Video

There are powerful videos and weak videos. So, how can you make sure your video is powerful and truly engages your donors? Here are three rules you can’t afford to violate when crafting your own video: 1. Don’t point your camera inward. What I mean by that is to focus and place the emphasis on your cause not your organization. 2. Avoid filming your executive director and staff. It’s always best to have a voice from outside your organization glorifying the effect you’re having in the community. 3. Have a clear purpose for your video.

Congratulations to the winners of the DoGooder Video Awards, who were announced at the Nonprofit Technology Conference. The DoGooder Awards recognize the creative and effective use of video to promote social good. The four winning videos are “Right By You” from Partners for Mental Health (Best Nonprofit Video), “Nutiquette: A Dude’s Guide to Checking His Nuts” from Canadian Cancer Society (Funny For Good Award), “The Paradise That Wasn’t” from Wide Angle Youth Media (Most Inspiring Youth Media) and “Slaying Childhood Cancer” from Alex’s Lemonade Stand (ImpactX Award).

A session at the Greenpeace Digital Mobilisation Skillshare in Umbria, Italy, came together to look at what makes video work for activism and draw out lessons to support planning and ideas. According to research, material that triggers a strong emotional response is twice as likely to be shared. A strong, positive emotional response is 30 percent more likely to encourage sharing than a strong but negative emotion, like shock or anger, but the strength of the response is more important.

Nonprofits that do not create a lot of their own video content can still have engaging YouTube channels by curating videos relevant to the nonprofits' missions and programs. Just because your nonprofit didn’t create a video doesn’t mean you can’t feature it on your channel. By adding videos to “Playlists” and then displaying those playlists as “Sections” on your channel, your nonprofit can have an engaging YouTube channel that makes a strong first impression.

A myth persists that nonprofits need the standard fundraising video or the basic call-to-action video to be successful. But I would argue there are a variety of ways in which you can share your story.

So, below are nine quick examples of what I have found. They are creative, unique and sometimes cutting-edge. I am hoping this can serve as inspiration when you conceive your next video story/strategy.

NGOs are leveraging the Vine platform in a variety of ways, including inspiring people with positive messages, promoting events and spreading awareness. Our picks: UNICEF uses creativity to raise awareness around an event, UN Women inspires people, Greenpeace USA uses an expert and RED creates awareness.

Ah, video content marketing. It’s been a hot topic in 2013, and many end-of-year predication posts assert it will be more of a focus in 2014. Why? Well, as Forbes explains, people respond to faces, voices, movement and emotion — and video often contains all four of those elements, making it one crazy-powerful marketing tool.

Creating a video for online fundraising always starts with a plot. Here’s a roundup of four videos, each with unique plots, that you can follow as examples for your next fundraising video:

1. Connection plot fundraising video — Trinity Grace Church Brooklyn: A New Morning Service.
2. Challenge plot fundraising video — International Justice Mission: A Ray of Hope.
3. Creativity plot fundraising video (example 1) — Innovation Africa: Bringing Israeli Innovation to Africa.
4. Creativity plot fundraising video (example 2) — The Adventure Project: Give a Stove This Holiday

There are a few nonprofits doing great work that stand out because they are adapting better to an online, mobile world. Take, for instance, DigDeep, an organization dedicated to making sure everyone has easy access to clean water. DigDeep is running a campaign designed raise awareness online to understand what a lack of water means offline. More than a billion people around the world have access to only about four liters of water each day, and the 4 Liter Challenge is designed to show us what that’s like.

In this webinar we discuss the fears surrounding mobile & text-to-give, interactive websites, and video… and how to overcome them.