December 28, 2010 | Read Time: 3 minutes
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.
Videos in the series, each of which is no longer than two minutes, showcase social-service programs that Volunteers of America Chesapeake provides, including its shelters for the homeless and programs to help people kick drugs and alcohol.
Ms. Dunn says her goal was to offer potential donors “a behind-the-scenes tour” of the charity.
Ms. Dunn’s background in television made it easy for her to produce the videos. She visited the charity’s offices over three days, wrote the scripts, and directed the videos.
Each video ends with Ms. Dunn asking viewers to go to the group’s Web site and give before the December 31 deadline for making a gift that can be deducted from 2010 taxes. She also explains the other ways people can give, such as donating a used suit jacket for one of the charity’s clients to wear to a job interview or joining the charity’s corps of 2,000 volunteers.
So far, the video campaign has helped the charity increase visitors. Page views on the charity’s home page rose by 76 percent during the third week of December compared with the third week in November. And each day since the videos started, the number of people who view the home page has risen.
Most important, the videos have already sparked a handful of donations. Jan Kary, vice president for development and external affairs, says her goal is to raise $200,000 by December 31.
Ms. Dunn is promoting the videos on social-media sites such as Facebook and Twitter and by sending e-mail blasts to the organization’s 600 employees as well as its donors.
Writing in the Agitator blog, Tom Belford, a fund-raising consultant, praised the novelty of the video series but didn’t much like the idea of a 15-day appeal. “Having gone to the trouble and expense to produce the videos, I would have constructed them to be timeless,” he writes. “And a 15-video countdown—one each for the last 15 days of the year—while cute, seems unnecessary and might even strike some as extravagant.”
Ms. Kary says it’s not the charity’s intention to keep the videos viable all year long. “As a fund raiser, December 31 is a tax deadline, even for people who don’t itemize,” she says. “There’s something about the deadline, a part of it, that’s an emotional, visceral decision to give.”
“We’re trying something different, and we think it’s valuable,” Ms. Kary says, adding that her organization hopes to continue the series in 2011 with different iterations of the concept.
Here’s the Day 2 video of “Courtney’s Quest.”
