“CauseVox was a huge factor in the success of our benefit this year.” — Jamie Salka, StoryPirates
About StoryPirates
StoryPirates is a nationally respected arts and creative writing organization founded in 2003 to celebrate the words and ideas of young people, to promote literacy as a vital part of education, and to preserve the spark of youthful creativity often lost in the transition to adulthood. The cornerstone of the company is the Play/Write Program, a series of creative writing and drama workshops that lead to a musical sketch comedy show acted by adults and comprised entirely of stories written by kids. Dually based in New York and Los Angeles, Story Pirates has grown to reach hundreds of thousands of children in over 150 schools across the country.
The Challenge
For the recent StoryPirates fundraiser, StoryPirates had a particular challenge: the event came together at the last minute and StoryPirates staff had very little time both to promote ticket sales and to seek contributions for education programs in low-income schools. StoryPirates staff simply didn’t have enough resources to reach a wide enough demographic in the eight weeks that had been allotted to achieve their goals.
StoryPirates staff couldn’t use traditional methods like snail mail campaigns, or rely on word of mouth alone to spread the message. The solution was to use CauseVox to empower the biggest supporters, staff and core fans, to reach out to their entire social network for help. It worked.
Campaign Techniques
StoryPirates started by holding an internal pep rally within our organization to announce the campaign. StoryPirates discussed the purpose of the benefit, the financial goals, and asked staff for their support reaching out to others. StoryPirates staff showed those who volunteered how to make CauseVox profiles, and asked them to each choose a reasonable goal for themselves. Finally, StoryPirates staff announced that the person who raised the most funds would get a prize at the end.
Everyone wrote their own passionate case on their CauseVox profile for why StoryPirates was important to them. As the campaign unfolded, StoryPirates staff coordinated a PR campaign that allowed StoryPirates to release big news or updates every several days, increasing as StoryPirates got closer to the event. That gave StoryPirates’ fundraisers reasons to keep posting developments and appeals for support on their social networks and over email.
StoryPirates gained more and more momentum and excitement as the event got closer and ended up drastically exceeding our goals.
Campaign Results
The goal was to raise $50,000. StoryPirates ended up taking in double that amount. The additional funds are a game changer for StoryPirates. They mean that StoryPirates will be better equipped to administer high quality creative writing programs to several thousand additional low-income students next year.
In addition, StoryPirates successfully leveraged the biggest supporters to reach new donors who had never contributed to the organization. StoryPirates now have hundreds and hundreds of new fans who got involved in large part because CauseVox made it so easy.
