Review Fix chats with Operation Supply Drop’s Glenn Banton, who discusses the military charity and its amazing 2014 and goals for 2015. If you aren’t familiar with what the organization does, Blanton fills you in and does into depth explaining why 2015 may be the group’s best year ever.
Review Fix: For people that don’t know what you guys do, can you explain?
Glenn Banton: Operation Supply Drop is a 501(c)(3) military charity supporting active-duty and veteran troops of the United States Military and Her Allies with gaming since 2010. We do this with our 4 primary programs: Supply Drops (video game care packages), Thank You Deployments (VIP trips for wounded-vets to entertainment conferences & studios), The Teams (local-based veteran support network using gaming as a catalyst to bring vets & civvies together) & the Veteran-Owned Business Program (providing mentorship and support to vet-owned businesses in the industry).
Review Fix: What did you guys get done in 2014?
Banton: Big picture, we grew from a one-man successful “hobby charity” to a charity business. We’re in the business of supporting the troops through one of the most generationally relevant activities today, gaming. We further expanded our program set and scaled the Supply Drop program to provide more both down range and on base. From a stats standpoint, we did over $1MM in fundraising and have now supported directly over 7,500 active-duty and veteran members of the US military and NATO allies.
Review Fix: How will the new site be different?
Banton: There are both front-end and back-end changes. On the back, we finally switched over to WordPress. Previously we’d been hamstrung by the fundraising platform provider we’d been using which made the design capabilities very limited. On the front, it’s all about the content. We now better narrate the breadth and depth of our programs where prior it looked as if we were only providing the care packages. Even many of our own supporters do not realize how big we are and how much we do on a month-to-month basis.
In relation to the site specific to the 8-Bit Salute fundraising initiative and fundraising in general. We made a very smart decision in changing to Classy.org. They have a much larger and more diverse user base in comparison to our prior partner. This allows for a better feature set, but more importantly more frequent feature updates to better the experience for our support network as well aa our staff.
Review Fix: Can you explain the Ambassador Program?
Banton: This was a program that grew out of a conversation last year with our friend Kevin Dent. We’d already had a great network of celebrity types in the industry, many of which had become personal friends. I’d end up calling on them a few times a year asking if they could help with this or that in relation to our troop support programs. Some examples include Hank Baskett helping me present one of our supply drops to a deserving wounded veteran at the RTX show, Greg Miller stepping up as the monster in an Evolve match at PAX Prime against some of our Thank You Deployment recipients and Jack Pattillo inviting a half dozen troopers on the the Rooster Teeth live stream for 8-Bit Salute last May. We figured, why not formalize this? These individuals have stepped up to carry the flag and evangelize our mission.
OSD Ambassadors are leaders in the entertainment and technology industries, representing the fields of film, online media, sports and gaming. Some are veterans themselves. They demonstrate leadership in their professions and serve as positive role models through their work. OSD Ambassadors have played a critical role in raising awareness of the needs for the current generation of troops, and have continued to use their talent and fame to fundraise, advocate, and educate on behalf of OSD.
Together, OSD Ambassadors have proven that being a public figure can be a powerful tool in mobilizing the support necessary to improve the lives of our troops and ensure our heroes have a support systems both during and after military life.
Review Fix: How do you want the next 8-Bit Salute to be different?
Banton: No DDoS. While we had an amazing turnout in 2014, we estimate we didn’t raise a minimum of $750k due to not having the advertised method to donate. Many millions of people had been notified and joined the streams from our amazing partners, but the links (and associated ability to track data needed for many of their giveaways) was DDoS’d 20 minutes into the start of the event. We were still impressed with the amount raised which topped $300k! Especially given the commotion.
This situation is a lot of what lead our board to make the decision to change partners on the fundraising platform to one that better understand not only mitigating this risk, but also actively monitoring during the larger event in May.
Another change in relation to 8-Bit Salute is that it has become a year-round activity with many dozens of streams happening on a weekly basis. We still have the “big event” in May, but our support base, understanding the monthly needs of our programs and the troops we support has stepped up.
Review Fix: What are your goals for 2015?
Banton: Become a mainstream NPO spoken of in the company of the VFW, USO, Wounded Warrior, AMVETS etc. We are the home for this generation’s veterans. We’re told that every day by those we support which only drives us to further identify opportunities within our content to support our heroes.
We also want to continue to scale both the supply drop and thank you deployment programs, continue to enhance the relationship we so strongly have with the eSports community and make our new program, The Teams, our headline program. We will also be furthering our activities within NATO countries which already includes a UK chapter of The Teams program.
Dollars, cents and support, we’re targeting a fundraising budget of $2.2M for 2015 while supporting an additional 7,500+ troops.
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