In honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, we’re reflecting on our recent partnership with Geiger Institute, an organization with a proven track record of helping domestic violence survivors. Matter has been privileged to partner with Geiger Institute on several initiatives over the years, helping elevate the critical work they do. Recently, they asked us to create a video that would get the attention of large donors. They needed a gripping and urgent call-to-action that would inspire donors to give towards the cause of ending domestic violence homicide. We were incredibly motivated to get this right, knowing that a well-crafted video could help inspire donors to rally behind this life-saving work, but the request came with a unique set of challenges.
Challenge #1 – Underscoring importance of domestic violence issues
Our first challenge was coming up with an opening scene that would immediately capture our audience’s attention. We knew we had to strike a careful balance between illustrating the extreme urgency of preventing domestic violence homicides without triggering the audience to withdraw in distress.
Solution – Create a scripted 911 call
As the late Fred Rogers once said, “You will always find people who are helping.” Brainstorming and collaborating with Geiger Institute led us to the decision to confront our audience with the voice of someone in the middle of a domestic violence crisis, asking for help. That’s how we landed on the idea to start this fundraising video with an audiogram of a 911 call. This approach would demand our audience’s attention, tapping into their instinctual draw to help someone in need, without introducing potential visual triggers. It spoke to the real danger that domestic violence homicide poses every day, to thousands of people around the United States — inviting the audience not to just to witness and feel distress at someone else’s emergency, but to be part of the solution.
Challenge #2 – How to portray a 911 call
With our 911 call idea in place, we had two options: use a real 911 call or create our own in the studio. We wanted to open this video with strong emotion – anything reminiscent of a hokey reenactment was definitely out. Still, using audio from a real 911 call presented its own ethical issues.
Solution – Stage the 911 call with professional actors and tasteful sound design
We ultimately decided that using someone’s most vulnerable moment as a tool for gain, even in the name of authenticity, was not in the spirit of putting survivors’ safety first. Instead, we held a studio recording session with professional voice actors, making sure to include members of the Geiger Institute team to ensure authenticity, accuracy and sensitivity.
Challenge #3 – What does the audience need to know?
While many of the facts and statistics about domestic violence homicide are staggering and carry a heavy emotional weight, we knew that to make our audience care deeply about the issue, we needed to find the right balance between informing and storytelling.
Solution – Combine our expertise with the expertise of our client
As a longtime client, we’ve had the privilege of developing a significant level of trust with Geiger Institute. That’s what made it particularly easy to collaborate successfully. We were able to recommend limits to the number of statistics to include in the video as well as the optimal duration of time to spend on this section, while the Geiger Institute team contributed their deep, contextual knowledge to assist us in choosing the most crucial information to include.
“We were thrilled to partner with Matter for a video project to support fundraising efforts with our national domestic violence homicide prevention work. Matter has been a wonderful community partner for many years to Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center, and now Geiger Institute, a division of the Center that we launched in 2022. They patiently worked with us through the storyboarding process to find the right visuals to bring to life a complex, nuanced issue. The process for each step of video creation was collaborative and exciting. We are so pleased with the result, and now have a powerful tool to continue to grow Geiger Institute and move forward our work to end domestic violence homicides across the country.”
– Alicia Peet, Communications Manager for the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center
For us, this project was more than just another video—it was an opportunity to contribute to an essential cause. We’re proud to have been part of creating a tool that will help Geiger Institute not only raise funds but also continue their mission to save lives.
To learn more about Geiger Institute’s work to end domestic violence homicide, check out https://geigerinstitute.org.