Telling stories is one of the elemental qualities of humans. We love to tell them, hear them, and watch them. But sometimes changing media can short-circuit our storytelling instincts as we work our way through the technology yet allow the narrative to dissolve. In the nonprofit world, one of the great developments in media is video. Even inexpensive video cameras can capture amazing quality nowadays, and sites like Vimeo and YouTube offer free platforms to share your organization’s video with the larger world.
If you are not sure video can be worth the investment, did you know that YouTube is now the second largest search engine behind Google? Now that your organization can create its own ‘channel’ for people to discover and subscribe to, why would you willingly pass up the opportunity to reach millions of people via the most human of activities? If the issue is guidance, the good folks at CauseVox and ListenIn Pictures have just the thing to get you started.
Though telling stories might be fundamentally human, making a video that tells a compelling story about your nonprofit and its great work does not come naturally. Getting into some of the practical challenges of making a video, and making that video part of a larger strategy of client/donor development strategy, requires a bit more effort. And they have a great introductory video to make the point:
Start Storytelling from ListenIn Pictures on Vimeo.
They have written a free ebook, The Starter Guide to Nonprofit Video Storytelling, to get your organization to the next step of planning and production. We spoke with CauseVox’s founder, Rob Wu, about what his organization set out to accomplish.
Looking across some of our most successful online fundraising campaigns, we saw that video is one of the most powerful techniques that nonprofits used to raise awareness and funds. We collaborated with the passionate and talented crew at ListenIn Pictures to create The Starter Guide to Nonprofit Video Storytelling.
Our hope is that nonprofits can learn the thinking that goes behind powerful and impactful stories so that they can use those techniques to the fullest effect. In the ebook, we discuss the type of stories nonprofits can tell, common plots, the production process, and also how it integrates into campaigns.
If part of an overall strategy of outreach, video will certainly bring a striking return on investment because it can make human in a few minutes what your organization does year-round. And we all respond positively when such stories are shared with us.
