Collect Beneficiary Stories with Storyraise Collect

By Dionna Dash

Whether you’re producing a donor impact video or a personalized annual report, you need great content. But getting that content, especially from busy stakeholders like program staff, students, and community members, can be a huge bottleneck.

Introducing, Storyraise Collect.

Collect is the new way to gather stories, quotes, photos, videos, and more, all in one streamlined system. It lets you easily create and send a customized form to anyone you need input from, then stores those responses in your Storyraise workspace, ready to drop into reports or videos.

What Can You Use Collect For?

Collect helps you grab the content that makes your campaigns. Below are a few of the most common use cases.

 Thank you messages from beneficiaries
 Stories from program leaders
 Field reports, such as a document on how a grant was used or how a program unfolded
 Voices from your community, including reflections on peer-to-peer campaigns
 Video stories
General information, such as bios and event RSVPs

How to Create a Collect Form

To get started, click “Collect “in your left-hand sidebar, then hit the “Start New Collection” button in the top right.

Step 1: Choose Your Use Case

Pick the type of content you want to collect. This helps the AI generate a relevant starting point for your form.

Step 2: Build Your Form in Conversation with AI

Instead of dragging and dropping, you’ll chat with AI to design your form.

Want to change the title? Add a logo? Make a question required? Just say it.

On the right, you’ll see a live preview of your form update in real time.

You can:

– Edit the title and form description
– Add or remove questions
– Change the type of questions (text, dropdown, file upload, etc.)
– Make fields required
– Include helper text or instructions

It’s quick, intuitive, and actually kind of fun.

Step 3: Preview and Share

Once you’re happy with your form, click “Get Link.”

Your form will open in a new tab, where you can copy the URL and drop it into emails, newsletters, Slack messages, or wherever your audience lives.

Anyone with the link can fill it out, no login required.

Step 4: View and Use Your Responses

Back in the builder, all your form responses will show up in a table view.

You can sort, filter, and clean up the responses as needed, and then pull them into your Storyraise reports or videos just like any other personalization data.

Use Case Example: Scholar Updates for a Donor-Funded University Program

A university scholarship office can use Collect to gather stories and thank-you notes from students receiving donor-funded awards.

They create one form and send it to all active scholars. Students share quotes, photos, and even selfie videos about how the scholarship impacted them.

Later, the team pulls these responses into personalized thank-you videos for each donor, showing exactly how their generosity made a difference.