FriendRaiser™

BrandFlick, a company specializing in storytelling on video, has been tapped by Smith Beers Yunker as the Exclusive Producer of FriendRaiser™. David Wecker, founder and creative director of BrandFlick, brings to our clients nearly 30 years of experience as a journalist, author and storyteller – including two decades writing columns about everyday people for The Cincinnati Post and The Kentucky Post. Read on. . .

What Is FriendRaiser™?

How Can It Help My Non-Profit Win?

As a non-profit, your story is your most powerful tool for generating awareness and raising funds. Now take it up a few notches: Your story -- as told by real people in their own words on video -- has an unmatched ability to capture hearts and minds, all while engaging anyone you wish to reach in a one-on-one conversation.

FriendRaiser™ blends storytelling and a few minutes of video in a way that breathes life into your story. It makes emotional connections between those who can help and those who need help … people who can be halfway around the world or on the other side of town. People they will never meet but can get to know by looking into their eyes and hearing their stories.

In terms of major gifts and capital campaigns, it’s hard to beat face-to-face interactions, where a friend tells a friend, who tells another friend. But arranging meetings between volunteers and thousands of current and prospective donors is an immense challenge both logistically and financially.

FriendRaiser™ takes each viewer straight to the heart of the matter, be it a hospital construction site in Darfur, an inner-city homeless mission or a senior living community. The people in your FriendRaiser™ are transformed from statistics to living, breathing human beings. In an instant, viewers not only see what you’re working to accomplish, they understand why it matters. And they become inspired to play a role in the victory.

“The ability of video to capture faces, moods, smiles and stories cannot be compared with photos or text. It elicits an emotional response that moves the viewer to want to be a part of the story through their giving.”

Denise Roe

Special Projects Manager

Manna Relief Ministries

FriendRaiser™ takes a journalistic approach to your story, using your people in their own words, weaving it all together to tell your overall story. The result is a compelling mini-documentary that tells your story for you the exact same way over and over -- whenever someone visits your website, when you send a link to everyone in your database with the press of a button or when you make it the center of a direct-mail campaign.

The great thing about people is, they want to help. They just have to know you’re out there and hear your story. FriendRaiser™ will help them put themselves in your story.

Oh, one more thing – one huge practical reason that makes FriendRaiser™ the smart alternative for raising funds and generating awareness: It lets you take full advantage of the Internet.

Figures from a 2011 joint study by Convio, Sea Change Strategies and Edge Research into the power of video storytelling for nonprofits clearly show that more major and mid-level donors are giving online. Corporate donors know that giving online is more efficient because it helps non-profits reduce operating costs.

The fact is, most non-profit website are missing big opportunities to engage wired donors with their organizations. Fewer than half of those surveyed believe most non-profit websites are inspiring or give them any feeling of being personally connected to their cause or mission.

So get connected. And start building stronger connections with donors and prospective donors. That’s what FriendRaiser™ can do for you.

To learn how your organization will benefit from your own personalized FriendRaiser™ please e-mail us at info@sbyco.com or call 800.698.6537.

Afterall, we must first raise friends, before we can raise funds.