Sara Bezaley charmed Liran Weizman.
The now 11-year-old girl had been in a New York City hospital from November of 2009 until April of 2010. In 2013, she contracted pneumonia a second time and had a leg amputation and heart transplant later that spring.
Weizman, a Stern College student, had no clue what to expect when she volunteered to go play games with Sara in her hospital room, but soon had enjoyed their time together watching Cake Boss so much, she began staying overnight to give Sara’s parents a reprieve.
What seemed like a wonderful friendship between Sara and Liran would soon turn into a whole lot more.
After learning the theories of social media and effective digital marketing, the Media Studies course entitled “Social Media Driving Business Results” at Stern College was given a final project to crowd-fund a campaign of their choice. Crowd-funding is “the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet.” The group chose to use Indiegogo, a crowd-funding platform that allows for flexible funding, meaning all money raised will go towards the cause, even if the fixed goal hasn’t been reached. Additionally, Indiegogo allows fundraisers to provide small “perks” for supporters to thank them for their donation. The class was split into two groups and many suggestions turned out to be viable options. One group finally chose a project, but soon learned that trying to fundraise and keep up with emails and contacts was hard to do. With a deadline approaching, the group sat down and discussed what type of cause would most need their help and also, elicit a response from the public.
That was when Weizman suggested contacting Bezaly’s and finding out what they would need to remodel their home for Sara’s needs. She was still in touch with the family and, “wanted to give back to them, because they had given so much to me. And what a better way for people to help her out than to make her home more open and accessible!”
The group spoke with the Bezaleys and decided that they would raise funds to widen the bathroom doorways so Sara’s wheelchair could fit through the door.
The group put together a video set to the Philip Phillips’ ‘Home’, came up with a efficient media strategy, decided on the “perks” for donors, and had pre-written Facebook updates and tweets to send out for the two week long campaign. They set the fundraising goal at $4,000.
Late Tuesday April 28th, the group launched their campaign “Open Hearts: Open Doors.”
They were not prepared for the response.
As soon as the Indiegogo page went live, the group began updating each other through an email chain. Only a few hours after the campaign, the group had reached 10% of their goal, over $400. By late that night, they were well over $1,000.
The next morning, at 10:39 A.M., Weizman wrote, “We made over $2,000!” By 10:58 A.M., it was at $3,000. The number was changing quickly, and the group was amazed. In a span of half an hour, the group raised another $2,000. “What is going on!?” one group member wrote. “Who are these people and where are they coming from? This is amazing!” Another group member spent the day tweeting updates to the YUNews Twitter handle and to Professor Longert, until finally she finally had to tweet only one word, “REACHED.”
“I was just shocked and speechless that day,” said Yali Cohen, a junior majoring in Media Studies. “I just sat there refreshing the page for three hours and sending emails and messages to my family and friends about our campaign and its rapid success.”
Open Hearts: Open Doors had reached its goal, and doubled it, in a matter of twenty-four hours. Weizman and the group were getting calls from Sara’s entire extended family thanking them for all their help and efforts and behalf of their family. The group quickly updated their page, thanking all their supporters and updating the new goal to be $24,000, to help remodel other areas of the house.
By class that evening, the group’s professor, Robert Longert, co-founder and manager of Day One Agency and media expert who had been teaching social media and Stern for three semesters, was speechless as well. “It’s amazing to see something like this happen,” he told the class. “Congratulations so far, but there’s still so much more to go.”
The group took Longert’s encouragement and continued to publicize their campaign, and its success to family and friends. By the weekend, in a matter of 100 hours, the campaign had raised over $24,000 for Sara and her family, hitting their new goal. Now, Open Hearts: Open Doors was not only helping Sara tremendously, but instantly becoming a celebrated campaign in both the Jewish and crowd-funding scenes.
Nicole Berlin, a resident of Great Neck, saw how her friends in her community were quickly spreading Sara’s story though Facebook updates and messages. But even so, she was astounded at how a few Facebook messages could translate into funds. “I knew we would raise the amount we set out to raise,” she shares, “but I was not expecting it to happen and such a short amount of time – and then far exceeding out goal.”
Aleah Gornbein, another team member, was not only surprised at how quickly the money was pouring in, but at people’s generosity and willingness to give so much. The campaign received multiple donations of over $1,000, many of which were anonymous.
Michal Kaplan-Nadel, a senior majoring in Media Studies, credits the skills that Professor Longert taught in his course to the campaign’s success. She reflects that, “All semester long, and throughout the entire year of learning about social media, Rob stressed that the key to a successful campaign would be to bring a good, sharable story to the right audience. This campaign really brought out to life and put it into a reality.”
How did the campaign share Sara’s story? “People just shared it with friends and family. When they connected to the story, they wanted to tell it over to their friends and family. We had a large group of people.” Longert adds, “It’s spreadable media at its best. There is emotion connected, people are invested.”
Many in the group said that they expected to raise maybe $400, and perhaps even if they focused their efforts on advertising the story to influencers with large online communities, they would reach their goal. The rapid and enormous responses that Open Hearts: Open Doors received propel the group to continue the campaign in bigger and better ways.
The group largely credits their family and friends for donations, but recognizes that a large amount of funds came from Sara’s community in Long Island, Great Neck. Sara’s mom Tamar credits Sara, the Great Neck community, and social media for the campaign’s overwhelming success. “The funds raised are a testimony to how amazing this kid is, to how amazing to the community supporting her is, to the fabulous things that can be done through social media, and that there are so many caring people in the world,” she says.
As per supporter request, the group is working towards providing a tax deductible. The group also made it to the Indiegogo homepage, a space reserved to highlight some of its most successful campaigns. And now, the group is learning how to juggle the responsibility of making sure the perks are delivered to all the supporters, updating and maintaining the community, and publicizing this even bigger story than they had set out to tell. “We’ve now had to shift out efforts from local publicity and just securing the funds to having the entire story, the story of Sara and of the community’s outpouring of support,” says Public Relations manager for the team, Kayla Weil, who is working with all the others to secure media coverage from Great Neck, Long Island, and New York broadcast and print outlets.
“It was a sellable story,” says Weizman, looking back on the success of the campaign. “It’s a story about a girl with a beautiful family overcoming barriers, and she deserved our help and support.”
“Its really special,” says Longert. “There was no expectation, it was just an experiment. It’s not every day something like this happens.”
Update: The campaign has raised $29,640 as of 5/9.