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Playbooks: Creating a Play

Creating a fundraising campaign has never been easier; we'll walk you through the four simple steps that will allow you to generate everything you'll need to raise more than ever before.

Playbooks is a powerful new feature in Avid that enables organizations to turn their donor data into fully-fledged fundraising campaigns. By leveraging information from your CRM, email marketing tools, and paid social platforms, Playbooks helps you craft, customize, and deploy campaigns across multiple channels—all within Avid. The tool streamlines campaign creation, offers AI-generated drafts, and automates asset generation, making it easier than ever to launch data-informed campaigns.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Started with Playbooks

1. Accessing the Playbooks Dashboard

Navigate to the Playbooks section from the main dashboard.

  • A catalog of 22+ campaign templates, tailored to different fundraising strategies. These templates cover a range of campaign types to suit different organizational goals.
  • A “My Plays” tab, where you can view your launched campaigns, check their status, and monitor results.

    You’ll see:


2. Selecting a Campaign Template

Browse through the available templates. When clicking on the play name, you'll be able to gain more details such as: 

  • A full description of the campaign.

  • The objective and impact metrics it aims to improve.

  • Recommended channels (e.g., email, donation pages, social ads).

  • An estimate of time and effort required for setup.

3. Launching a New Campaign

  • Click Start in the top-right corner to launch the selected template. (This can also be done from the Playbooks Dashboard)

  • A wizard will then guide you through the four essential setup steps

    • Name the campaign (e.g., “Fiscal Year-End Campaign”).

    • Choose whether to schedule by start or end date (useful for automation and timed messaging). This can be adjusted at a later date.

    These details influence how and when assets like emails and text messages will be deployed.

4. Setting the Strategic Tone

  • Complete the “Set the Tone” section, which serves as your strategic brief.

  • The questions vary based upon the template chosen.

  • If you’re unsure how to fill this out, Avid can generate a draft using AI, which references your organization’s website, mission, and provided value prop
  • Pro Tip: While the AI draft is a good start, spending 5–10 minutes customizing this section results in significantly better campaign messaging across assets.

5. Customizing Channel Selection

  • Review the recommended campaign channels. For each channel, there are suggested messages including content and cadence.

    • Some are mandatory (e.g., donation pages for digital fundraising campaigns or the letter for a direct mail campaign).

    • Others (like prospecting emails or text messages) can be toggled on or off, depending on your strategy and available tools.

    This flexibility allows for a tailored approach without unnecessary components.

6. Crafting the Central "Asset"

  • Each campaign revolves around a primary asset. This is generally the most important part of a campaign where all messages either point to or come from.

  • By creating this asset first, all other communications will have this messaging to draw from so they utilize a consistent message and tone.
  • Avid automatically creates a draft version using:

    • Organizational context (mission, value proposition, your website, etc.)

    • Strategic brief information you provided earlier in the process

    • Historical donor behavior

This draft will be a decent first draft of the content but you’re encouraged to revise it to reflect your organization’s voice and donor experience.

  • You can also use the Regenerate button at the bottom to provide additional context or to utilize one of the other tools to try different versions of the content.

7. Generating All Campaign Assets

  • Once the primary asset is finished, Avid will then automatically generate the remaining assets
  • Each asset aligns with the messaging crafted earlier, ensuring consistency and saving time.
  • You'll be able to edit that content, create new messages, or delete unnecessary assets on the Playbook Overview page.

Conclusion

Avid’s Playbooks feature revolutionizes the way fundraisers build campaigns. By guiding users through strategic planning, offering AI-enhanced content suggestions, and automating asset creation, Playbooks minimizes the operational burden while maximizing campaign effectiveness.

Whether you’re planning a high-stakes year-end appeal or a targeted donor reactivation effort, Playbooks makes it easier to get from strategy to launch—fast.