Wild Futures Shortlisted For Third Sector Excellence Award
Wild Futures, the leading primate welfare charity based in Looe Cornwall, has been short listed for a Third Sector Excellence award in the category: Use of Digital Media.
The Third Sector Excellence awards aim to award registered charities, not-for-profits, social enterprises and campaigning groups for outstanding campaigns, strategies, projects and performance, which all has to be backed up by hard evidence success.
Wild Futures has been short listed in the digital media category for its campaign film, Joey’s Story by Stephen Fry. The three minute film presented by Stephen Fry centres on the story of Joey, a black capped capuchin monkey; kept in a cage for nine years. Left without sunlight, Joey developed severe metabolic bone disease, a curved spine, hip dysplasia and poorly formed jaw. Joey was rescued by Wild Futures in 2007, and although he will always be severely disabled, he has since integrated with monkeys of his own kind and lives a happy life at the Wild Futures Monkey Sanctuary. The aim of the film was to showcase Wild Futures’ charitable rescue and rehabilitation work, highlight why monkeys are not suitable as pets and encourage support through its ‘adopt a monkey’ scheme.
The film, Joey’s Story by Stephen Fry, was produced by Environment Films and launched by Wild Futures in July 2012 on a landing page on its website. The project involved a great deal of preliminary work in order to set up a large network of influential online ‘pushers’ who could share the campaign on the same date at the same time. Each ‘pusher’ was sent a document which outlined the actions required, including the important hashtags, keywords and links. The aim was to funnel as many hits to the landing page as possible.
At the same time, an app called ‘Monkey Nuts’ was created and launched with the help of mobile web design company, Elixel, which contained a link to the film. A twibbon was also created for adopters to upload on their social networking profiles to encourage others to follow suit.
Within 24 hours, the film attracted more than 4,000 views. The campaign led to extensive national media coverage and an increase in the charity’s ‘adopt a monkey’ scheme income of 21%.
Hayley Dann, Head of Income Generation and PR stated: “We are absolutely over the moon to be shortlisted for this prestigious award. The team worked extremely hard to get the campaign off the ground and the results were fantastic. Digital fundraising has now formed a key part of our fundraising strategy and we firmly believe that this campaign put us on the map. Digital media is a great way for small charities like us to achieve awareness and ultimately expand our charitable work. The increase in our ‘adopt a monkey’ income has meant that we have been able to rescue more monkeys in the past year and continue to provide a ‘wild’ home for life for our current 37 residents. We will always be extremely grateful to Stephen Fry and everyone who helped with this emotive and thought provoking campaign.”
Gavin Jones from Elixel stated: “Monkey Nuts was a great opportunity to introduce Wild Futures to a new audience. With over 4000 downloads the app has definitely spiked interest. Utilising games is a fun and engaging method for both pushing campaigns and educating new markets. We at Elixel have enjoyed being part of this campaign and hope it helps to highlight the valuable work of Wild Futures. We would like to congratulate Wild Futures on being shortlisted for this award.”
The awards ceremony takes place on the 26th of September 2013 in London when the winners of each category will be announced.
Joey’s Story by Stephen Fry is still available to view on the Wild Futures website: www.wildfutures.org