How Video Helped Make-A-Wish Minnesota Raise $38,000+ on Give to the Max Day

Summary

For Give to the Max Day 2023, TreeTop Media produced a campaign video for Make-A-Wish Minnesota that helped drive over $38,000 in donations — a $5,000 increase over the previous year — with a 5.9% engagement rate, more than triple the 1.7% non-profit industry average for the period.

The Client & Challenge

Make-A-Wish is a global non-profit organization that fulfills life-changing wishes for children diagnosed with critical illness. Give to the Max Day is Minnesota's largest annual day of giving, with thousands of nonprofits across the state competing for donor attention in a single 24-hour window. For an organization like Make-A-Wish Minnesota, the challenge wasn't just asking for support — it was cutting through a crowded field of causes, all making their case at the same time, to the same pool of donors.

The campaign needed a video that could stop the scroll quickly, communicate the emotional weight of a wish in seconds, and give donors a clear, compelling reason to choose Make-A-Wish over the dozens of other worthy organizations asking for their support that same day.

Strategy & Approach

At the heart of every Make-A-Wish story is a child choosing what they want most — and wishes generally fall into five categories: a wish to go somewhere, to be someone, to have something, to meet someone, or to give back. Of these, a wish to give is among the rarest and most striking: rather than choosing an experience for himself, Carter chose to direct his wish toward benefiting his community.

For a fundraising campaign built around a single day of giving, this wasn't just a heartwarming detail — it was the ideal story. A wish framed around generosity mirrors exactly what Make-A-Wish was asking donors to do: give, without expecting anything in return.

Centering the campaign on a child who had already modeled that same generosity gave the video an emotional throughline that a more conventional wish story — a trip, a meeting, a big-ticket item — wouldn't have offered as naturally. Donors weren't just being asked to fund an experience; they were being asked to match the spirit of a wish that was already about giving.

What We Produced

Our crew produced a 5-minute film about Carter's story and wish. Leading up to Give to the Max Day, Make-A-Wish posted short segments from the video to build awareness with their audience, then released the full video on Give to the Max Day itself with two distinct calls to action: one tied directly to the day's campaign, and one more evergreen, allowing the video to keep inspiring giving well beyond the 24-hour event.

The Process

Capturing Carter's story meaningfully meant starting well before the cameras rolled. Our team first met with the family to get to know them and understand the full story behind Carter's wish — a step that shaped how we approached every shoot day that followed.

Production took place across several days: we captured the wish reveal event, a day of interviews with Carter and his brother, and a separate day of interviews and b-roll at the family's home with their parents. Depending on the shoot, our crew ranged from 2 to 5 members.

Working with a family volunteering their time to share something this personal requires a different kind of production approach than a typical shoot. Schedules shift, moments happen unscripted, and plans change quickly — so it takes a team willing to stay nimble, adjust in real time, and prioritize the family's comfort and pace over a rigid shot list.

Why It Worked

In a single day crowded with fundraising asks from nonprofits across the state, that alignment between story and ask gave Make-A-Wish Minnesota's campaign a distinct emotional throughline other organizations' appeals may not have had.

The results reflect that distinction. Make-A-Wish Minnesota's Give to the Max Day campaign saw a 5.9% engagement rate — more than three times the 1.7% non-profit industry average for the same period — along with a $5,000 increase in total donations over the previous year. Authentic, specific storytelling doesn't just perform better emotionally; on a day when donor attention is split across hundreds of causes, it's often what determines which organizations actually convert that attention into support.

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