{"id":2130,"date":"2013-04-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/?p=2130"},"modified":"2024-05-08T17:47:01","modified_gmt":"2024-05-08T17:47:01","slug":"inspiration-a-video-fundraising-success-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/blog\/inspiration-a-video-fundraising-success-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspiration: A Video Fundraising Success Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, we had a call with Brice Thomas of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.united.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">United Theological Seminary<\/a> to chat about UTS\u2019s recent success on a campaign incorporating video.\u00a0 Let\u2019s get right to the \u201cWow!\u201d:<\/p>\n<p>By incorporating video in the campaign in question, UTS saw an inspiring 30% increase in giving.<\/p>\n<p>Wow!<\/p>\n<p>More specifically, each year, UTS runs a campaign in order to raise funds, a portion of which go directly to students at the seminary in the form of scholarships.\u00a0 Normally, they run a mail campaign that includes testimonials in which students express gratitude and describe the impact a scholarship had on their lives.<\/p>\n<p>This year, however, was a little different.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the print campaign, Brice took his camcorder and sat down with a diverse array of students to capture their testimonials in video interview format.\u00a0 He then edited the footage with free desktop software, and uploaded it to YouTube.\u00a0 As a part of the email portion of the campaign, supporters were sent a link to these videos.<\/p>\n<p>The impact was amazing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor the first time, donors had faces to put with the requests for funding,\u201d Brice said.\u00a0 \u201cThe videos created an emotional, human connection between donors and beneficiaries that inspired significantly greater giving than in past years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This leads to a few lessons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Emotional, organic, real, live communications are often best when it comes to fundraising.<\/strong>\u00a0 While statistics and well-written appeals may have their place, they can\u2019t replace the oldest type of connection that can be made between people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Less is more.<\/strong>\u00a0 UTS\u2019s videos were each 45-60 seconds.\u00a0 This kept the message focused, and impactful, and minimized disruption to the target audience\u2019s day.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>You don\u2019t need video skills to create videos.<\/strong>\u00a0 Brice is not an IT professional, nor is he a videographer (or at least, he wasn\u2019t prior to the campaign in question).\u00a0 As he said, \u201cIf I can do this, anyone can.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need to have a lot of technical skill \u2013 it\u2019s the content that matters.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Video is cheap.<\/strong>\u00a0 Believe it or not, videos can be created and shared very cost-effectively with free editing tools and video upload platforms.\u00a0\u00a0 While a professional video could easily cost thousands, you can make one yourself for far less.\u00a0 Scrounge up a camcorder to borrow, and you\u2019re in business.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What\u2019s the biggest takeaway?<\/p>\n<p>Dive in to the video pool with both feet.\u00a0 The water\u2019s fine!<\/p>\n<p>To see the videos, please <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/unitedseminaryoh\" rel=\"noopener\">click here to be taken to UTS\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a>, and view any video with the title \u201cUnited&#8217;s Effective Ministry Fund testimonial.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.startstorytelling.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Need help with video storytelling? Check out our free ebook!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, we had a call with Brice Thomas of United Theological Seminary to chat about UTS\u2019s recent success on a campaign incorporating video.\u00a0 Let\u2019s get right to the \u201cWow!\u201d: By incorporating video in the campaign in question, UTS saw an inspiring 30% increase in giving. Wow! More specifically, each year, UTS runs a campaign in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"acf":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Olivia Hosey","author_link":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/author\/ohosey\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}