Bonjoro: Changing the Game for Charity Fundraising

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Bonjoro: Changing the Game for Charity Fundraising

Bonjoro, a personalized video communications platform, crosses the threshold of 30,000 users in just three years since the company began in 2017. Bonjoro is focused around empowering companies, non-profits and charities to build real and lasting relationships with their supporters no matter where they live or work. Bonjoro allows a fundraiser to easily record a personal video, either through our phone app or their desktop recorder, and send it out to potential donors or members of their community. 

The idea behind personal video is to break away from high budget video productions and bring back the human and authentic side of donor relations. Bonjoro is about building real relationships and personal video gives fundraisers the ability to make a human to human connection.

Matt Barnett, CEO of Bonjoro said “Donors to a charity can sometimes feel a bit unloved. Video gives fundraisers a unique ability to delight each donor with something truly personal. Our charity customers have found that video not only drives more delightful experiences for their donors vs phone, email or text, but crucially helps to drive actions like repeat donations and word of mouth for ongoing fundraising campaigns.” On top of that, each personal video with Bonjoro has a CTA (or Call to Action Button) on the side and this is critical to helping drive desired actions like “Make a Donation” or “Talk with our Team”. 

Melanie, of Cause Cafe says, “For me it is an absolute no-brainer for every non-profit, it doesn’t matter what size you are, you should have this technology…donors absolutely love it!”. From small charities to global organizations like CURE, Girl Scouts and the YMCA, Bonjoro is revolutionizing how charities are fundraising. On the Charity podcast, the Whole Whale, they talk about companies seeing a 100% increase or doubling of their typical fundraising amounts. This increase in donations is largely due to a substantial difference in open and engagement rates, with personal video often getting upwards of 3-4x the rates of standard text emails. 

The major places we see Bonjoro and personal video being used by non-profits are:

  • Reactivating lapsed and former donors to their cause 
  • To thank donors for their support and build brand/mission loyalty
  • To invite donors/community members to events/galas
  • To showcase “before and afters” around the cause the donors are supporting

As we continue to grow, we look forward to reaching more non-profits and helping these organizations amplify their social good. Simply put, standard email is getting lost in inboxes in today’s world and organizations need a way to stand out from the pack. Iconic marketer Seth Godin puts it well with his example of the “Purple Cow”. He says if you were driving down the street and you saw a cow you probably wouldn’t think much of it. But if you saw a bright purple cow, you would stop and pay attention. This is part of the logic behind the impact of personal video emails. They are unique and they stand out in the donors inbox.

This guest blog post is written by Casey Hill from Bonjoro

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