Our friends at Seeds of Hope within the Archdiocese of Denver had a big decision to make.
They were feeling the pain that so many businesses and non-profits have felt this year: how to adapt their annual gala— their biggest fundraiser of the year— to accommodate the reality of a global pandemic?
Embarking into this uncharted territory, their executive director, Jay Clark, told us:
“Our biggest fundraiser is usually a 400 person gala in a beautiful hotel ballroom. Well with the current environment, that just wasn’t possible.”
“We looked at various solutions. Do you do a smaller gathering? Do you do an email campaign? Do you do a virtual gala? What do you do in the absence of a single event that raises half a million dollars a year?”
Jay said they were going to need a video to grab peoples attention, whatever they ended up doing. Whether they did a gala with 400 people, with 30 people, or a virtual gala - regardless, the visual video piece was going to be central to whatever solution they would find.
Seeds of Hope strives to make a transformative Catholic education financially accessible to any family who seeks it.
Jay said, “The best thing we have to sell our program are the kids that we support, so obviously the visual piece of that is critical for us. That can tell our story better than any letter, email, or phone call - the visual piece is so important to what we do. People want to see who they’re supporting.”
The team resolved to take a leap of faith.
Jay explained, “I came across some videos from a friend. They were on serious topics, but had a light and human element to them. And I asked him, ‘Who does these videos? I need to talk to them.’ And that’s when I reached out to Lux Lab.”
“We needed someone with a fresh outlook who are professional storytellers. Someone to take everything we want to do, and turn it into a story.”
“[Lux Lab] did everything we wanted to accomplish— in just a three minute video. I was impressed with how effective we were. Everything down from the music choice, the cuts, the editing style, the drone shots, and the scripting of it all.”
“There is no way I can envision that getting done with another organization the way that we worked together to get that done in 3 minutes. Extraordinary.”
Jay explained what they are doing now that the video is made.
“We’re maximizing the exposure to this video because it tells our story much better than we could with any other medium. We’re using it on all our social platforms, it’s all over our website, we’re doing a lot of email communication with it.”
Seeds of Hope got innovative.
“We did get some of our bigger donors together for a small dinner and that was essentially the world premiere for the video. There was even a small ovation. That night really set the tone and we got halfway to our goal. I point that all back to the video setting the tone.”
Jay is really excited about the direction Seeds of Hope is headed this year. They are well on their way to meeting their fundraising goal, and he’s confident that they’ll get there by the end of the year.
“I would enthusiastically recommend Lux Lab to other people. The process of how they figure out how to make it work is the most valuable piece. I know a lot of people that can cut videos together and shoot stuff, but to me, having the outline piece of that and knowing how to make it flow and tell a story was the most invaluable piece to have access to. To have that vision is a gift.”
Our congratulations go out to our friends at Seeds of Hope. We are so excited to hear how fundraising goes this year, and we hope many lives will be blessed by the outstanding work you all are doing this year and beyond.
Here's to your success!
Fiat Lux!
