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Organizations that seek to do good for the world, must also be very good at raising the funds needed to fuel that work. The average charity spends somewhere between 20-28% of their annual budget on fundraising efforts and other administrative costs. Depending on the size of the group, that figure can reach millions of dollars, and those funds could be spent furthering their cause. Our company, Pivotshare, an online video distribution and marketing platform, helps charities efficiently increase donations and attract new supporters. 

Camp Firefly, a charity that allows terminally ill children and their families to enjoy time together in the great outdoors, wanted to fund a project and created a video that they planned on selling to their supporters using iTunes. Shortly before launch, they learned aboutPivotshare and changed their plans. We set up their online video player so that when customers bought the video for a small fee, they were given the option to make a further donation.

The campaign went extraordinarily well and proved that online video fundraising could be an incredible tool to help charities. Donations outpaced purchase income by a margin of three to one and the average donation was over $18 for a video that cost $1.99.

There are other benefits to using video aside from financial gains. Recent studies show that emails containing video components have a 5.6% higher open rates and 96.38% higher click through rates.

Supporters are more likely to donate further after just having seen an emotionally charged video as opposed to reading the same plea in text form. Also, the variable cost of the video is effectively nil, especially when compared to physical goods. Merchandise fulfillment and shipping expenses can now be a thing of the past. 

Any organization can benefit from this enhanced technology without needing overly technical staff. All charities need to fundraise is the video itself. If the group has a great existing website, they can use an embeddable video player and if not, a complete site can be generated instantly using the Pivotshare platform. Both options make sharing on social networks easy in order to leverage networks of your existing contact list.

The system will also capture valuable contact information that can then be used for further fundraising efforts, as opposed to offline equivalents such as donation boxes or email campaigns that prompt supporters to mail checks. Other valuable data such as location and demographics can help plan future events around the most passionate donors.

Our company has also run successful campaigns for many other organizations including UCI Mind, an Alzheimer's research group, and Exodus Cry, an association dedicated to eradicating sex trafficking worldwide. We look forward to empowering more charities in the near future to generate crucial funds in the smartest and most efficient way possible.

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About

Adam Mosam is the founder of Pivotshare, a technology company specializing in digital media marketing and distribution. He is a serial entrepreneur that previously built and sold a software company and has worked in product management, marketing and business development on five continents. http://pivotshare.com

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