Case study · Mount Vernon · 2021–2024
Strengthening Our Foundations: A $150M Capital Campaign for America’s 250th
Mount Vernon’s comprehensive capital campaign — Strengthening Our Foundations — was timed to the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026. We led the digital, content, and storytelling apparatus that put the campaign in front of major prospects: the campaign website, a three-part film series produced with the agency Evoker, and a tactile, screen-embedded video mailer with Red Paper Plane that drove $2.5M in directly-attributed gifts on its own.
The brief
The 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence falls in 2026. For an institution whose entire identity is bound up in the story of America’s founding, the run-up to that moment was a once-in-a-generation event. Mount Vernon set a $150M goal across three priorities — preserving the Mansion and Historic Area, teaching America’s history, and securing the institution’s long-term future through endowment growth — and the leadership team needed a content and storytelling apparatus that could carry the case for support to prospects across the country.
The film series with Evoker
We partnered with the film agency Evoker on a coordinated set of campaign films — a 6-minute omnibus piece plus three ~2½-minute pieces, each mapped to one of the campaign’s three priority pillars. The three priority shorts let major-gift officers bring the right story to the right prospect; the omnibus film carried the whole case for support in a single sitting.
The full film (6:06)
Strengthening Our Foundations — the full case for support
The omnibus campaign film that introduced major-gift prospects to the three campaign priorities, the case for the 250th, and the people doing the work.
The three priority shorts
A fourth priority short on Securing Our Future rounded out the set on the campaign website.
The video mailer: a $2.5M cold-open
In previous Mount Vernon capital campaigns the leave-behind film had gone out on VHS, then DVD. By 2022 neither played in most prospect households, and a thumb drive could be (and was) easily lost in a stack of mail. We took a different approach: a 7-inch HD video brochure produced with Red Paper Plane — the screen embedded directly into the printed mailer, the campaign film already loaded, the whole thing starting to play the moment the cover was opened.
We could have sent the video on a DVD or thumb drive; we could have shared it in an email. But none offer the same high-touch level that the video mailer has. Right from the start, you open it, and it immediately impresses you. It transports you to Mount Vernon, even if you have not been there in a while, and connects you with stories from our donors who have already participated in our campaign.— Matt Briney, Vice President for Media & Communications, Mount Vernon (Red Paper Plane case study, 2023)
The results
The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association directly credited the video brochure with $2.5 million in donations — before counting the major-gift follow-ups that the mailer made possible at in-person dinners and fundraising events. It was, in the team’s own assessment, one of the most successful single fundraising tactics in the institution’s recent history.
The video mailer in 3 minutes (Red Paper Plane case film)
“See How Mount Vernon Raised $2.5 Million”
A 3-minute case study from Red Paper Plane on the campaign, the video mailer, and why a tactile artifact outperformed digital sends.
The campaign website
We built and operate campaignformountvernon.org as the public destination tied to every campaign touch — mailer, email, event, press placement. The site keeps the architecture simple on purpose: the three priorities, the films, ways to give, and a clear “Act Now” call to action. It’s the URL that every other piece of the campaign points to — the same site shown at the top of this page.
Visit campaignformountvernon.org →
What we did
Engineered a video-first campaign content stack
The thesis was simple: video is the most compelling storytelling vehicle a place like Mount Vernon has, and we should treat the campaign as a film franchise instead of a fundraising mailing. The Evoker partnership gave us the omnibus + three priority pieces; the campaign site let donors pick the one most relevant to them; the video mailer made sure the film didn’t need a screen the donor had to find themselves.
Re-thought the leave-behind for a post-DVD generation
The video mailer wasn’t a gimmick. It was a deliberate response to a real distribution problem: prospects don’t have DVD players, thumb drives get lost, and email attachments don’t survive a busy inbox. A printed mailer with an embedded screen sidesteps every one of those failure modes — it’s tactile, self-playing, and impossible to miss when it lands.
Built the campaign as a connected program, not a sequence
The mailer, the site, the films, the email program, the major-gift conversations, the donor-event premieres, and the press coverage all routed to the same URL and the same case for support. One campaign, one architecture, one place to land.
What we learned
- The right medium isn’t always the cheapest one. A DVD costs cents to ship and an email costs nothing. A video brochure costs real money to print and mail — and it’s the one that actually opens at the dinner table and gets watched in front of the whole household.
- The single video isn’t enough. A 6-minute omnibus is a great campaign film, but the major-gift officer needs the 2½-minute version on the priority the prospect actually cares about. Producing the four pieces as a coordinated set instead of one film with three trims was the right call.
- One URL, every touch. campaignformountvernon.org was the only destination across every piece of the campaign. That kind of architectural discipline is what makes a multi-year campaign legible to the donor and reportable to the institution.
Why it mattered
Video really is the most compelling storytelling vehicle that we have. There’s nothing better than to see the place and hear from the people that are doing the work.— Matt Briney, on the campaign content strategy
The campaign was the operational lift of Mount Vernon’s run-up to the 250th — the work of getting the Mansion, the historic area, the education center, and the institution’s long-term footing ready for the moment the country looked again at George Washington. The content stack we built around it — the Evoker film series, the Red Paper Plane video brochure, the campaign site — was how a major historic site told that story to the people who fund it.
References: campaignformountvernon.org · Red Paper Plane case study · Full campaign film on Vimeo · Mount Vernon on Vimeo