This Nonprofit Used Poetry to Inspire Kids and Crush Their Fundraising Goal

Give Lively
Give Lively
Published in
6 min readApr 6, 2018

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Charity Blackwell, DC SCORES Director of Writing, celebrating fundraising success at Our Words Our City. Photo credit Erin Mahoney.

DC SCORES, an afterschool program focused on soccer and tutoring for at-risk youth in the nation’s capital, just held their biannual event showcasing student poetry aptly named, “Our Words, Our City.” Olga Kuzmina, a Development Fellow at the nonprofit, is still buzzing with excitement from that night.

“Our Words, Our City, is a unique moment for us because it’s both a program event and a fundraising event,” Olga says. “We give the kids the opportunity to develop their skills around poetry and spoken word and to express themselves on stage,” Olga says. As for fundraising, DC SCORES hosts a reception before, and has professional artists perform on the same stage as the students to draw in bigger donors. “It’s a unique combination that works really well for us.”

Olga Kuzmina of DC Scores.

The DC SCORES program combines three things: soccer, poetry, and learning. “Each one helps students who come from very vulnerable backgrounds develop confidence,” Olga says. The nonprofit serves over 2,500 kids at 60 different schools in Washington, DC, and most kids participate at their own school with teachers and coaches who stay after for DC SCORES’s program. “It’s really helpful for kids to develop these relationships with their teachers. They can come to teachers with any problem from inside the classroom or out, which makes a big difference in their lives,” Olga says.

“The quality of performances is just incredible.”

At each event, only ten kids are selected to perform. “The quality of performances is just incredible,” Olga says. This Spring’s Our Words, Our City event was special, Olga says, “Because, this time, the kids worked with professional spoken word artists from the DC area for two months before the event, dramatically improving their public speaking skills and their art by the time they performed.” Olga highlighted a poem by a 10-year-old student named Senora A. from Smothers Elementary School as one of the best from this particular event. You can read the full poem at the end of the article.

Senora A. from Smothers Elementary School performs “I am no Shakespeare” at DC SCORES’ Our Words Our City event. Read the full poem below. Photo credit Erin Mahoney.

While Our Words, Our City always draws a big crowd, previous events were missing one thing: “We needed an easy solution that would help our supporters donate to us in one or two clicks,” Olga says. “Last time, we had a Square [card reader] where our staff would be in different station swiping donors’ cards. It didn’t work very well,” she says, adding, “paper pledge cards didn’t work well either because it takes time to lot of time to go to a specific place to get them, fill them out, and give them back. People don’t want to go through that kind of complicated process when they are enjoying an event and having fun.” She emphasized, “It’s important to get them in the moment because they might not be inspired to give after the event.”

“People don’t want to go through that kind of complicated process when they are enjoying an event and having fun.”

Olga and the DC SCORES team wanted to try something new this time to raise more at the event. She was looking into other fundraising platforms for events when someone from LA Scores, an affiliate branch, told them about Give Lively. “We were immediately very interested,” Olga says, “Then I talked to [a Nonprofit Account Specialist at Give Lively] and it turned out to be even better than I imagined.”

Charity Blackwell reads a guest-written poem in front of the Text-to-Donate Live display at Our Words, Our City. Photo credit Anna Langer.

Olga and her team came up with a novel strategy for capitalizing on Text-to-Donate in preparation for the event. “During our one-hour reception for donors before the event, we asked four of our staff members to go around the room with clipboards and prompts to write a group poem. Every guest wrote one line and we ended up with four poems written entirely by our guests.”

DC SCORES’s Director of Writing, who is also a spoken word artist, read all of the poems to the audience while the interactive Text-to-Donate live display showed incoming donations towards the nonprofit’s goal. “We told the attendees that we were using this great Text-to-Donate tool and that they can text ‘SCORES’ to this number, then we immediately started with the first poem,” Olga says. “Then we would come back to the progress bar to encourage attendees to text and remind them about the code and the number.”

“It was incredibly easy and people loved it.”

“By the end of those ten minutes, we reached about 60% of our goal of $10,000.” After uploading offline donations that had been made at the reception beforehand and by donors who couldn’t attend, the live display showed DC SCORES far surpassing its goal, with more than $13,000 raised.

“It was incredibly easy and people loved it. Just texting a simple code like ‘SCORES’ literally takes a few seconds, with the full whole donation being completed in about process taking about 30 seconds,” Olga says. “It makes it very, very easy to support us. Everyone who wanted to donate was able to do so before, during, or after the event.”

“We got a lot of new donors in the process,” Olga says. Board members were encouraged to bring friends, one of whom made a donation of $1,000 using Text-to-Donate. The Northern Ireland Bureau, a diplomatic institution, sponsored the event and brought over 20 people who worked at other embassies and cultural organizations with them. “They were impressed and a lot of them ended up donating to us in the moment,” Olga says.

A student performs her work at DC SCORES’s Our Words, Our City event. Photo credit Anna Langer.

Olga’s team got a ton of positive feedback on the new fundraising strategy from everyone involved. “Staff, board members, and attendees, they were all amazed,” she says. “Our board members and supporters saw that even though we are a small nonprofit, we are able to leverage innovative technology.”

While DC SCORES was blown away with the results of their first Text-to-Donate experience, Olga says, “The impact of using this tool is far more strategic for us than just what we were able to raise at one event.” She explains, “Having a solution that we know is going to work well makes us more confident about events in the future because we know that if we get the right donors in the room, we will raise thousands of dollars to support our programs.”

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I am no Shakespeare by Senora A.

I am no Shakespeare.

But my words have meaning

I am no different nor the same.

For I am a person

Why do you look so fond of me?

Is it because of the shade I wear? or is it the words I speak

My nappy raked up hair, I am no white chocolate or light snow

I am dark milk chocolate, not a ghost.

You may think I am different, but I am the same

Soon one will be tame.

___________

To learn more about DC SCORES, contact okuzmina@dcscores.org.

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