Locks the frame every Christmas Appeal artefact must express: hero landing page, 4-email sequence, Meta · Google · LinkedIn creative packs, PR release, founding-donor Christmas warmth touch. Written for Carla's 20 Nov EOD go/no-go read.
Purpose. Freeze the words, the composite case, the ask ladder, the numbers, and the frame-hostility list. Once this document is signed by Carla on 20 Nov EOD, the frame does not move. Every downstream artefact renders this frame in its channel-specific format. Sprint 56 scoped the appeal calendar and reactive triggers (see /launch-90-days Weeks 5–9 and /q4-content-calendar Peak phase). This document is the lock.
Compliance envelope. ABN, ACN, ACL 387398, mediation disclosure, complaints and privacy links, dignity floor. No beneficiaries are named or identified. Y1 audited numbers appear verbatim (31 cases · $1.82M debt resolved · 23-day average resolution · 52% average K10 drop · $1,840 average cost/case · 87c direct-service ratio). Every artefact carrying the frame carries the full envelope on the page it lands.
Status: SCOPED, NOT YET LOCKED. This document is the frame proposal drafted under Sprint 57 authoring authority. It becomes the frame lock only when Carla signs the G2 compliance envelope and the 20 Nov EOD go/no-go pack (per /launch-90-days Week 7 · Carla row). Until that signature, any element on this page can move.
Signing sequence (per /marketing-governance five-gate framework):
All five gates must clear before Carla's 20 Nov EOD go/no-go. Any one gate un-cleared triggers the reactive scenario 6 in /launch-reactive-playbook: postpone to January, not soften-and-ship.
These are the ten sentences the Christmas Appeal will say. Every artefact expresses some subset of these ten in its channel-appropriate form. No artefact says something the frame does not authorise.
The frame in one paragraph — test-read. A person dying at home should not be spending their last months on the phone to a bank. Life Without Debt exists so they do not have to. We do not lend money, we do not consolidate debt, and we do not offer advice. We fund the mediation work — performed by Credit Mediation Services Pty Ltd under ACL 387398 — that resolves a dying person's debts before those debts follow their family. In our first year we resolved $1.82 million in debt across 31 cases, at an average $1,840 cost per case; eighty-seven cents of every dollar donated went to direct service. It is efficient work because the practitioners are experienced and the referral pathway is short; it is quiet work because the beneficiaries want it that way. This December we are asking for the gift that funds the next thirty cases — $1,840 funds one full case, end-to-end. Whatever you give this month will land at the mediation-desk in January. Thank you for reading this far — it is not an easy subject.
That paragraph is 148 words. It is the entire appeal, rendered in one paragraph. Everything Corrina, the Meta creative team, Google Search copy, LinkedIn posts, the hero page — every artefact — is a channel-specific expression of these ten sentences.
The appeal needs one composite case-vignette to make the frame concrete. Sprint 55 discipline (composite-only, labelled-in-line) applies. The vignette below is drafted from Y1 audited aggregate patterns — it is not any individual case, and it is labelled composite on every surface it appears.
Composite case — “Ellen” (labelled composite).
Ellen is a composite drawn from patterns across our first 31 cases. She is not a real person; no beneficiary is named or identified in this or any LWD communication.
Ellen was 72. She had been living with metastatic disease for eighteen months when her palliative-care nurse referred her to Life Without Debt. She had $47,000 across four accounts — two credit cards, one personal loan she took out to help her daughter through a hard year, and a store card she barely remembered opening. The interest was compounding faster than she could pay it down on her pension. She had stopped answering unknown numbers.
Her referral pathway ran fifty-one hours from clinician-call to first-contact. Twenty-three days later, Credit Mediation Services had resolved all four debts — three written down in full, one settled at cents on the dollar. Ellen never spoke to a creditor again. Her family, when they found out, learned about it from her, not from a debt-collection letter that arrived after her funeral.
Ellen's case cost $1,840 in mediation-practitioner time, funded entirely by donors to LWD. Cases like Ellen's, thirty-one of them in Y1, are what your gift this December funds another thirty of, in Y2.
Composite discipline lock. Every instance of the vignette in every artefact carries the labelled-composite disclaimer either in-line or in a footnote reachable from the vignette. The name “Ellen” is not used elsewhere in LWD communications (no other composite reuses the name; no real beneficiary is called Ellen). If a real beneficiary shares the name, the appeal is re-drafted with a different composite name — not the other way around.
Three suggested-gift tiers. The featured tier is $1,840 because that is Y1's audited cost-per-case — not because it is a nice round number. Below and above, the tiers are calibrated to the general-list donor cohort based on Sprint 51 retention math and Sprint 55 voice-map.
| Tier | Amount (AUD) | The frame that goes with the button | What the tier funds · verbatim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | $50 | “Fund a case-review call.” | Contributes to the referrer-intake and case-review stage that precedes formal mediation. Y1 average intake-through-review cost: $180 per case; $50 covers roughly one third of one case's intake. |
| Featured | $1,840 | “Fund one full case, end-to-end.” | Y1 audited average cost-per-case exactly. Every $1,840 funds one dying person's full debt-mediation journey through CMS's ACL 387398 practice, from intake to resolution. |
| Founder-tier | $5,000 | “Underwrite a small cohort's worst month.” | Enables LWD to hold reserve capacity for the December-January window when referral volume typically spikes and case-complexity is higher (family bereavement, holiday debt-collection intensification). Not tied to a fixed case-count; funds capacity, not throughput. |
| Custom | Any amount | “Whatever you give lands at the desk in January.” | Custom-amount field with the timing-sentence (locked line 9) reassurance. No suggested amount. |
Give-page tier presentation ruling. Featured tier ($1,840) sits centre with visual emphasis. Entry ($50) sits left. Founder-tier ($5,000) sits right. Custom sits below the three. Sequencing left-to-right is deliberate — scanning eye lands on $50 first (low-friction entry), then $1,840 (frame-honouring featured), then $5,000 (capacity-holding stretch). No “monthly” toggle in the Christmas Appeal; monthly conversion is the January retention job, not the December ask job.
The Christmas Appeal cites Y1 audited numbers and nothing else. This is not a marketing preference; it is a compliance lock. The six audited numbers below appear verbatim wherever any number appears. Projected Y2 numbers, ratios expressed in unaudited combinations, or any figure not sourced to the audit file does not appear on any Christmas Appeal surface.
| Number | Verbatim form | Where it appears in the appeal |
|---|---|---|
| Cases resolved | 31 cases | Locked line 5. Envelope footer of every artefact. Ellen-composite paragraph 4. |
| Debt resolved | $1.82M debt resolved | Locked line 5. Envelope footer. |
| Average resolution time | 23-day average resolution | Envelope footer. Ellen-composite paragraph 3 (as “Twenty-three days later”). |
| Beneficiary wellbeing outcome | 52% average K10 drop | Envelope footer only. Not in the frame — wellbeing measurement is a governance report, not an appeal message. |
| Cost per case | $1,840 average cost/case | Locked lines 5 and 8. Featured ask tier. Envelope footer. Ellen-composite paragraph 4. |
| Direct-service ratio | 87c direct-service ratio | Locked line 5 (as “eighty-seven cents of every dollar donated”). Envelope footer. |
Numbers not in the appeal. Y2 case-count projection (“we aim to double”) — not audited, does not appear. Y2 cost-per-case efficiency claim — not audited, does not appear. Comparative sector ratios (“better than the average charity”) — not our number to make, does not appear. Any “donation multiplier” language (“your $50 becomes $200 in impact”) — false-multiplier is an ASIC RG 234 risk and does not appear. If a number is not in the six above, it is not in the appeal.
The frame is defined as much by what it is not as by what it is. These devices are common in Christmas fundraising and are specifically excluded from every Christmas Appeal surface. Verboten items are compliance-envelope violations, dignity-floor violations, or brand-voice violations — and in most cases, all three.
Every surface below is a channel-specific expression of the ten locked lines and the composite case. Corrina drafts, AI CMO pre-checks, domain-owner signs, Carla clears the envelope, Chair signs G4. No surface ships until all five gates fire for that surface.
/christmas-appeal (URL provisional, pending Laurence route-add). Live-indexed by Mon 23 Nov.
Send-dates per /q4-content-calendar Peak phase: warm-up Tue 1 Dec, Giving Tuesday Tue 2 Dec 06:00, mid-appeal Fri 12 Dec, close Wed 23 Dec.
Draft locked Fri 20 Nov (per /launch-90-days Week 7). Ad-account approval buffer: 5–15 business days.
Copy pack finalised Fri 20 Nov. Ad Grant CTR discipline: ≥5%.
Two organisation posts inside the appeal window: warm-up Wed 18 Nov, Giving Tuesday morning Tue 2 Dec 07:00.
Voice-fill dependent. If Sprint 55.2 has landed, Lisa's Giving Tuesday morning post fires 08:00. Laurence's follow-post fires Wed 3 Dec 08:00.
Drafted in December, embargoed until early Jan for Q1 outcome release. Different from the appeal itself — this is the follow-through release.
Founding-donor cohort touch-through. The Christmas Appeal does not reach founding donors through this frame. They receive the appeal only as members of the general list, per /founding-donor-launch discipline. Their in-cohort touch is Touch 5 (Wed 23 Dec 14:00, “A Christmas note”) which is a warmth send, no-ask, distinct-frame. That touch does not repurpose the Christmas Appeal frame.
Every gate must fire on this specific frame lock before Carla's 20 Nov EOD go/no-go. Weekly Signature File in /marketing-governance receives every signature.
Gate failure is a hold, not a soften. If any of G1–G5 cannot sign on the frame as locked, the frame does not ship in reduced form. The reactive playbook Scenario 6 (postpone) fires. Better to run the appeal in January with the frame right than to run it 2 December with the frame compromised. Chair-first ruling authority applies.
Once the frame ships on 2 December, it runs the length of the appeal (through 23 December). Reactive discipline is not to change the frame mid-appeal. Reactive discipline is to hold the frame and adjust the peripheral operations.
| Reactive signal | Not-a-response | Actual response |
|---|---|---|
| Donation-take below floor | Do not rewrite the frame more urgently. Do not add urgency devices. Do not lower the featured tier. | Playbook Scenario A. Channel-diagnose (which channel is soft, which is holding). Additive touch on the strong channel, not a rewrite. |
| Email open-rate below Sprint 51 baseline | Do not clickbait the subject line. Do not add exclamation points. | Segment isolation. If founding-donor-adjacent segments open at baseline but general-list is soft, the issue is list-warm not frame-fit. Address the list. |
| Ad-account rejection (Meta or Google) | Do not soften locked line 3 to bypass. The negative-space definition is the reason we clear ad policies. | Appeal the rejection with the compliance-envelope pack. Locked line 4 (ACL 387398 attribution) is our defensibility — use it. |
| Beneficiary or family recognises the composite Ellen | Do not defend the composite. Do not argue about aggregate. | Playbook Scenario E fires. Chair-first response. Composite is retired if the person requests. Every downstream artefact refers to a different composite immediately. |
| External narrative attack on the numbers | Do not add caveats. Do not add ranges. The six audited numbers are the six audited numbers. | Playbook Scenario G. Offer the audit-file provenance. Response drafted by Chair, not Corrina. Envelope preserved. |
| Frame reads “too small” to a donor (“only 31 cases?”) | Do not inflate. | Locked line 6 already answers this in-frame. Point the donor to the sentence. If the sentence isn't landing at scale, that is a Sprint 58 diagnostic, not a mid-appeal fix. |
The frame is locked; the voice-fill is not. Three voice-carrying paragraphs across the seven surfaces depend on Sprint 55.2 voice-capture with Lisa (primary) and Laurence (secondary).
| Voice-fill target | Locked line source | Dependency |
|---|---|---|
| Hero page closing paragraph | Locked line 10 + Lisa's frame | [Lisa voice-check pending] — Sprint 55.2. If not landed by 20 Nov EOD, the hero page ships with the locked-line 10 scaffold and Lisa signs her voice into it on the live page by 30 Nov EOD (fix-forward window). |
| Email 2 (Giving Tuesday) opening + closing paragraphs | Lisa's frame around locked lines 1, 2, 10 | [Lisa voice-check pending] — Sprint 55.2. If not landed by 25 Nov EOD, Email 2 delays — the appeal does not open on a Lisa-voice email that reads scaffolded. Emails 1, 3, 4 are Corrina-voice / brand-voice and are not voice-fill dependent. |
| Lisa 2 Dec LinkedIn founder post | Locked lines 1, 2, 10 + Ellen paragraph 4 | [Lisa voice-check pending] — Sprint 55.2. If not landed by 27 Nov EOD, the post does not fire. Corrina posts the organisation-level LinkedIn only. Lisa's post is not scaffold-shippable. |
| Laurence 3 Dec LinkedIn founder post | Locked lines 4, 6 + practitioner-authority frame | [Laurence voice-check pending] — Sprint 55.2. If not landed by 27 Nov EOD, the post does not fire. This is an authority-signalling post; scaffolded, it dilutes rather than adds. |
The appeal itself runs Tue 2 Dec through Wed 23 Dec 2026. The dark period (25–31 Dec) applies per launch-90-days three-hard-date discipline. The frame's afterlife carries into January 2027 through the outcome release and the founding-donor Touch 6 (30 Dec Q1 snapshot).
The frame's honesty test. After 2 December, once the appeal is live, one test governs every reactive decision: does this response say something the locked frame doesn't authorise, or does it say the frame more clearly in a channel where the frame is soft? If the former, the response doesn't ship. If the latter, it ships within the standing gate authority Corrina + AI CMO already hold. Simple test, hard discipline — the entire point of a frame lock is that mid-campaign, discipline replaces judgement.