Sherwood Forest Virtual Fundraiser Entertainment
This year, due to social distancing, many Spring fundraising events were canceled, postponed, or pivoted to a virtual format. Our friends at Sherwood Forest opted for the latter option. They took their whole event from live to virtual in about a month’s time and successfully raised $180,000!
They also have decided to move their entire summer camp season to an online format, making this a landmark year for the organization. We are impressed and thoroughly excited to have partnered with Sherwood Forest for another successful year of their annual spring fundraiser, and even more excited that they will be able to continue their important mission this year while keeping the camp and the community safe and supported.
For the past several years, we have partnered with Sherwood Forest to provide talent. St. Louis Media personality, Rene Knott, repeatedly emcees the event. When they asked about having him do this in a live broadcast capacity, we happily jumped on board! For over 40 years, our agency has worked to provide talent on and off the big screen; this was an opportunity to pull from years of experience in our on-camera work, to support the successful implementation of a virtual event.
Virtual vs. Live Program
Live fundraisers and virtual ones are quite different from one another; especially those being broadcast in the midst of COVID-19, competing with a plethora of social media content. The key to capturing the audience’s attention was in bite-sized, fast-paced programming. The show runs much more like a television broadcast than akin to your typical event style format. The breakdown of how this looks for each organization is slightly different and heavily relies on what kind of content is being generated. That’s where we were able to step in and offer some solutions that aligned with the overall event, which brings us to the next piece of it all.
For the past several years, we have partnered with Sherwood Forest to provide talent. St. Louis Media personality, Rene Knott, repeatedly emcees the event. When they asked about having him do this in a live broadcast capacity, we happily jumped on board! For over 40 years, our agency has worked to provide talent on and off the big screen; this was an opportunity to pull from years of experience in our on-camera work, to support the successful implementation of a virtual event.
Professional Talent + Organizational Representatives
We are seeing many organizations doing online campaigns right now, which is wonderful! And while budgets might be tight, professional performers are an element that can have a high impact on the visibility and engagement you see in your digital campaigns. Including the right mix for your organization can be the key to getting your message seen, heard, and realized.
Sherwood Forest featured a mix of interviews from representatives within the organization and allowed Rene to do what he does best and keep the audience engaged and the program moving with a personal touch.
Aside from the educational and informational content, we worked with Sherwood Forest to secure a live band that spoke to the values of their mission, provided some vignettes of dancing, and lightened the evening quite a bit. St. Louis band Fresh Heir played intermittently bringing their uplifting sound and positive lyricism, which captured the attention of the virtual attendees and celebrated this important moment of connection.
Technological Partners
Content is king, and the quality of that content is queen; don’t underestimate the value of partnering with experts. For this event, there were two production partners involved for the recording and engineering of the program and live music component. As production moved forward and we observed social distancing protocols, it was imperative to broadcast from two locations. We’ll leave the logistics out of this article for now, but shoot us an email if you’d like to chat more about how this portion worked.
$180,000 Raised and a 5 Star Review
“We were able to raise more than $180,000 during our virtual Blue Jean Ball – which we are thrilled about. Thank you for your help in coordinating many different levels of involvement this year and helping us put on such a great event. We really appreciate your ideas and the enthusiasm you brought during the planning of the event. I have received multiple comments about how people loved Fresh Heir. Their songs were the perfect message for the evening and just the general feelings for the time right now.”
-Director of Resource Development, Sherwood Forest
-Director of Resource Development, Sherwood Forest
Thank you Sherwood Forest! We can’t wait to see how your first virtual camp season goes!
If you would like more information on how to successfully implement a virtual fundraiser for your organization, e-mail us at: info@talent-plus.com