wild places you love. 

Our Impact

Momentum has grown quickly, with Target, a Fortune 50 company, recently signing on as the lead, multi-year underwriter. The Panda Paddle is now in its third year of production, and we couldn't be more thrilled to get out on the water with WWF. 

March of Dimes

STRATEGY • FUNDING • CULTURE

The Need for Strategic Alignment

March of Dimes came to Plenty at a crossroads. The organization’s performance was in rapid decline. Legacy income models were deteriorating, attitudes towards the brand were apathetic, and the long-time community support was eroding quickly, with the national walk series underperforming and the community dissipating. New, energized leadership arrived, determined to not only restore the organization, but take it to new levels of success. 

Our Work

A multi-year engagement centered on two focus areas: turnaround and innovation. In the category of turnaround, Plenty was hired to completely overhaul the organization’s chief source of revenue, the March for Babies national walk series. This expansive scope included significant revenue analytics to diagnose issues, convening multiple levels of leadership to create a new way forward, and rebuilding client and staff relationships to prepare for a new set of funding streams. In the category of innovation, Plenty used its Morpheus innovation process to design an entirely new funding stream.

Our Impact

The initial results of our work have been tremendous. Fundraising performance has increased by a staggering 80%, as Plenty’s multi-pronged segmentation strategy has gained traction. A national sponsor has been secured for the new funding stream, and all systems are go for launch. We're so proud to help this critical organization leap into a new future. 

Moffitt Cancer Center

STRATEGY • LEADERSHIP • FUNDING

The Need to Navigate

In the midst of a leadership transition, Moffitt Cancer Center needed help navigating the path to achieve their ambitious goals for their legacy peer-to-peer fundraising event, Miles for Moffitt. With less than three months to the event, they turned to Plenty. 

Our Work

Plenty used Polaris, our coaching and implementation service, to assess where things stood, create a set of interventions, and implement them on-the-fly. We also created a dashboard and funnel to create a real-time forecast of projected participants and revenue. We facilitated an in-person workshop to build alignment, cohesion, and excitement among the team. From discovery to race day, we guided the Miles for Moffitt team, providing executive coaching, data analysis, messaging and brand communications, and strategic advisement to pull the needed growth levers for success. 

Our Impact

The year after our engagement, Miles for Moffitt saw the largest increases in both participation and fundraising in the history of the program, marking it was one of the fastest growing peer-to-peer events in the country.  

American Cancer Society

CULTURE • LEADERSHIP

The Need for Empowerment

With a team in transition and a need to strengthen their culture, the North Central Region of the American Cancer Society asked Plenty to facilitate their cultural transformation and unite their team with a renewed hopeful vision. 

Our Work

Utilizing our culture workshop, Compass, we delivered the Five Keys Assessment for over 80 members of the team to measure the organization’s perceptions of their strategy, leadership, wellbeing, community, and funding. 

Our Impact

In a room of nearly 100 people, we were able to co-create a safe, inspiring, trusting space for deep and connective conversations. That led to real, actionable, and tactical improvements the team could take ownership of.