Have You Mastered Nonprofit Video Yet?
Faithful Agitator readers know I’m a big fan of online video as a call-to-action and fundraising tool. One of my favorite posts I write each year is about the nonprofit video awards given by NTEN, See3 and YouTube. Here are the 2015 winners, as I discussed back in March.
If you haven’t experimented with video yet, get on it!
To help you along the path, take a look at Joe Boland’s very helpful recent article in NonProfitPro, titled Mastering Nonprofit Video. Joe interviewed some savvy practitioners. Here are some key observations he cites:
- “…social engagement stats are through the roof with video. Video is the fastest-growing service on mobile. Video is everywhere. And your supporters are being trained to expect video. You have to be there where your audience expects you to be.” (Michael Hoffman, See3)
- “what’s most interesting to me about video in the nonprofit sector is you don’t have to be a videographer— you don’t need lots of fancy equipment or [to] have a huge script and cast … It’s not a film, but making an incredible, touching, personal video about your nonprofit really just requires the story.” (Amy Sample Ward, CEO of Nonprofit Technology Network, NTEN)
- “…one of the leading commonalities between crowdfunding campaigns that met or exceeded their fundraising goals was having a video at the top of the fundraising page.”
- “It’s not about studio quality or budgeting dollars. It’s all about storytelling, just like everything else when it comes to nonprofit fundraising and advocacy.”
- “The key is to create videos that make the viewer the hero. You can do that by describing how an outcome the organization achieved was actually due to the viewers’ efforts. The hero in every story should be the donor, the advocate, the volunteer.”
- “The hero is the supporter, not the brand.” (Hoffman)
“The hero is the supporter” … the more fundraising changes, the more it stays the same!
Tom
P.S. For more insight into online video, try the treasury of relevant blog posts from See3. Or look at the 25 nonprofit video tips they provide (via 25 videos, none more than 3 minutes, most much less).
I think the best thing about videos as a medium for charities and fundraising organisations is that they appeal to the greatest number of senses. Reading something or looking over an infographic can be stimulating but nearly so much as a video capturing thousands of frames a minute and providing audio as well.