Electronic Media: Fundraising Features

General Observations

41 entries

The fundraising video category continued in 2007 as the most competitive of the Circle of Excellence electronic media categories, with 41 entries (down just one from last year). The four award winners, the judges agreed, were outstanding examples of the effective use of video to inform, inspire, and engage donors and prospects. Buried in the other 37 entries were productions that missed the mark – sometimes in glaringly obvious ways – leading to an outpouring of “how-not-to” hints from the judges in their discussion after viewing the entries.

Entered in the category were many productions the judges felt were low-energy and plodding. A number of factors contributed to the anti-excitement. Far too many presidents, headmasters, and deans play a prominent on-camera role in fundraising videos. While these leaders obviously have many talents, most often those talents do not include a powerful and compelling on-camera persona. (We’ve seen exceptions, but they are few.)

One judge said that “If a person is to be interviewed in a video, he or she must convey energy and warmth – and must be worth watching. Good media training of the interviewee, and careful, honest direction of those speaking on camera are required.” Being overly deferential and solicitous to the head of the institution when shooting the on-camera segments is not a favor either to the leader, or to the production of the video.

The use of quiet, slow music also contributed to the low-energy feel of some productions, as did generic on-camera sound bites with not real context. The power of good story-telling was demonstrated in the best entries, but missing from most of the others. Instead, we saw overly-scripted people trying to read poorly placed teleprompters or glancing down at notes – which doesn’t make for good video.

And the judges noted one odd interview set up that may be a problem specific to fundraising videos. A couple of the entries featured husband-and-wife couples (given that many major donors contribute as a couple), but then only one of the pair would be interviewed, while the silent spouse smiled and looked on awkwardly. It’s a set up that is unfair to the silent spouse, and distracting for the audience.

Comments on Winning Entries

Gold Medals

Hobart and William Smith Colleges – “Campaign for the Colleges”

• Archival footage is often used – and often poorly – in fundraising videos. This video uses old footage well, like seasoning, to set up a look at Hobart and William Smith today that is tied inextricably to its past. Taking a “tapas” approach, the video offers brief and well-edited sound and video bites to highlight notable aspects of the colleges. It’s a more light-hearted and quietly humorous view than we typically find in campaign videos.
  There are many voices and faces, and many engaging stories – and the “Gratitude” conclusion is a tour de force that includes super-brief on-camera comments by an amazing 75 members of the Hobart and William Smith family. This video is an outstanding example of warmth that works.

Tufts University – “Tufts Is…”

• This campaign video powerfully communicates the key goals of the Tufts campaign: a global perspective, active citizenship, and a commitment to the health sciences. In many ways, the production is an model of the classic fundraising video – an engaging overview of an institution’s priorities through creative videography and editing, sensitive use of music, and brief comments by those who are the institution.
  A clever and subtle device of snapshots clipped on a line ties the vignettes together, and we’ve rarely seen a celebrity alum (NBC’s Today Show Co-anchor Meredith Vieira) used more effectively to open and close a production.
  This outstanding example of the fundraising video genre is a powerful communication tool, both on the small screen and in the big-screen launch event setting – something few such videos achieve.

Silver Medals

Phillips Exeter Academy – 75th Harkness Anniversary Film

• Opening with archival footage of a classroom debate at a “Harkness Table” (basically, student teaching and engagement in the round), this production is story telling at its best. The video recounts the largely unknown saga of Edward Harkness, a quiet philanthropist of a stature equal to a Carnegie or Rockefeller, whose friendship with a Phillips Exeter principal in the early 1900s led to a reshaping of the academy’s approach to education.
  Throughout the production, archival footage is delicately interwoven with faculty, staff, student, and alumni interviews. The end result is a video that is the exact opposite of generic, revealing the special history and personality of a truly unique institution – which is exactly what any fundraising video should do. It’s candid, fun, and powerfully engaging for all who might view it, but most especially for the key audience, Phillips Exeter alumni.

University of Edinburgh – “The University of Edinburgh Campaign: Enlightenment in the 21st Century”

• To tell the story of this unique institution, this richly-layered video uses the approach of outlining and communicating Edinburgh’s “DNA,” which is described in the award entry as “a combination of research and teaching, history and modernity, students and academics . . . a DNA that every alumnus contributes to and also carries with them.”
  In a particularly gutsy move, the producers decided to give selected students video cameras to use in shooting “video diaries,” and ultimately included clips from three of those in the final production. The student-shot segments offer an intriguing – and well-integrated – counterpoint to the professionally produced segments. The production concludes with a compelling, and again well-integrated, statement of the goals of this largest capital campaign ever in Scottish higher education, and underlines what the campaign will mean to the future of this remarkable institution.
  This production represents an outstanding example of case stating via fundraising video. Furthermore, in carefully relating the video to the printed campaign case statement, those responsible for the campaign have leveraged a well-planned and consistent message across communication platforms.