To build a successful Donor Recognition Display requires careful planning, not just to ensure that the project meets all your budgetary and timeline objectives, but also be certain that it remains a relevant and engaging destination at your organization for years to come. This post deals with Tips To Ensure a Successful Donor Recognition Display!
Using the following important points as a guide will help to make sure that your display is a compelling showcase of your achievements and a powerful and engaging statement of thanks to your supporters.
Are you ready to install a Successful Donor Recognition Display ?
A successful Donor Recognition Display is one that gets people’s attention, inspire your visitors, and most important, thank your generous donors. Digital Donor Recognition Display is a departure from the typical static donor wall many of your constituents may be familiar with, so communicating the benefits of touch screen or self cycling multimedia is important. As you can appreciate, the more that people (read: potential donors) know about your organization’s history, achievements and the mission, the more inclined they will be to support your vision and goals. Electronic recognition gives you the opportunity to tell your story in ways a static donor wall never can, along with the ability to upgrade and refresh as frequently as you wish. The first thing you need is a project leader, someone who will shepherd all phases of the development from start to completion, and will act as a liaison between the organization and the recognition vendor. Choose someone with good organizational skills, who can communicate with all the internal and external stakeholders and, above all, someone who has sufficient time to steward this initiative properly.
Location, Location, Location!
As with retail and restaurants, location is everything, and the same is the case for recognition displays. You want to be make certain that your electronic presentation is going to be seen by as many people as possible, so choosing the right location is critical. However, you also don’t want to create more congestion by mounting it in a hallway or on a stairway where visitors stopping to view the display may impede other traffic. The perfect site is the one that allows visitors to stop and view the presentation without interrupting other visitors or affecting the normal workflow of that area.
Content Is King!
The degree to which visitors will be informed and inspired by your multi-media interactive donor recognition display is influenced in large measure by the type and quality of content in the presentation. With both touch screen or self-cycling multimedia, less is more. The purpose of your multimedia presentation is tantamount to share your stories and history, honor donors and promote upcoming initiatives, but brevity is the key to successful communication. Most of your visitors will only spend 10-15 minutes at any one time reviewing your material so you want to keep videos brief (30-45 seconds), keep copy to one screen, if possible, and limit bios and profiles to 500-600 words. Ideally, the goal is to have visitors to contact the Foundation office for more information after they’ve viewed the multimedia presentation.
Integrated or Self-Standing Donor Recognition Display
Again, the choice here may be dictated by aesthetics or by necessity. If you’re installing an architectural donor wall, a great way to improve it as you increase traffic and enjoyment is by adding a multimedia interactive video wall that blends with its environment. However, if you place your multimedia presentation on a self-standing kiosk, you’ll give your organization a valuable outreach marketing tool because kiosks can be transportable. That means that, with the aid of a custom designed transport case, your kiosk presentation can be taken to galas, golf tournaments, shopping centers, alumni events or other locations to present your message. In particular, organizations without a highly visible location can use self-standing kiosks as a very effective way to have their message reach their constituency.
What About Your Website Integration?
One of the best ways to increase the exposure of your electronic recognition display is to make it accessible on your organization’s website. Ordinarily, visitors will only see your multimedia presentation when they’re at your hospital, university or other facility, or a touch screen kiosk in the community. However, by making all or parts of the presentation available on your website, you’re now able to reach out to the global community, reconnecting with expatriate community members and allowing them to stay connected with your organization as contributors and supporters.
How Do You Select A Vendor for your Donor Recognition Display?
Like anything else, choosing the right vendor for an electronic recognition display requires some due diligence. The following is a list of questions you should ask each of your prospective vendors to ensure that you’re properly comparing (multimedia) apples to apples!
- Do they have experience working together with non-profit organizations?
- Is designing and manufacturing donor walls and recognition displays with multimedia presentations their core business?
- Will they be doing the design and programming of the multimedia presentation themselves or will they be subcontracting it to a second vendor?
- Can they provide specific project examples and references for projects that they have developed that incorporate interactive and/or self cycling multimedia?
- Are they a one-stop shop?
- Can they design and fabricate the display?
- Can they design and integrate the multimedia presentation?
- Do they have in-house writers and multimedia designers to assist with content creation?
- Can they guide you through a content development process which might include text, graphics, video, photographs, audio, archived information, storyboarding and multimedia layout?
- Are they knowledgeable with regards to the different types of multimedia display hardware options?
- Do they have experience setting up, monitoring and supporting remote networks?
- What is their data base structure? Is it scaleable and able to handle an unlimited number of records and search queries?
- What is their record of back-up and restoration capability?
- Do they provide an image of the most recent version of the multimedia presentation and database, and how quickly can it be replicated?
- Do they have experience working with the various types of lighting required for different displays and locations?
- Do they have experience working with donor management software?
- What is their system’s security protocol? How is the system locked down?
- On interactive multimedia presentations can the client measure visitor use, areas visited, times of visits, etc?
- What reporting procedure does the system employ?
- How is content management handled? Can it be done remotely from the client’s computer or does it require a technical visit to the system’s PC? Does it require information to be forwarded to the vendor’s facility where it must be burned to a CD or DVD and then sent back to the client, who must then upload it manually to the system?
- What ongoing monitoring system does the vendor put in place to continually check on the system’s performance and address any issues that may present themselves?
- Are they capable of integrating all or part of the multimedia presentation with the client’s website?
- Can they answer the technical questions posed by your IT professionals, architects and engineers?
How Will You Handle Day-To-Day Content Updates?
Keeping your donor recognition display informative, up-to-date and relevant depends on the quality and currency of your content. That means that, in addition to adding new donors or moving donor names to new gift categories, you also need to ensure that the information, videos and photographs you feature represent your most recent announcements, achievements and initiatives. That way, visitors get the most relevant information and keep coming back, knowing that what they’re looking at is always new and exciting.
To ensure that information remains current you’ll need to task a staff person with the job of updating information as it becomes available. This should be a regularly scheduled assignment, once a week or bi-weekly, but always updated consistently and in a timely manner. For that will make sure your vendor delivers an intuitive, easy-to-use content management solution.
Make Your Story Known!
Use your digitally interactive, donor recognition display to tell your organizations’ story! Show achievements. Introduce your team. Tell some of your success stories.