“Like most shops, our frontline fundraisers were foaming at the mouth for one-pagers. We’ve really been trying to move away from one pagers and tell impactful stories, instead.”
What MGOs really want from one-pagers
It makes sense that Gift Officers are always on the hunt for one-pagers. They are looking for a snapshot that captures the “elevator pitch” of a campaign priority. They want to outline a need in a way that isn’t overwhelming or pushy.
One-pagers are a quick, tangible lead-in or leave-behind. And we all get why they are so popular. But there’s a better way to meet this demand, both for fundraisers and for donors.
What Gift Officers are really looking for in a one-pager (and, what donors will really respond to) is an impactful story. That’s what fundraising is, at its core – telling the story of a compelling need to a person who wants to meet that need.
Gifts are made when the real story rings true both for the student (or faculty member, or Dean, or program director) AND for the donor. This is another way of saying that people build relationships with people. Not with buildings, or mascots, or even awesome research initiatives.
So, what is the best way to get the story from fundraisers to donors?
One-pagers scratched that itch for a while, but these days, we can do so much better than attaching a PDF one-pager to an email. There’s a better way to tell impactful stories, one that does justice to the humans at the heart of fundraising.
KU Foundation embraces the shift
Over the past few years, the fundraising foundation for the University of Kansas has gone through MAJOR strategic and cultural shifts in donor engagement and fundraising. They put lots of “ways we’ve always done it” on the chopping block.
And they’ve seen incredible results (like 7,000 new gifts within 90 days of launching a new Donor Experience program and $17.7M+ in new revenue).
Austin Ice, Assistant Vice President of Donor Engagement, has been at the helm of a lot of this change. She recently joined us for a deep-dive on the early results of this team-wide shift. (Catch a quick clip below – and watch the full conversation here.)
Swapping one-pagers for impact videos
There are many tweaks that the KU Endowment team made that ANY team can put into practice almost immediately, and start to see positive results. One of those tweaks is to swap out campaign “one-pagers” for video impact stories.
Instead of arming frontline fundraisers with the latest PDF one-pagers for campaign priorities, the team made a folder in their team-wide ThankView called “Development Resources” and filled it with the beautiful impact videos created by the University’s Marketing and Communications team.
Important note: these impact videos already existed at KU. No new work, no new costs. We bet there are similar videos at your institution that you could track down and make available to your fundraisers, too.
A library of impact videos for MGOs
Next, fundraisers at the KU Foundation received basic ThankView training. They learned how to search the “Development Resources” folder to find a video that describes a specific fundraising priority, and then embed the video link right into a personal email to a prospect.
Here’s an example of one of the videos from the KU College of Engineering that fundraisers can share via email with their prospects.
Imagine receiving that video in your email inbox as Chemical Engineering alum. Does that beat a PDF one-pager?
When KU MGOs send emails to donors featuring these pre-recorded videos from program leaders, faculty members, or students, donors can hear directly from the people they support. This leads to a stronger, human-to-human, connection. (Which is what fundraising is all about.)
AND it allows scaled authentic storytelling without adding to MGO workload.
Bonus: Because fundraisers are sharing these videos from ThankView, they can see whether the prospect opened the video, if they watched the video, how much of it they watched, and how many times they watched it. All great indicators of interest – and perfect prompts for follow-up.
Beyond 1-1 fundraising: Sending videos for major events
The KU endowment team has also armed their Donor Experience Officers (DXOs) with ThankView, encouraging them to send videos as follow-ups to event attendees and ahead of marquee fundraising moments like Giving Day.
Swapping one-pagers (or text-heavy emails) for videos before and after events is yielding some incredible ROI:
- Over 50% of folks who attended events in FY24 made post-event gifts after receiving a follow-up video
- That’s $15.4M+ influenced
- There was a 125% increase in new, first-time donors on Giving Day
The takeaway
Authentic storytelling works, and there’s a better way than the one-pagers of ye olden days. EverTrue’s donor video platform, ThankView, makes is so easy for fundraisers to send impact videos to their donors – and track engagement metrics to inform follow-up.
There’s a better way to tell impactful stories. You can send a test ThankView message to your email inbox to see this in action.
Swapping one-pagers for personalized videos is one shift at the KU Foundation that led to 7.5x donor engagement in just one year. You can read the whole story here – or watch our (free!) webinar featuring Austin Ice, Assistant Vice President of Donor Engagement at the KU Foundation.
