🔒Q&A: How The Shine Initiative raised $80K virtually

Like many nonprofits in 2020, The Shine Initiative had to rethink its annual gala fundraiser this October, in the wake of social distancing rules amid the coronavirus pandemic. The nonprofit already had actor Sean Astin – of Goonies, Rudy and Stranger Things fame – lined up for its planned in-person event. 

When did you start with Shine?

I started in August 2018, overlapping with my predecessor, Paul Richard, for three months. Shine was poised to come into its own. Paul helped it find its own way, and the board brought me in to keep that work going, as well as expand.

Since taking over, it has has gone really well. It was going really, really well until 2020 slowed everything down. We had seen significant support from our sponsors and the community, and received a $57,000 grant from the Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts to upgrade our app in order to better reach youth. Pre-2020, we talked about how if we are working primarily with teens, we needed to have the technology in place to reach them.

What is Shine’s mission?

To reduce discrimination and stigma around youth mental health in children and adoloscents. We partner with schools and develop clubs called Mindmatters teams. We were about to be in 50 schools. It is mostly high schools, but now we are growing into middle schools.

How did COVID disrupt operations?

In a sense, the demand for our services initially went away because our programming was happening with students and faculty in schools. Then all of us realized there was a growing need because of the pandemic, particularly with youth now facing isolation. Our website got the most traffic it had ever seen from mid-March to mid-May. It was 6x the traffic from the previous year.

We started adjusting by bringing as much as we could online: Doing what we could with Zoom and webinars, as well as supporting teachers as they were starting remote learning. We sent out lesson plans around social and emotional health. Some schools were even sending those out to every parent and student in their district.

How was fundraising impacted?

Our grant revenue and philanthropic dollars were down significantly at the start of the year. Funders and nonprofits were – rightly so – putting their dollars toward immediate needs like personal protective equipment and stocking food banks.

Now, we are starting to see our funding come back. People realize mental health is a basic need we all must address. Especially with winter coming, we are concerned about the level of isolation children will face.

Why hold your gala fundraiser virtually?

Shine has had an in-person gala as our major fundraiser in October for 13 or 14 years. I ran my first one last year. In January, we were planning for the gala to be in-person; but then the pandemic hit, and we thought about maybe canceling it.

We were fortunate our event wasn’t in the spring, so we got to see how other organizations did with virtual fundraising. It seemed to go well, so we decided to go forward with the Shine Initiative’s Virtual Un-Gala for Youth Mental Health.

It was amazing to see the sponsors and everyone really come together to support us.

How did you end up with actor Sean Astin as the featured speaker?

The committee had already selected Sean Astin as the speaker of our in-person event. When everything changed, we had to rethink that, and he was so gracious and so helpful throughout the whole process.

Part of our mission to reduce stigma is to talk as openly and candidly about mental illness with teenagers. I saw an article where Sean Astin talked openly about the struggles in his household with his mother’s undiagnosed mental illness, even as he was becoming famous when he was younger. He is probably the best-known speaker we had ever had. We figured people would be disappointed when we switched away from the in-person event because everyone wanted to meet him. It turns out he was the best speaker to have for a virtual event, because he was able to attract more people. Our reach was larger. We had people tune in from Boston, when they wouldn’t have been able to come otherwise.

How much money did you raise?

We ended up netting $80,000. Last year was $100,000 from the in-person event, and the year before was $75,000. We were able to net what we did because an in-person event has greater expenses. Our expenses with the virtual event were much lower. Coming in at $80,000 during a pandemic, we’re thrilled.

This interview was conducted and edited for length and clarity by WBJ Editor Brad Kane.