Minnesota Nonprofit Cookie Cart Increases Gala Donations by 15% Using Video

Background

“It’s more than just a cookie, it’s preparing me for my future.”

Cookie Cart provides a fun and educational first job experience for teens in North Minneapolis and East St. Paul, with a strong emphasis on unlocking the potential within. Through its creative and engaging bakery and classroom environments, youth employees learn leadership and job skills that will last them a lifetime. Youth staff who go through Cookie Cart’s doors grow their confidence in a professional environment and are taught that they each have unlimited potential for success.

Challenge

Inspiring Donors to Give More Generously to Cookie Cart

Fundraising events, such as galas and auctions, are popular ways that organizations like Cookie Cart use to raise donations, awareness and showcase the success of its mission to supporters. This year, the team at Cookie Cart wanted to create a captivating video to share the stories of its youth employees with its audience at its annual Chef’s Dinner gala. They’d used video before, but were still in search of a video team that could not only make a great video, but could make the video experience awesome overall, and bring out the unique personalities of these teens.

When approached by this challenge, we were excited for the opportunity to make a video that was not only engaging to viewers but engaging to the teens that were part of making it.

Approach

Strategy

We started with an exploration session to narrow in on the core message: “How Cookie Cart helps teens discover their potential within.” From there, we developed a mood board that represented the feeling we’d convey. Youth are full of energy and the video would undoubtedly have to capture this. The mood board included visuals of interviewees talking directly to camera, bright lighting, colorful scenes, and smiling faces.

Finally, we had to find the story. To get the most authentic story across, we avoid interviews from board members and teachers. It needed to be directly from the people who were benefiting from the organization – the youth staff! We conducted pre-interviews with a variety of teens to learn about their perspective and how Cookie Cart impacted them. This allowed us to create better interview questions that help us get the most authentic stories the day of production.

Production

We filmed the video over two days with a three-person crew, one day devoted to each of their locations (Minneapolis and St. Paul). These days included capturing candid interactions in the bakery and classroom settings, interviewing teens at each of the locations, and filming with our drone. 

In order to better captivate the audience, we decided to have the speakers talk straight to camera. Being on camera is already difficult enough – so looking straight at the lens could be a real challenge! To make this approachable, we used a teleprompter that showed the interviewer’s face, making it feel like a natural conversation. The youth were really able to open up and forget they were talking straight to camera.

Distribution

Of course, Cookie Cart used the video at their annual Chefs’ Dinner Gala, but they were also able to use it in email marketing to donors, Give to the Max, and on their website. By distributing it across multiple channels and events, Cookie Cart was able to increase the video’s effectiveness and raise more donations. Additionally, Cookie Cart was able to pull stills from the video to incorporate throughout its website and social channels.

Outcome

Increased Event Donations by 15%

Not only did the guests love watching the video, the youth and team members of Cookie Cart had a wonderful time creating it. The Chef’s Dinner event increased its donations by 15% from its previous year, despite being completely virtual. Not only that, Cookie Cart set a new donation record at its event. Talk about success!