Ringo’s Big Birthday Show: A Case Study in Virtual Event Fundraising

August 5, 2020

Disclaimer: This post is reflective of our company while under the name Pledgeling and the listed information may be outdated. Please refer to our main company website on Pledge for current information and resources.

What do you do when one of The Beatles needs help fundraising for causes he cares about? You reach out to Pledgeling, of course!

We were honored to partner with legendary musician, Ringo Starr, and his 80th Big Birthday Show on July 7th to power donations for causes close to his heart. Despite the pandemic, Ringo wanted to bring his fans together and celebrate with his annual birthday tradition of “peace & love.”

Ringo held a livestream benefit concert on YouTube Premiere, featuring a Starr-studded lineup that included performances by Paul McCartney, Sheryl Crow, Gary Clark Jr., Ringo himself, and more. The livestream garnered more than a million views!

All tax-deductible donations raised via Pledgeling for The Lotus Foundation through the virtual event were dispersed evenly between 4 organizations: The Black Lives Matter Global Network, The David Lynch Foundation, MusiCares, and WaterAid. Ringo and Barbara Starkey founded The Lotus Foundation to fund, support, participate in, and promote charitable projects aimed at advancing social welfare in diverse areas.

Pledgeling Solutions

We set up Ringo’s text-to-donate campaign in a matter of minutes with the keyword ‘RINGO’ on our shortcode 707070. You can see the campaign now directly on your phone. Simply text RINGO to 707070 to experience the ease of Pledgeling’s text-to-donate platform!

On the backend, we handle all of the heavy lifting, including disbursements to the nonprofit organizations, as well as immediate tax receipts to individual donors.

For Ringo’s campaign, we also provided our easily-embeddable donation forms for Ringo’s official website and integrated text-to-donate throughout the show.

We solved a pain point of reaching and engaging Ringo’s largely international fanbase by enabling donations in multiple currencies and providing a dedicated URL for donors outside of the US who were unable to donate via text. As a result, Ringo’s fundraiser raised $1,500 per minute of his livestream!

This is the impact your virtual events can have through a partnership with Pledgeling.

As we all navigate the uncertainties of our new normal during COVID-19, you can rely on Pledgeling to be your trusted fundraising partner for virtual events of all types and causes. We are here to help you meet and exceed your fundraising goals.

Click here to create your own fundraiser page and text to donate campaign. To contact our team, email us at sales@pledgeling.com.

Thank you for joining us in the #PledgeToDoGood!

And as Ringo says, “Peace and Love” from all of us at Team Pledgeling