We’re excited to announce that we’ve partnered with YouTube to present the 4th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards! The contest will award a total of $10,000 in grants, funded by the Case Foundation, to the best videos of the year found in the YouTube Nonprofit Program—a special program that YouTube designed to help nonprofits achieve their missions.
Starting today, submit any video your organization made last year by March 19, when a set of nonprofit and media professionals will select 16 finalists to compete in a public vote among the YouTube community. Awards will go to organizations of all sizes, including a special award for Best Innovation in Video.
“We are thrilled to partner with YouTube for the DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards. With this contest, we get to highlight important nonprofit stories and help organizations engage with the YouTube audience,” said Michael Hoffman, CEO of See3 Communications. “In addition, we are grateful to have such wonderful partners who have been trailblazing how nonprofits use technology, video, and social media.”
Now is your chance to get your nonprofit video featured on the YouTube homepage, receive great prizes from Flip Video and Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), and have your work showcased at a screening in Washington DC, hosted by Nomadsland.
We’ve really enjoyed getting to know the folks at Flip Video Spotlight. They designed these custom Flip “trophies” for the 2009 DoGooderTV Nonprofit Video Awards, and they’re continually demonstrating their commitment to providing necessary digital resources to the nonprofit community.
So when Basho Mosko, Program Manager at Flip Video Spotlight, asked us to co-present with him for NTEN’s “Mission Video” webinar, we couldn’t resist.
Here’s what we covered during “Mission Video: How to turn your nonprofit’s story into an engaging video”:
Video is all over the interwebs. You recognize it’s power to tell a message by engaging the eyes and hearts of viewers. Your nonprofit has a story to tell. Converting from words to video is powerful but where do you begin? With its plethora of information about video, it can be hard to find what those tactical steps to creating a video for your nonprofit are. In this webinar, we will walk you through an adaptable template to create your organization’s introductory video and provide some quick tips for reporting from the field.
This year’s theme, “Everyone’s Doing It”, is meant to include submissions of all shapes and sizes, from organizational vlogs, to staff-produced web clips, to high-end, professionally produced videos.
According to Michael Hoffman, CEO of See3 Communications, “2008 was a great year for video, and we continue to see incredible growth each year in the number of nonprofits using video. With camera and equipment costs down, organizations have nothing holding them back from using video as a communications tool. We’ve seen some really innovative, powerful videos this year, and we hope the DoGooderTV Nonprofit Video Awards will highlight that.”
Last year, more than 160 entries were received from over 100 nonprofit organizations. The top winning videos were from the Humane Society of the United States, Greenpeace International, and the Center for Constitution Rights. The winning videos receive thousands of views and publicity online and offline.
Video submissions will be accepted until March 26, when a panel of judges will select the finalists in each category. The public voting period will open on April 7 and end on April 26. The winners will be announced at NTEN’s annual Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) in San Francisco, which takes place April 26-28, 2009. Winners will be featured on The Nonprofit Times website.
One of my presentations at the Nonprofit Technology Conference (08NTC) was The Age of YouTube: Using Online Video to Reach the Masses.
Here is the session description:
Broadband is finally here and the organizations that are creating compelling and viral video content are reaping the rewards. Those gala dinner videos are no longer enough. Readily available digital video cameras and editing software allow your organization to capture stories and introduce a wider world to your mission. Video content can be seamlessly integrated into your website and provide the compelling hook for fundraising and advocacy. Portable media players enable you to embed your message in hundreds of sites. But, how do you capitalize on the opportunity?
Takeaways:
1. The benefits to using web video
2. Case studies of innovative uses of video
3. How to effectively use video in your e-campaigns
I opened the session looking at the world we live in — the environment nonprofit messages are competing with. Here is the video I showed at the start of the session:
Here is the slide deck I used for the session. Mostly, these are just illustrative of talking points.
Videos from Amnesty International showing both the man-on-the-street technique and how you can use video in an online campaign and how you can make videos with very different tone out of the same source material.
Care2 is an online community where you can promote a video and seed your list in order to reach new audiences. If you are interested, you can learn more by calling Clinton O’Brien
Vice President, Business Development
Email: partners[at]earth.care2[dot]com
Phone: 202-785-7308
AOL quietly offers a program of free banners for certain organizations. If you are interested you should call us at See3 and we can tell you more about it.
If I left something out of this list that I mentioned in the session, please let me know with a comment.
Steve Grove’s YouTube for Nonprofits Tip Sheet. (Steve did not make the session at the last minute, but we got his tips. I will ask Steve some of the questions and publish the answers.)
The Basics
• Reach Out. Post videos that get YouTube viewers talking, and then stay in the conversation with comments and video responses.
• Partner Up. Find other organizations on YouTube who complement your mission, and work together to promote each other.
• Keep It Fresh. Put up new videos regularly and keep them short—ideally under 5 minutes.
• Spread Your Message. Share links and the embed code for your videos with supporters so they can help get the word out.
• Be Genuine. We have a wide demographic, so high view counts come from content that’s compelling, rather than what’s “hip.”
Your Channel:
• Design Your Channel. Go to Channel Design, then choose a color scheme to match your logo or other materials, and decide which modules you’d like to display on your public profile.
• Add Banners and URLs. Go to Branding Options, upload your icons and banners, and enter any of the other options you’d like to use.
• Choose Your Top Video. The top video on your channel automatically plays each time someone visits your page—choose it wisely. Update this video regularly to keep it fresh, or keep your most important video there as an introduction.
• Get Donations Flowing. Sign up for Google checkout, then go to your Google Checkout Options, enter your ID and Merchant Key, and choose donation amounts. Once you’ve filled in the information, the button will appear on your public profile and all of your video pages.
Your Content:
• Direct Dialogue. Make videos that create a dialogue about your work and what you’re trying to achieve. Ask questions and solicit video responses.
• Call to Action. Harness the power of user-generated content by asking supporters to submit videos to your cause. Create a group to collect these videos together; find ways to give recognition to the best ones.
• Tell Serial Stories. Engage viewers with a series of videos that tell a story around a specific theme, and keep them coming back for more. Once you’ve created a few episodes, put them into a playlist. This allows you to develop several video narratives targeted at particular demographics.
• Respond to Current Events. Address relevant news stories by posting videos that explain your position. You can then embed them in emails to your supporters—a video message can be more effective than a text-laden email.
• Use Endorsements. Whether they’re from celebrities or people you’ve impacted, it helps to have supporters chiming in about why your work matters.
Networking and Distribution
• Tag and Title Well. Tag and title your videos with relevant keywords—that’s how users will find your content as they navigate YouTube.
• Embed, Embed, Embed. Broadcast your videos over the web by embedding them on your website and encouraging supporters to do the same on theirs.
• Click “Subscribe”. Subscribe to the YouTube channels you’re interested in to stay up-to-date on their content; they may return the favor.
• Engage and Interact. Draw attention to your work by interacting with both allies and adversaries through video responses, text comments, or joint projects/debates.
• Make Web Traffic a Two-Lane Road. Use your video description field and branded banner URL to drive users to your website, and link to your YouTube channel from your website to encourage people to interact with your video content here.
For video production tips, go to: http://youtube.com/video_toolbox
The last session I attended at the NTC in New Orleans was:
E-Advocacy: Mission over Membership
Designed by Mr. Charles Lenchner | DemocracyInAction.org
E-Advocacy can mean different things to different people. What if we were able to separate the organizational self interest to build membership and raise funds from the planning of issue based advocacy campaigns? What would campaigning look like if we only cared about the real world result? Our panelists will discuss this issue using real world examples of successful campaigns, along with insights that can help YOUR organization plan better advocacy campaigns.
Takeaways:
1. Guidelines for getting mission driven results
2.Strategies and tactics that work
3. Cheat sheet: how to plan your next online advocacy effort
Here’s 2 minutes of Colin talking about how he was part of a campaign that went after Toyota on environmental issues as part of the campaign to increase fuel economy standards. He offers some advice on online advocacy campaigns.
The 160 entered videos were then judged by a panel of experts in video and nonprofits, including Jeff Pulver, founder of the Video on the Net conference, Danny Alpert, Executive Producer of See3 Communications and award-winning documentary filmmaker, and Suzanne Muchin, Principal, ROI Ventures, a Chicago-based organization helping social entrepreneurs create scalable enterprises.
Here is video of Michael Hoffman, CEO of See3 Communications, giving out the awards at the final lunch at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans.
This is a great widget made with the Sprout technology. Sprout is a tool that lets you easily build your own widget.
What I love about this widget is that it includes a link to video — using the See3 logo as the key. Check out the menu on the right side. If you are going to the NTC in New Orleans, let me know, would love to see you. And if not, you should!
