REPAIR THE WORLD
Services: Campaign Strategy | Messaging & Communications Development | Influencer Engagement
DSS designed a scalable digital strategy and series of timely, creative campaigns to complement the efforts of Repair the World’s existing service hubs while expanding their capacity to reach and activate young adults in service nationally.
THE REALITY
Repair the World mobilizes Jewish communities to pursue a just world, with a mission to catalyze one million acts of service and learning by 2030. Traditionally, they reach young adults (18–29) via a network of service hubs and a coalition of over 60 organizations in their Jewish Service Alliance (JSA). In 2024 they came to us with a new challenge: activate young Jews and their peers at scale, increasing the organization's capacity for sustained national engagement.
Young adults—Jewish and non-Jewish—are hungry for connection. Americans aged 18–25 are the loneliest segment of the U.S. population, but they don’t want to stay that way: 89% of young adults in the U.S. agree it is important for Jewish communities and other religious and ethnic groups to increase cooperation with one another. DSS saw an opportunity to use service to satisfy this need for connection and belonging among Gen Z, while building bridges between Jews and their peers on the issues they care most about.
OUR APPROACH
DSS designed campaigns around moments that bridged service with trending conversations and connected traditional Jewish education opportunities with more secular Jews and their friends. We built two campaigns and supported Repair the World with their execution:
Secondhand Spring – Tapping into the trend of sharing thrift hauls on TikTok, Secondhand Spring inspired young people to donate gently used clothing during Earth Day and pick up some secondhand finds to spark more sustainable shopping habits. To kickstart participation, we facilitated partnerships with influencers to share their #SecondhandSpring online.
Passover Earth Day Challenge – Since both holidays coincided in 2024, we merged environmental action with the Passover story, linking the 10 Passover plagues with 10 modern ecological "plagues." Participants were challenged to complete service responses for each, turning an ancient narrative into a timely call to action.
THE IMPACT
Our efforts grew Repair the World’s social media following by 20% during the campaign periods, helped scale the Jewish service movement and evolved longstanding strategies, such as micro-granting, beyond JSA partners to include individual ambassadors. Repair the World continues to use learnings from these campaigns to evolve their Gen Z engagement strategies.
Secondhand Spring
Reached 100k potential volunteers in 14 days
18 ambassadors ran clothing donations, resulting in 447 acts of service and learning and over 870 hours of service
Passover Earth Day Challenge
Engaged 46% more website visitors over the previous month
Reached 178k potential volunteers through new relationships with content creators
160 ambassadors inspired 4,816 acts of service and learning – a 65% lift from FY23’
Interested in how to cultivate relationships with young leaders in your organization?