Breaking Attendance (and Donations) Records:

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay

“Big Night” is an annual Boston, celebrity-based, “Who’s Who” theme party celebrating and supporting one of the country’s leading one-to-one mentoring programs. The party venues were big. The music acts, even bigger. Unfortunately, the bottom-line effect on engagement and donations were, well… little.

BBBSMB approached Think it First to concept a party theme, brand the event, and create the fleet of printed materials used to communicate with guests and garner donations. Since this is what they had always done, we quickly realized the approach would have achieved similar results to previous years. Rather than have a party, we thought, we wanted to have an impact!

While pushing forward a high-end design asthetic of all printed materials, Think it First employed cutting edge technology to the events branding and communication efforts. For the past three years, we have created custom websites for each year’s event, allowing us to sell new and original sponsorship opportunities and web banners. We’ve set up the team with an iPad application for face to face on-site donations. We’ve created a mobile “text-to-donate” program for donations and on-site event communication. And employed custom Twitter hashtags in our arsenal of tech-based communication platforms. An almost unprecedented tech effort for a non-profit.

By utilizing both design and technology as tools to achieve the organization’s broader event marketing objectives, we have helped “Big Night” become Boston’s premier “Party of the Year”. Annually, the event has consistently raised almost $2 Million dollars, including more than $200,000 donated the day of the event.

“You guys rock! Thanks for all your hard work. You were a major part of Big Night success!”