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Category Archives: Fundraising Videos That Work
December 22, 2011, 10:22 am
Oxfam America Spurs Holiday Gifts With ‘Cheeky’ Campaign
Think you’re a bad gift giver?
You’re not alone, says the actress Scarlett Johansson in an animated video that’s helping to increase year-end donations to Oxfam America, the U.S. branch of the global development charity. The video is part of a campaign that pokes fun at holiday-gift traditions to spur support for Oxfam.
In the video, Ms. Johansson is the voice of an animated female character who discourages viewers from giving lame holiday gifts—like a picture of a kitten or an ugly sweater. Instead, she suggests going to the group’s online portal, Oxfam America Unwrapped, and purchasing something more meaningful: chickens for a farmer, books for kids, or fruit trees for a village. “Now, these are really great gifts,” she says.
The video has garnered a “lot of traffic,” says Stephanie Kurzina, vice president for development and communications a…
December 8, 2011, 2:40 pm
Holiday Drive Honors Good Deeds, With a Social-Media Twist
The Case Foundation is asking people who witness random acts of kindness this holiday season to capture those moments in photos and post them on their favorite social network. They may get a nice reward for that good deed: up to $500 for themselves and up to $5,000 for their favorite charity.
The goal of the program, called #GoodSpotting, is to honor “little acts of good that go unsung” by recording them with pictures, much like the popular foodie Web site Foodspotting does with restaurant dishes, says Allyson Burns, a spokeswoman for the Washington foundation started by the AOL founder Steve Case and his wife, Jean.
Organizers say the kinds of photos they have in mind might show people volunteering at a food pantry or giving clothes at a coat drive. Photographers who upload their shots to social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter must label the image with the…
December 7, 2011, 5:51 pm
Charity Creates 250 Videos to Thank Donors
For two weeks, employees of the nonprofit Charity: Water baked cakes, donned climbing gear or tutus, got on stationary bikes, and undertook a range of other stunts—all with the goal of mimicking the efforts the group’s supporters have made in the past five years to attract donations from friends, relatives, and others to bring clean and safe drinking water to developing countries.
The charity captured those efforts as it created 250 videos to mark the organization’s fifth anniversary and send a personal thank-you to each of the 250 supporters.
The 250 people honored with thank-you videos were picked to represent the 250,000 people the charity estimates have helped it raise money. But instead of emphasizing those who gave the most, the charity focused on the people who showed the most creativity in spreading the word about the nonprofit and its mission.
In all, two dozen staff …
December 2, 2011, 10:07 am
University Thanks Big Donors With a Rap Video
To thank donors who paid for a new $32-million sports center, Bowling Green State University produced a video featuring some of those very same supporters.
The donors were game. They wore basketball uniforms and tried to bounce and spin a basketball, while acting tough on camera. The video, which was shown at the dedication of the Stroh Center in September, also featured a college student rapping about the donors’ big gifts, while showing the buildings and the basketball court named after them. Watch how the student, Mikey (Rosco) Blair, raps “philanthropy”:
“It tells a story and it entertains,” says Mary Ellen Gillespie, associate athletics director for external relations. “It has become the ‘wow’ that we wanted it to be.”
Now the university is showing the video to potential students and donors in off-campus events.
Here’s how the video came…
November 29, 2011, 8:26 pm
How to Make Great Thank-You Videos
In recent years, some charities have begun to acknowledge donors’ gifts with videos. But many of these productions aren’t getting the job done, according to a fund-raising expert who has reviewed dozens of them. He warns nonprofits to keep their thank-you videos clear and simple.
Adrian Allen, a fund raiser at a private school in St. Louis, recently watched 40 thank-you videos from nonprofits. He found them through a pitch he made on an e-mail discussion list maintained by the Association of Donor Recruitment Professionals. Originally, he wanted to write a post about the topic on his blog No Donor Left Behind.
Mr. Allen discovered three common mistakes charities make with thank-you videos.
They’re too long. Too often, Mr. Allen found charities “overestimating the attention span of the viewer.” Viewing one 15-minute video, he says, sapped his desire to watch more after a couple…
August 4, 2011, 8:54 am
A Can of ‘Nothing’ Supports Food Banks
Nothing can end hunger.
That’s what people in Rhode Island said when hunger advocates asked them to support food banks, giving the advocates an idea: Maybe nothing can end hunger. Nothing, that is, in the form of an empty can—one made to look like a can of soup with a “Nothing” label.
With the help of local marketing firm Nail Communications, the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, in Providence, sold the cans in May last year at Dunkin’ Donuts, Whole Foods, and other stores.
For $3, customers could buy a can, and the full purchase price would go to the food bank. They could also use the cans to collect money (they have slots on top) and drop them off at the food bank when they were full.
“People filled them to the brim,” says Andrew Schiff, chief executive of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. The average can contained about $50, he says. The Nothing campaign, which ran…
July 26, 2011, 11:36 am
Mission Possible: Jumping Off a Building for a Cause
Add this to the annals of extreme fund raising: jumping off a 41-story building to raise money for charity.
Endurance events, such as marathons and bike cross-country expeditions, have long held appeal for participants who ask their friends and relatives to “sponsor” them by making donations. But another type of event has entered the extreme fund-raising circuit—and is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars.
More than 100 rappelling events have occurred since 2008, when Over the Edge, a Canadian company, brought the concept to the United States.
In 2009 it had 18 charity clients; a year later, it had 42. For 2011 it has 62 nonprofit organizations including Boy Scouts of America, the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and Special Olympics. The organizations have raised more than $10-million since 2009, with the average event raising more than $60,000…
July 15, 2011, 11:27 am
Japan’s Red Cross Gets Donations From Vending Machines
If only charitable giving was as easy as buying a Coke at a vending machine. Well, now it is—at least in Japan.
A Coca-Cola bottling company in Japan and the country’s Red Cross have joined together to enable people to make donations by putting money into a vending machine, which in Japan is a popular way to buy items like mobile phones and food.
Donations are paying for recovery efforts under way in the wake of March’s devastating earthquakes and tsunamis.
Sayaka Matsumoto, a spokeswoman for the Japanese Red Cross Society, said in an e-mail to The Chronicle that she is not aware of any effort to bring the concept to the United States.
People can give in two ways through the vending machines that bear Red Cross logos. They can buy drinks at the regular price and a portion of the sales will be donated to the Japanese Red Cross. Or they…
June 3, 2011, 11:40 am
How to Raise $1.3-Million in One Hour
Thompson Child & Family Focus, in Charlotte, N.C., managed to raise $1.3-million in under an hour at its annual fund-raising lunch last month. That’s a big sum for the group — it represents about 9 percent of the social-service group’s annual budget.
Ginny Amendum, Thompson’s president, didn’t set a goal before the charity’s annual fund-raising lunch started. But everything else was carefully orchestrated to ensure success.
John Fennebresque, a Charlotte lawyer who served as host of the luncheon, quickly scanned the crowd and felt the energy in the room. The audience reacted well to a six-minute video about a young man the nonprofit helped become a thriving teenager even though he had suffered serious mental problems after he spent time as young boy in a Russian orphanage. People stood up and applauded the young man’s story, and then Mr. Fennebresque took advantage of the…
December 28, 2010, 10:48 am
15 Fund-Raising Videos for the Last 15 Days of 2010
The Volunteers of America Chesapeake affiliate is trying to replace the traditional 12 days of Christmas gifts with a new tradition—15 days of fund-raising videos.
Every day starting with December 17, the charity, which serves people in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, has been posting a new video; the last one will appear on December 31.
The idea took hold after Thanksgiving weekend when the charity’s staff members held a brainstorming session. They wanted to do something big to promote year-end gifts but to do it in a way that would not cost much or take a lot of time.
What materialized was “Courtney’s Quest: 15 Days of Giving.” The host of each video is Courtney Dunn, who handles communications for the charity—and who worked as a television reporter and anchor before joining the organization. The charity estimated it spent about $3,000 on the appeal.
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