Charities turn to videos to solicit support

By Cristina Maldonado

updated 12:15 p.m. ET Oct. 17, 2008

When NFL star Michael Vick was accused last year of gambling on and sponsoring dog fights, the Humane Society’s Web site and social networking sites across the Net erupted into a buzz of outrage and accusations of animal abuse. “People kept sending us letters, photos, and comments,” recalls Carie Lewis, the nonprofit’s Internet marketing manager. “We knew people wanted a way to express how they felt.”

Lewis and colleagues wasted no time seizing the opportunity. They decided to harness the outrage and transform it into new levels of support for the nonprofit and its work by issuing an open call over the Web for short, citizen-made public service videos about the incident — and the importance of fighting animal abuse.

By crowdsourcing the videos this way, the Humane Society not only engaged the creative talents of its supporters and would-be backers, it engaged them in the contest itself, by asking people not only to send in videos but to judge them, as well. The result? Twenty-two people sent in their videos for judging, 18,000 people voted on the submissions, and — by the time the contest had ended — the Humane Society increased its membership by 2,000. And that’s not all. It didn’t cost the nonprofit a cent, Lewis says.

Call it the engagement imperative. As the U.S. economy spirals into economic malaise this giving season, more and more charities are turning to mass collaboration with supporters, both online and off, to boost interest in the cause and shore up membership rosters — without breaking the bank. Short videos can pack the least expensive and most emotionally resonant engagement, say nonprofit Internet experts — and it’s no wonder. It’s one thing to talk about a problem, they say; it’s another to show each other examples of it, triggering new talk over solutions. Says Lewis: “We’ve seen that when we attach a video to our fundraising appeals, it increases [public] interest and donations tremendously. People really relate to us when they actually see what we’re doing.”

Videos for a cause
The Humane Society’s experimentation with social media, chiefly video, is just one example of the movement toward the use of cause videos by the giving sector. NYU media professor Clay Shirky, the author of Here Comes Everybody, a new book about the influence of social media on the way people organize groups, says an organization’s ability to engage people and pull them into its work has never been easier. “A lot of the power of the Web isn't actually in the technology,” Shirky told Contribute in an interview, “it’s in the ability that the Web is unleashing for people to come together, to share things together, to collaborate, to take collective action.”

Change.org The Engagement Imperative Part 1: Crowdsourcing Part 2: Cause Videos COMING UP: Part 3: Mobile Action Part 4: The Cause-Wired-A roundtable?

Engaging others to film and share their stories about a particular cause can help nonprofits hugely: Cause videos provide nonprofits with a quick way to reach donors where they spend much of their time already — on video-sharing Web sites like YouTube and Facebook. According to the most recent data by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 75 percent of Net users watch or download videos online; 57 percent send video links to others, and 13 percent upload videos into an email so they can share them online with others.

With the explosion of low-cost social media — from Twitter to digital videos to social networking sites — it’s never been easier for nonprofits to cultivate communities that are sympathetic to their causes. Add to that the proliferation of inexpensive video equipment, and nonprofits now have a new way to work with supporters to expand their visibility, online and off. “Nonprofits traditionally do not have big budgets, so that when they hear ‘video,’ many think it’s expensive,” says Steve Grove, Head of News, Politics, and Nonprofits for YouTube. “The reality is that all you need is a hundred-dollar camcorder and a free YouTube account.”

Grove says YouTube recently beefed up the number of ways nonprofits can brand themselves using online videos. One new feature, for example, lets users attach additional video clip links to their digital videos, allowing several attachments to travel with a video simultaneously, as it rockets across the Web. YouTube also now gives nonprofits free access to a set of statistics about the videos that people upload, including a way to track which videos are the most popular and the geographical location of the people who watch them.

For nonprofits like the Humane Society, the goal is to show potential members and donors exactly what they’re doing for the cause, and all at a minimal cost to the organization. “We use YouTube because it’s free,” says Lewis.

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