How The Raptor Center Used Personalized Videos for Their Biggest Fundraising Event of the Year

Learn how the Raptor Center blew their donors away by sending videos

The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota was looking for a way to effectively thank their donors for donating to their largest fundraising event of the year - Minnesota’s Give to the Max Day. They didn’t want to send a generic note in the mail or another automated email; they were looking for something genuine, authentic, and easy to execute.

Enter Gratavid.

Gratavid is a tool that allows organizations to create personalized videos at scale and send them via email or text. Nonprofit organizations use Gratavid to personally thank their donors, collect testimonials, and bring their donors to the scene by showing them the impact of their donation.

The Raptor Center partnered with Gratavid to create personalized videos thanking donors at all giving levels. The campaign exceeded their expectations and made it possible to thank 450+ donors!

The Raptor Center's goal was to have a personal touchpoint with every single person who donated to their most successful campaign ever. The support they receive from the community means everything to them, so they were looking for a way to engage with those who have helped move their mission forward. Whether they were first-time donors, donors that gave a smaller dollar amount, or returning donors and those supporting at a high level, they wanted to ensure they were thanking each and every one of them personally.

The Raptor Center turned to Gratavid for help.

With the use of Gratavid, they could work as a team to reach their goal. The video tasks were assigned to a group account that their team pulled up on a shared computer, setting up a thank you “studio” of sorts. Whoever was free at the time could see the current progress and jump in to thank donors personally before handing it off to the next person. It meant no donors were missed, and they had an easy way to organize, track, and send 1 personalized video and two generic thank you videos to all their giving day donors! 

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“Gratavid made it possible to easily and conveniently thank all of our donors and reach our goal of showing our appreciation at all giving levels. Without Gratavid, we wouldn’t have had a process to capture all these videos and track where to send them without getting overwhelmed."

Steve Turnbull
Minnesota Raptor Center

The campaign was sent to all giving day donors and finished with a unique open rate of 67% and a unique click-through rate of 47.8%.

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The Raptor Center also received a reply rate of 15.1%  from their donors. Here are just a few of the replies they received.

How awesome are those? Check out our 8 Tips for More Video Plays and Replies to learn the ways in which you too can receive amazing replies!

1. Divvy up the tasks between team members. There is no way that we could have pulled off thanking 450+ donors if we didn’t divvy up the tasks between our team members. Setting our expectations of how we would execute this campaign, in the beginning, was key.

2. Use a whiteboard to write the persons’ name. We used this tip from Gratavid to let our donors know that the video was specifically created just for them.

3. Add props to catch the attention of the donor. We added in one of our live raptors (a falcon, owl, or hawk) that was perched in the frame to really grab our donor’s attention and make it unique to The Raptor Center.

If you leave this article feeling motivated to create a donation experience that will make your donors feel confident in the impact of their gifts and eager to contribute again, set up a 30-minute demo today.