Teacher Appreciation: Day of Giving
From the Nominator
To support Brewster's newly reinstated Day of Giving during Teacher Appreciation week, we developed this video with the "Teacher Appreciation" theme in mind. Our goal was to highlight the people who have tirelessly given their time and energy to Brewster for years–our faculty–with a call to make a gift in their honor. To do so, we collected thank-you letters from alumni and students; then, we invited the letter recipients to read them on camera for the first time. We wanted to emphasize the teachers as authentic individuals, which is why we showed behind-the-scenes cuts and surprised them with their heartfelt letters. The primary target audience was alums, so we focused on soliciting thank-you letters for our long-tenured faculty. However, after receiving more thank-you letters than we needed, we couldn't bear not using them. As a result, after making our flagship Teacher Appreciation Day of Giving video, we created two more – trying to balance the different voices and letters throughout all three. While we think our flagship video was the strongest, we believe the collection of all three and supporting social media posts (photos and graphic stories) helped create awareness for the revamped Day of Giving. We met our goal for alumni giving and a matching gift, and while it was a low number (97), we believe it was an essential start for a new venture into alumni engagement.
From the Judges
The heartfelt and sweet nature of this video is perfectly geared towards alumni, making a meaningful impact. If it were slightly shorter, it would be even more impactful.