Hi Cleveland,
We had our virtual gala last night! Our fundraising committee decided on a two-part fundraiser. The first part was a mail-out, asking members to donate to the museum. The mail-out included a print-out where they could donate to a particular exhibition or educational programming. We made thousands of dollars off of the mail-out alone due to the thoughtfulness of our members.
The second part was the virtual telethon that we held last night. Over the last few weeks, we have reached out to artists, collectors, donors, volunteers, and staff members to create short videos talking about the impact of AMSET on the community and on their lives. We accumulated 9 to 10 videos that were between 3 and 5 minutes long, and also made two powerpoints with pictures from old galas and fundraising events. After editing the videos and powerpoints, we put them together in one really long video. Last night's event was held live on zoom. We advertised the link on our website, via social media platforms, and also emailed it to all our members. We had a retired board member act as emcee, and she introduced each video. After she introduced the speaker, we screen shared the video. When the video was done, we switched back to the emcee. In order to manage calls, we had staff members stationed in their offices. All calls came in through the front desk, so when a call was received, our receptionist transferred the caller to a staff member. Each staff member was given forms to take down credit card information. At a few points during the evening, we would announce that any donations made during a certain time would be matched by other gracious donors. Towards the end of the event, our executive assistant went to each staff member and totaled up the amount of money made from in-coming calls. We then announced a "final" number of donations at the end of the program. As part of last night's events, members were encouraged to order dinner from a local catering company. The museum received partial funds from the sale of the dinners.
We are a small museum with only 7 full-time employees and 6 part-time employees, so our fundraiser model could work for another smaller institution. It might even work for a larger organization. We don't have professional photographers or videographers on staff, so many of the videos were filmed on our phone cameras and edited with simple editing software. We had a few complaints from viewers about the sound and the quality of some videos, but overall, many people seemed to enjoy it. I think we had around 40 people watch the telethon last night.
If you have any questions about our fundraiser, you can email me at
cclay@amset.org. Good luck with your event!
Sincerely,
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Caitlin Clay
Art Museum of Southeast Texas
Beaumont TX
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-29-2020 09:52 AM
From: Cleveland Johnson
Subject: Virtual galas
Just did a search for any discussion threads here re. virtual galas, but didn't turn up anything.
We're beginning to brainstorm about our own virtual gala for spring 2021 and have been looking at a lot of models out there. Most of what we've seen is from performing-arts centers or social-service organizations, but we would love to see what unique creatively the museum sector may be bringing to this kind of production. Does anyone have any interesting examples to point to? Most of these virtual galas are accessible online after the timed event, so any links you might have would be great.
Cleveland
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Cleveland Johnson PhD
Executive Director
Morris Museum
Morristown NJ
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