When Angela Joens, assistant vice chancellor for development outreach at the University of California at Davis, learned a major donor was dying, she wanted to thank her in a meaningful way. The donor had endowed a study-abroad scholarship, so Joens recorded the program’s first class of scholars in a video about what the opportunity meant to them. Joens filmed the video on her iPad, and a colleague showed it to the donor shortly before she died.
For the donor, watching the video was an “It’s a Wonderful Life moment,” Joens said. She responded not only with tears but also an increased planned gift to the university. The size of the estate gift was surprising. The video, Joens said, “wasn’t even meant to get more money. It was just to say thank you for that gift.”
UC Davis uses videos primarily to thank donors and keep in touch with them throughout the year. It uses software called ThankView to record and distribute videos on holidays like Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day and during major fundraising drives. Joens estimates that the institution pays about $5,000 a year for the service.
And whenever a donor makes an annual contribution over the phone, the student who closes the gift immediately films a quick personal video on an iPad saying thanks and how much he or she enjoyed speaking with the donor.
The videos that are done more casually tend to receive better feedback, says Joens. Videos from phone-athon callers are simple expressions of gratitude, and when donors don’t expect an immediate and personal acknowledgment of their gift, they’re most responsive to a thank-you video, she says.
Most of the videos UC Davis sends are filmed selfie-style on a phone or tablet. It takes as few as 30 seconds to record these videos, and the students can send them immediately, Joens says.
And while most videos take little effort on the part of the development team, she says, they can have a big impact. ThankView allows recipients to respond by email or video. One donor responded to a Valentine’s Day video saying it was a bright spot of her first Valentine’s Day alone after her partner had died. “That was worth any ounce of energy my team put into it,” Joens said.
Donors Interact and Raise Money
At the Florida affiliates of Susan G. Komen, which supports breast-cancer research, Josh Hirsch, director of mission and communication, used a software called CauseVid to thank people who gave to his Facebook birthday fundraising event for the organization. His thank-yous also were simple selfie-style videos.
He was floored by the way donors responded: “People were thanking me for saying thank you,” Hirsch said. “I never really get anything like that with a traditional handwritten thank-you. But it really blew me away, too, to see that engagement.”
The charity uses CauseVid to send thank-you videos to those who participate in fundraising events and to monthly donors, among others. Hirsch says the chapter spends $200 a month for the service, although packages and fees vary.
And a month before each donor’s birthday, the organization sends a video asking donors to mark their birthdays by fundraising for Susan G. Komen on Facebook. In one video, three staff members in party hats eat cake.
“Join us by celebrating your birthday — we’ll save you a piece of cake,” one says. Another staff member directs the viewer to click the button labeled “Create Your Facebook Fundraiser” under the video. A week before the donor’s birthday, the charity follows up with another video as a reminder to set up a fundraising event.
This year was the first that the chapter was set up to receive donations from fundraising events on Facebook, and while Hirsch has anecdotally seen more Facebook fundraising events for the group, it’s not yet clear how much of an impact the videos are having.
At UC Davis, Joens thanks more than 50,000 donors every year. “Video lets you be as personalized as possible,” Joens says. That doesn’t mean each donor receives a unique video. For example, someone who gives to support women’s track and field will get a thank-you video that mentions a gift to student athletics rather than the specific sport. “But it’s close enough. It’s unique enough,” says Joens.
Thank-you videos are also a valuable tool for donor retention, Hirsch says. “If we all know that it’s much easier to retain a donor than it is to try to acquire new donors, why not make our donors feel like a million bucks?”
