See What’s Out There

This year, See3 is playing an active role in Tweetsgiving 2009, a global celebration that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. Last year, Tweetsgiving raised $10,000 to build a classroom in Tanzania. But as the story behind Tweetsgiving demonstrates, the real focus is not to raise money but to share gratitude all across the web.

Over the next few days, we’re encouraging folks to create a short video of themselves expressing what they’re thankful for this year. All you have to do is upload it to YouTube, tag it with “Tweetsgiving”, and include the tweetsgiving.org URL in your video description.

Watch the instructional video below, as well as three Tweetsgiving videos made by members of the See3 staff.

To see videos that others have created for Tweetsgiving, visit the Epic Change YouTube channel.

Any questions? Write in the comments below.

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.

You can access the slidedeck and audio here.

[This piece was originally posted as part of “Video Week” on Care2’s Frogloop blog. Thanks to Allyson Kapin and the Frogloop team for inviting us to participate.]

I used to be quite the curmudgeon about online video back in the day—ask anyone I worked with in the late nineties at AppNet’s Nonprofit practices or later in the early 2000s as the head of the Internet group at Easter Seals. My reasons were simple… the technology just wasn’t ready yet. Too much could potentially go wrong, and I’m very careful (some might say paranoid!) about make sure there’s never any interruption in the donor’s online giving usability path.

1. Back then, a majority of our client’s constituents didn’t have broadband on their computers.

2. Problems abounded creating the right versions for cross players, browsers and accessible versions.

3. The video equipment was expensive and difficult to use.

But oh! what a difference a few years make! Now I’m a fan! And why?

1. US broadband penetration has now grown to 63%.

2. As the medium has evolved, support has come forth to stabilize online video formats.

3. The low cost Flip video camera and other new technology is democratizing video making.

So now that all those pesky technical obstacles are out of the way, now what?

Now it’s all about the content. And wasn’t it always, really?

Video is the next best thing to being there. How many times have you (or your development director) said, if only our donors could be here in our service centers, meet the people we’re serving, see the needs first hand. Video is a wonderful tool to help with that storytelling.

Storytelling with video can be a wonderful way of explaining a difficult or overwhelming concept. Watch the moving video above about one family’s experience with Trisomy 18 and see how it helps us understand the condition, the need for support and research, all through the story of this one little boy.

Nonprofit guru Allison Fine has a monthlypodcast on the Chronicle of Philanthropy site. This week, she featured Michael Hoffman from See3 and Megan Fowler from Refugees International, talking about online video. It’s short, so have a listen.

The Giving USA Foundation’s annual report on charitable giving said that gifts were down in 2008, but not by much, 2%. Given the economic mess — the worst since the Depression — this sounds pretty good. And, overall, it is.

But the overall number of 2% down hides the differences within the numbers. For example, get-out-the-vote work was counted and was way up because of the historic election last year. Gifts to United Way and others who aggregate giving to mostly local, mostly poverty-focused work was up as well. Religious giving was way up as well.

But other categories got hammered. Arts, environment, health and education — is that all? — were all down. All is not rosy.

Remember, the research says don’t talk too much about the economy. People want to support winners, not those desperate for cash. The actionable intelligence from this report is this: Tell your stories. Find your best stories and work extra hard to tell them to your potential donors. It’s the stories of people and their real lives that get people writing checks and clicking on your donate button.

You can hear more about this story at NPR.

More on this story from Blackbaud, which analyzed the data. They have some nice graphs. They show online giving is way up.

Online Giving Surpasses $15 Billion in 2008
Blackbaud analyzed the Giving USA data, along with other important metrics, and estimates that more than $15.42 billion was given online to US charities in 2008. This is a 44% increase over 2007’s online giving estimates. Online giving accounted for just over 5% of total giving to charities in the US during 2008 and has been growing for many years now.

more from Blackbaud here.

We’ve talked about the power of the Girl Effect video, which uses only typography and classical piano to make its point. It’s a very compelling piece, and has received a lot of attention exactly for its freshness and innovation.

Well, Starbucks released a new ad during Saturday Night Live this past weekend that’s shockingly similar. I don’t know if it’s done by the same people, mere flattery, or a total rip-off.

Watch the side-by-side below and tell us what you think.

Girl Effect

Starbucks

Tonight is the start of the Democratic Convention and you should pay attention to the films they will show. There will be a film about Michelle Obama and I think a tribute film to Ted Kennedy. Then later in the week we will see a Barack Obama bio film. Remember how successful Clinton’s Man from Hope was?

Pay attention to how the stories are told. Keep in mind that nothing in the Obama films are done by chance. The music, the quotes, the clothes, the backgrounds, are all designed to elicit a certain emotional response from the audience. Then think about how you can use some of these advanced techniques in your own work.

The New York Times has a little video called The Art of the Bio Film.

David Axelrod, Obama’s senior strategist, is a master at storytelling and the use of video. My guess is that the Obama film is going to be very very well done.

What is this video? It’s a story. A dramatic story. And it’s told using only words, almost. No pictures. You will pay attention because you won’t want to miss something. Now, sit down and write the story of your cause this way. What way? Draw a straight line from your tactics to the huge potential impact you can have if successful. Bring someone along from the very small — one person — to the very big — changing the whole world.

1. Tell a story.
If you want your audience to identify with your mission, you need a compelling story that connects your work to real people. If a story moves you, it will likely move others as well—and become the foundation for deeper involvement.

2. Be relevant.
People respond to what’s going on around them, so try to relate to the news or the calendar as much as possible. You’ll also have a better chance at success if you’re pitching your video to bloggers or other websites—they’re always looking for something current and fresh.

3. Tell them what you want.
You have their attention, now tell your viewers how you want them to engage, whether it’s donating money, visiting a website, or volunteering. They won’t know to give unless you ask for it.

4. Be brief.
Few people are watching your 7-minute online video—that only works when you have them locked in a room. Try to get everything out in 2 minutes or less.

5. Videos don’t raise money by themselves.
Your organization should think of online video as one of many tools to fit into your fundraising program. Adopting video into your organization is critical, but it has to be a means instead of an end.

6. Embed video on your donations page.
The distance between the “play” button and the “donate” button should be short. Also, give your viewer the right web tools. Can the viewer forward the video to a friend, subscribe to your RSS feed, get involved, and sign up for your newsletter right there on the spot? If not, they should.

7. Put video at the center of a campaign.
Video is often best used in the context of a campaign. A campaign can be raising money for a particular village, trying to reach a specific goal, or giving limited to a specific timeframe.

8. Empower your viewers.
Ever heard of peer-to-peer fundraising? Encourage your audience to pass your videos along. Make the embed code easily accessible within your page so your video can reach a broader audience.

9. Create a media library.
Start gathering your footage now—you might have all the ingredients already! Building a media library is a valuable long-term asset for your organization. Have a camera ready for every important event. Ask volunteers to document their work and make it available for future events, trainings, and online use. Using existing footage you get more bang for the buck.

10. Test.
You don’t know if something works unless you test it. Send out emails with video and some without, and measure the results. Each nonprofit will have different nuances, and you’ll want to know when using video is most effective.

11. Know when not to use video.
Truth is, your strongest donors will likely donate with or without online video. They have been already, right? They don’t need any extra convincing. Use online video for attracting new audiences, for driving specific campaigns, for empowering your membership to spread your story or for deepening or expanding existing relationships.

I have a whiteboard in my office and I often use it to draw out complex problems, workflow diagrams, website diagrams, lists, etc. It helps to see things clearly. This is a technique we think can go successfully into video and help your organization explain complex tasks.

Here are some examples of different versions of this technique.

UPS - They have an elaborate whiteboard campaign complete with TV spots and a very expensive website. But we can learn something from it, do something less elaborate and succeed in explaining our issue. Here’s the whole thing — UPS Whiteboard HQ — it’s very elaborate.

Here’s one short animated spot from UPS.

The folks at CommonCraft use a technique with paper that’s pretty cool. They have explained many things, including RSS feeds and podcasts. Here’s Social Media:

Of course, where we got this whole idea was from Al Gore. Think about it… The guy won an Oscar with a PowerPoint. But he’s doing the same thing, explaining something complex in a way people can understand it.

If you haven’t seen the latest version of his talk, here it is: