Salvation Army is a renowned institution that helps people for a long time by collecting donations from people that have a bit to spare and delivering them to people in need. But how to keep Salvation Army's relevance in a time when people are far more digital, owning less and less physical things and more and more digital stuff?

So, to refresh the sense of community of the people and leverage the amount of donations made to the Salvation Army, we came up a new donation project designed using all the current cues from the digital world so it would be as effective as possible in this new scenario of less physical goods to be donated.

People are used to donate things they no longer use to the Salvation Army. But in order to help the Salvation Army keep saving people during a time when people have fewer physical things and more digital ones, first we had to update the very concept of donation.

That's how – and why – the first video donation campaign was born. We invited some of biggest YouTube influencers in Brazil to donate some of their old videos that were decreasing in terms of views and ask their followers to watch and enjoy those videos again. Why? They explained that all the income generated by those new views in old videos would be donated to the Salvation Army. In the end, the idea behind all the work the Salvation Army does, which is expressed in the line "if you're not using something, donate it", was brought to the digital era.

Youtubers influence more people than their fanbases. They influence other Youtubers as well. From this starting point, some of the most important Brazilian Youtubers shared the Salvation Army initiative not only among their fans, but also among other Youtubers growing the range of impact.

The project was born when few of the most famous Youtubers in Brazil, some of them with more than 15 million subscribers, accepted to bring to their fans (young digital audience from the entire country) the updated version of the Salvation Army work: if you're not using something, it's better donate it. The message resounded well. The old videos they donated gathered lots of new views to the Salvation Army and triggered other Youtubers that started to volunteer to donate their videos to an even broader audience.

To bring the essence of the Salvation Army work, we needed an up-close approach towards the influencers. So, it was an one-to-one work, going after some of the most important Youtubers in Brazil and presenting them the initiative. After that, Youtubers would choose an old video to donate and they also created a new one, very short, just to explain the initiative and invite their fans to watch the old video again so the Salvation Army would earn the money.

The initiative went viral, and it triggered more and more Youtubers to volunteer. After 6 months of a steady and organic growth, more than 5,000 videos were donated and Youtubers from different countries also engaged.

The idea was to use the power of some of the biggest influencers in Brazil, but YouDonor$ grew in time and scale when other influencers volunteered to be part of the project. People helped not only by watching old videos to generate income, but also when more and more Youtubers started donating old videos. In the end, an actual army of influencers donated more than 5,000 videos to a fanbase of over 30 million people, increasing the number of donations by 24,85%.

YouDonor$ draw attention from the main media outlets in Brazil (Globo, SBT, Record, Folha Estadão, O Globo, UOL, G1, Terra etc.) making the initiative with the best response rate in Salvation Army's history. It set a record by bringing 157% more money than previous campaigns: U$ 250,000 during the campaign peak and still bringing a smaller, but monthly income, from the views in the donated videos.