We got a tremendous response to our 2015 annual fundraising appeal, receiving a total of $106,962 from all sources—a 26 percent increase over 2014! We were blown away by the generosity of all of our contributors, and we’re planning to use that money to create even more great content in 2016.
One of our key new initiatives in 2015 was the Canopy Project. The idea for this campaign came from a principle of Internet marketing: Like the canopy of a forest, there are a relatively small number of creative outlets—YouTube channels, Facebook pages, websites, and so on—that get all the “sunlight” of public attention. Our plan over the next five years is to put all of our effort into improving our online offerings, especially the offTheLeftEye YouTube channel, with the goal of raising Swedenborg’s ideas into that high level of public awareness. With your help, we raised more than $325,000 toward this goal in 2015, with an additional $400,000 pledged for future years.
So far, we’ve used the money raised for the Canopy Project to expand our video production team and put more time into responding to questions and comments online; not only are people finding out about Swedenborg, but they’re also getting a personal response to their questions about him. And we’re already seeing amazing results—between January and December 2015, we’ve seen a 119 percent increase in the number of views our YouTube channel has gotten and a 348 percent increase in the amount of time they’ve spent watching.
In this past year, we also set a membership record, with 607 members by the end of December. This is not only a 27 percent increase, but it also represents our highest membership levels on record. Many of those new members are people who found us through our online activities, so we know there’s a lot of genuine interest in Swedenborg’s ideas budding out there.
Thanks so much to everyone who helped to make this year a success! We look forward to making 2016 an even better year for fans of Swedenborg. Learn more about membership and donation online, or contact Brian Mann at 610-430-3222 ext. 109 or bmann@swedenborg.com.