Chris Strub, the 'Giving Day Guy,' right, helped produce about a dozen Facebook Live broadcasts in a single two-hour stretch at the Community Foundation of Louisville offices on Sept. 12 for Give For Good Louisville. || Photo: Shutter Photography and Film
With arguably the most comprehensive Facebook Live strategy in the history of giving days, the Community Foundation of Louisville further established its reputation in the Kentuckiana region as a leading content producer and equipped dozens of nonprofits with live-streaming tools that helped raise a record-breaking $6.88 million in 24 hours during Give for Good Louisville 2019.
For a third straight year, I traveled to Louisville to partner with the CF Louisville team on executing a day-long live-streaming video strategy that blanketed their 24-hour online giving day. Traditionally, Give for Good Louisville's game day marketing plan has been centered around a 90-minute mid-day nonprofit rally at 4th Street Live!, but 2019 represented a new creative direction.
In lieu of a rally, the Community Foundation team staged a two-hour mid-day program at their downtown office, inviting nonprofits to sign up for free 10-minute live-streaming sessions with one of three three-person teams: a live-stream host; a live-stream producer; and a 'runner,' who managed the flow of the nonprofit staff in and out of each room.
Each of the three rooms had a schedule of 12 10-minute blocks, and nonprofits were given the opportunity to sign up for a block weeks in advance of the giving day. Nonprofits were instructed to bring in their own mobile device, and the live-stream producer would type in an optimized title/description, while the designated live-stream host would make the nonprofit staff comfortable with the video they were about to create. Meanwhile, the runner would make sure that the process was being kept to the strict 10-minute limit.
I functioned as the live-stream producer in room 3, and for two straight hours, I recorded a dozen interviews between Emory Williamson of the Community Foundation and the various participating nonprofits. Meanwhile, two other live-stream rooms were filled by teams of CF Louisville staff and local radio personalities, who are particularly comfortable on camera.
This three-pronged, nonprofit-focused live-streaming strategy allowed the Community Foundation to not only have more than 30 of the most social media-savvy nonprofits in the community live-stream simultaneously about Give for Good Louisville; it also allowed them to have their own team write an optimized description, and enabled all of these videos to include both the trusted voice of the hosts, and the view of being at the Community Foundation of Louisville offices. In the photo at right, you can see how each broadcast included the Give For Good Louisville signage and colors, as well as host Emory Williamson. (Photo credit: Shutter Photography & Film)
By operating as a live-streaming headquarters for the nonprofits, the Community Foundation in essence 'graduated' from one of a cacophony of voices on social media during the giving day, to a centralized source of content for a significant slice of the hundreds of participating nonprofits. Because each video was filmed by the same set of producers, and hosted by the same group of on-screen talents, CF Louisville was able to exponentially increase its total reach, and connect with dozens of different sub-sets of the overall Kentuckiana community.
But that's not all.
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In addition to its mid-day live-streaming extravaganza, the Community Foundation of Louisville continued its tradition of dispatching staff members to various events hosted by nonprofits around the region. As has been my role since 2017, I traveled with a partner from the foundation, with our first remote broadcast originating just after 7 a.m. at McQuixote Books. Watch it here.
Molly Melia, right, of the Community Foundation, hosted the first remote broadcast of the day for the Community Foundation of Louisville, with nonprofit Decode Project.
Throughout the day, we leveraged my set of live-streaming equipment, including tripods, lights, my Samson Go Mic mobile handhelds, and most relevantly my DJI Osmo Mobile, which allowed us to create steady video experiences from morning 'til night. You can purchase all of the different elements of my live-streaming video kit at www.StrubStuff.com.
We also heavily relied upon Switcher Studio, pushing the limits with the technology by partnering directly with Jimmy Burns and Dan Petrik from Switcher Studio, which is based in Louisville. As we reached the afternoon and evening hours, Burns and Petrik were stationed at the CF Louisville offices while my team and another team of social media foundation staff visited different sites. Switcher Studio's 'Switcher for Teams' product allows multiple remote guests to join a broadcast remotely -- so in addition to the smooth on-screen graphics and multiple-camera benefits provided in Switcher, we were able to create newscast-style broadcasts that included simultaneous contributions from three different locations.
Using Switcher Studio, we were able to stage a single Facebook Live broadcast with inputs from three different locations, as well as a call to action across the bottom of the screen to donate at www.giveforgoodlouisville.org.
As has been the case with other giving days I've worked with, our evening broadcasts were among the most popular of the day. The most popular piece of video content we created for the day was the announcement of breaking $6 million -- a stretch goal for the Community Foundation that was surpassed much earlier than anticipated. On Sept. 12, that announcement video -- about 4 minutes and 21 seconds -- had more than 1,200 unique viewers, with 425 views of 10 seconds or longer. That video alone logged more than 8 cumulative hours of view time on Sept. 12 alone.
The longest average view time for a video came during an 11 p.m. broadcast from headquarters, when I sat and spoke with multiple members of the Community Foundation of Louisville team about how the day had gone. This is evidentiary of two things: 1) people like to stay up late and watch video on Facebook; and 2) longer broadcasts (this was by far the longest broadcast of the day, at over 32 minutes) provides viewers the opportunity to tune in longer if they'd like to.
If you would like to see the full #GiveForGoodLou live-stream data report that includes watch time, total impressions, unique viewers and more, email chrisstrub <at> gmail <dot> com with the subject line '#GiveForGoodLou report' and we'll have it sent right over to you.
Jan Walther, VP of Marketing & Communications for the Community Foundation of Louisville, hosted a number of the Facebook Live broadcasts during #GiveForGoodLou 2019.
Cumulatively, the Community Foundation of Louisville created 20 Facebook Live broadcasts in a 24-hour span, totaling more than 2 hours and 45 minutes of content on their own page -- a number that doesn't represent the dozens of Facebook Live broadcasts they helped create on other social media channels during the two-hour lunchtime rendezvous.
Most importantly, Give For Good Louisville continued its upward growth arc with a dazzling 19,957 donors contributing more than $6.88 million to more than 500 participating nonprofits. This represented an extraordinary jump from the $5.4 million donated in 2018 and $4.6 million in 2017, with social media continuing to play an increasingly critical role.
Want to work with Chris Strub, the 'Giving Day Guy,' on your giving day in 2020? Contact Chris via email today: chrisstrub <at> gmail <dot> com. Spring dates are quickly filling up so don't delay.
Looking forward to bring back in Louisville again in Sept. 2020! 🤞🏼