The objective of this piece was to raise the prominence and understanding in our local community about Giving Tuesday. The video we are submitting was used to encourage participation and increase donations on this day of giving. Our goal was to create a really simple, but universal message that cut through traditional fundraising rhetoric and focused on the spirit of giving itself -- the same message that we teach our children when we want them to know the difference between right and wrong and be good people -- that sharing what you have is important -- and it does make "everyone happy."
The PSA was originally submitted to a 2015 Giving Tuesday PSA competition run by The Journal News / Lohud.com. (It won best overall video).
The youth featured in the video are children of our senior staff members here at Volunteer New York! Prior to filming, the youth were both already active in the community at local volunteer events thanks to their parents ongoing commitment to volunteering and the many community events they brought them to. The youth were filmed by their parents, and were just asked to answer truthfully several simple questions - as seen in the short PSA. The clips that were used in the PSA were all captured on their first and only takes!
We chose youth to be the messengers in this PSA because we quickly wanted to compel viewers with the "cute" factor, and then quickly hit them with a simple, but strong truth about "giving."
We purposely wanted to capture the hesitation in their answers when we asked them above giving away their toys -- because it shows something we can all relate to (not wanting to give up what we treasure the most).
We hoped though that these particular youth in the PSA, would surprise us with their later responses, as they did -- so as to further engage the viewer with these "unexpected" thoughtful replies -- that they would not expect to come from a 6 year old.
The b-roll news footage used at the beginning was selected to help quickly educate viewers about the size and scope of Giving Tuesday -- especially if they have never heard of it before.
The results of our 2015 Giving Tuesday campaign were better than we hoped (and helped us drastically support our mission). We feel the community as a whole, as well as the local business leaders who bought-into our campaign were far more receptive to being involved in Giving Tuesday, once they understood it better -- which the PSA was paramount in bringing about. Altogether we raised over $65,000 as a result of this campaign and well surpassed our fundraising goal of $25,000. We also had one of our most successful days of social media and online visibility, with record web traffic and social engagement.
As well, the success of this campaign deepened our relationship with the Journal News who signed on to support us this year for 2016.
