Case Study For Nonprofits
Sponsor Recognition Guests Say Out Loud
At the Mubadala Citi DC Open we built a green screen broadcast studio for the title sponsor. Here is what it delivered — and how to put the same offer in your nonprofit's sponsorship package.
Guest sessions in the booth
Shares out of the activation
Views of those shares
Faces detected on camera
Measured by the activation platform across the tournament run.
Your Sponsors Are Buying Recognition. Most Of It Is Passive.
Every nonprofit sponsorship package sells the same inventory: a logo on the step and repeat, a name in the program, a slide in the loop, a mention from the podium. All of it can be received without a single guest ever registering who paid for the evening.
The activation below is the alternative, and it was built for exactly this problem at a scale most galas never see. A title sponsor needed 3,000 people to know its name. So we made saying the name the price of admission to something guests genuinely wanted.
Read it as a template. The tournament had a tennis court behind the green screen. Your gala has your mission, your honoree or the community you serve — and the same mechanism works.
Get 3,000 People To Say The Name
As title sponsor of the Mubadala Citi DC Open, Mubadala wanted an activation that did more than entertain the tournament village. The brief was simple but strategic: get attendees to recognize the Mubadala name and say it confidently while giving them something worth sharing.
That is a harder problem than logo placement. A banner can be looked at without ever being read aloud, and a name nobody is sure how to pronounce is a name nobody repeats. The activation had to put the word in the guest's own mouth.
The mechanism underneath it is our video testimonial booth — the same booth that records guest messages at a wedding, pointed at a sponsor instead.
Every Guest Became The Broadcast
MD Mojo Photo & Video Booths designed and produced a fully customized green screen video activation that turned each guest into the anchor of their own professional broadcast.
Guests stepped in, took the mic and recorded a short piece to camera:
“This is Larry Selleh reporting live from the Mubadala Citi DC Open where today we are serving up global returns.”
Saying the line is the mechanism. The guest is not being marketed to at that moment — they are performing, and the sponsor's name is the part they have to get right.
A finished guest video from the tournament — stock broadcast footage top and tail, the guest's own piece to camera in the middle. Sound on.
Three Layers Added To Every Take
A guest recorded one short line. What they received minutes later was a finished broadcast segment, assembled automatically around their take.
A Broadcaster Introduction
Every finished video opened with a custom introduction recorded by tennis broadcaster Mark Petchey, so a guest's segment landed as part of a real broadcast rather than as a novelty clip.
That Day's Live Tennis
Footage captured on court during the tournament that same day was composited behind each guest with green screen. The backdrop was never stock — it was the match happening a few hundred feet away.
A Sponsor Closing Segment
A professionally produced ending carried Mubadala's mission and global investment strategy, so the brand message rode along with a video the guest actually wanted to keep.
For a gala, those three layers become a word from your executive director, footage of the work the money funds and a closing card for the sponsor who made it possible.
Green screen compositing from another MD Mojo activation — the same technique that put the DC Open's live tennis behind each guest.
Thousands Of One-On-One Brand Moments
The activation ran 3,545 guest sessions across the tournament and put 12,020 faces on camera — each one a direct conversation with the sponsor rather than a glance at a sign.
Every participant said the sponsor's name out loud, correctly, in a video with their own face on it. A piece of entertainment turned into brand education — and then into distribution: 4,858 shares left the booth and drew 7,515 views.
Passive sponsorship exposure ends when the crowd goes home. This kept working from the guests' own accounts.
Where The Videos Went
The sharing pattern is the part worth studying. Guests did not mostly post to social — they texted, which is the most personal delivery there is and the one a sponsor cannot buy.
Shares By Channel
Of the 4,858 shares, roughly seven in ten went out as text messages and about a quarter as direct downloads to the guest's own phone. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, email and AirDrop together accounted for the small remainder.
A text is sent to someone specific. Each one is the sponsor arriving in a one-to-one conversation with a note attached — and at a nonprofit event, that same text is what carries your donation link.
Modeled Reach
Estimated reach
Estimated impressions
These two are modeled, not counted — the platform projects them from typical audience size per sharing channel. We report them as estimates because that is what they are.
Who Stepped Into The Studio
Faces detected across every session
Average faces per capture
Largest age band, with 36–52 close behind
Detected split, women to men
Age and gender figures are the booth's automated face detection, so treat them as a read on the crowd rather than a census. An average of 3.4 faces per capture is the useful one: guests came to the studio in groups, and every person in the frame heard the line delivered.
What Your Sponsor Receives Afterwards
Every activation reports on itself. This is the actual post-event reporting from the DC Open — the evidence a development team takes into the renewal conversation.
Sharing and sessions
Counted events. Text messages dwarf every social channel combined.
View full size
Reach and impressions
Modeled by the platform from typical audience size per channel — projections, not counted events.
View full size
Audience read
Automated face detection. Useful as a read on who showed up, not as a census.
View full sizeWhat This Is Worth To A Nonprofit
Sponsors do not renew because the gala was lovely. They renew because they can point at what they got. This is the piece of the package that gives them something to point at.
Recognition Your Sponsor Can Hear
A banner gets looked at. This gets said. Every guest spoke the sponsor's name into a camera, correctly, in a video with their own face on it. That is a category of recognition nothing else in your package can offer, and it is why it prices differently.
A Report You Can Hand Them
Sponsorship renewals die for lack of evidence. This one closes with counted numbers — sessions, shares, views, faces — plus an audience read. Your development team walks into the renewal meeting with a page of results instead of a thank-you.
It Can Cost Your Organization Nothing
Bring us in as a sponsored activation and the sponsor underwrites the whole thing. The line item moves off your event budget and onto theirs, and what they get back justifies it.
Value That Outlives The Night
The banner comes down and the program gets recycled. These videos sit in guests' camera rolls and social feeds, resurfacing months later with the sponsor attached — the same visibility, at no additional cost to anyone.
How To Structure It
- Price the activation into your top sponsorship tier as a named, exclusive benefit — the sponsor owns the studio for the night.
- Write the line your guests will say. It carries the sponsor's name and your cause in one sentence.
- We build the studio around both: your mission on the screen, their name in the script and a closing card that belongs to them.
- Guests text themselves the video. Your donation link rides along with it — the mechanism that raised over $10,000 in one evening for another client.
- After the event, the reporting above goes to your sponsor. That is your renewal conversation, already made.
The Guest Was In The Story, Not In Front Of It
Rather than putting a logo in front of attendees, the activation invited every one of them to become part of the sponsor's story. Personalized messaging, premium production and instant sharing combined into engagement that traveled well beyond the tournament grounds.
That is the whole argument for a nonprofit. An immersive video experience converts a sponsorship from spend on visibility into a memory the guest keeps, with the sponsor's name attached in their own voice, long after the last speech has been given.
What This Looks Like At Your Gala
- A green screen studio built around your mission, not a booth with a logo taped to it.
- A script your guests perform, so the sponsor gets said rather than seen.
- Automatic intros, backdrops and closing segments that make every take look produced.
- Delivery to the guest's phone within minutes, carrying your donation link.
- A results report the sponsor keeps — see nonprofit events for the full picture.
Building Your Sponsorship Package?
Tell us who you are trying to recognize and what you need your guests to remember. We will design the activation and help you price it into the tier that pays for it. Serving Maryland, Washington DC and Northern Virginia.