Two months, twenty video entries, and twenty thousand video views later, we are proud to announce the winners of the JustTextGiving video competition!
In 1st place
With an incredible 5,185 views at the end of the competition, the clear winners are the Bald Mountain Crusade. The lads went to great lengths to fundraise for their chosen charity - Rett Syndrome Research Trust UK – and their sweet video has earned the charity a whopping £500 donation! Well done!
The runners-up
It was a tough call for our judges, but after careful deliberation and a carefully thought-out points system, they picked these two deserving runners up, who will each receive a £200 donation to their charities.
Mushroom Theatre & Equal People £500
For The Equal People Theatre Company
Shooting for the Target
Shortlist
We would also like to give a warm shout-out to the other high-scorers, whose videos we loved too!
Can you tell your arse from your elbow? – we really loved Simon’s entry as it created a (raunchy!) game out of fundraising.
10 Cool fundraising ideas with JustTextGiving – Jari came up with the creative idea of asking people around the world to display his text code in weird and wonderful places.
JustTextGiving with Dogs Trust – the first charity to submit a video entry, the Dogs Trust filmed a fun afternoon playing with their rescued dogs, and they managed to get 3,664 people to watch their video!
Thank you to everyone who took the time and effort to enter the competition. We feel totally humbled by your dedication to the causes you are fundraising for.
Video fundraising tips
JustGiving gets regular high traffic coming in from YouTube, and visitors from YouTube can be quite generous. In some months, YouTube visitors to JustGiving.com were twice as generous as visitors from Facebook and Twitter combined! So we definitely recommend investing some time in making a fun or thought-provoking video, then getting lots of people to watch it. (you can then add your video to your fundraising page)
In the judging session last night, as we sat and watched all of the videos, we thought of a few top tips that could have improved the “fundraising power” of each video. So here are some insightful tips from our judges:
1) Rob Dyson: “I think there’s room for wit, humour and creativity but not at the expense of obscuring the charity’s impact. If 2011 has a theme, it’s that charities and fundraisers must demonstrate their impact – because the public purse is shrinking, therefore we must be even more convinced and convincing in terms of how our money helps.”
2) Ross McCulloch: “Involve your beneficiaries where possible, it’s why the basketball wheelchair one worked so well.”
3) Rachel Beer: “Don’t forget tell prospective donors how their donation will make a difference – by relating it to the charity’s mission. It’s not enough just to say it ‘will make a difference’. Talk about what the charity does – the problem the charity exists to address and the work it does to address that.”
4) Zarine Kharas: “Whilst a couple of the videos were quite cool, they all needed to contain more about the charity and what it did, but also show the difference your donation can make.”
5) One cheeky one from me: “Make sure to include a URL to your fundraising page, or of course your text code, in the video description. This makes it easier for people to actually donate once they’ve watched the video!”
Tags: Fundraising Tips, justtextgiving, justtextgiving competition, sms giving, text giving, video competition, video fundraising, vodafone