What happens when 30 people who believe in the Uptown Film Center ask their friends and family to believe in it, too? An incredible $62,758 raised from 281 new donors and 49 repeat donors!
This summer, 30 Uptown supporters stepped forward as Light Up the Uptown campaign captains, each committing to raise a modest $500 by asking friends and family to make a gift of $20 or more. While the original overall goal of the campaign was $20,000, the captains more than tripled that number—and almost everyone exceeded their personal goal, with most raising more than $1,000.
The idea for the campaign came from Natalie Dawe, an Upper West Side volunteer and Uptown’s lead marketing consultant. She knew that a personal invitation would be much more powerful than a generic fundraising appeal. “Anytime I tell someone in my network about the Uptown Film Center and talk about how passionate I am about it, the excitement is infectious.”
Natalie proposed a peer-to-peer campaign that would give supporters their own personalized fundraising pages and the tools to share the Uptown story with their personal networks. Raquel Munive, another Uptown volunteer, joined the effort as co-chair. Together, she and Natalie created a toolkit to make it easy for first-time fundraisers to get started, providing information about the Uptown, sample emails and texts, social media posts and photos. Each “captain” also had a personalized donation page where they could watch their fundraising progress and receive regular updates.
The result was an extraordinary outpouring of support!
The captains ranged in age from 17 to 85; many had never raised money before. But because the ask was just $20, they say they felt comfortable reaching out to their friends and family. And then the gifts started coming in. One fundraiser identified a leadership donor; others kept raising their goals as they surpassed them.
By mid-August, after the eight-week campaign, the 30 volunteers had raised $62,758—three times the original overall goal. Just as important were the 281 new donors who joined the Uptown community by donating through the campaign.
“A broad base of community support matters enormously to a project like ours,” says Beth Krieger, Uptown Vice President/Development and Communications. “Foundations, government funders and individual major donors want to see evidence that our project has the support of the community it will serve.” The influx of donors from the summer campaign, she says, has brought the total number of donors to 1,400.
“I hope the captains feel a lot of pride because they did something significant for their community,” adds Natalie. “The Uptown belongs to all of us—and these 30 volunteers showed just how much can happen when a community comes together to build it.”
Raquel notes that several captains have asked to continue their fundraising efforts through crowd-funded Name a Seat campaigns, working toward the $5,000 need to name a seat in one of the Uptown’s future theaters.
Natalie and Raquel hope to repeat the Light Up the Uptown campaign next summer. A call for volunteers will go out next May in our newsletter, so if you are interested, be sure you sign up for Uptown mailings at uptownfilm.org/mailing-list.
