Videos Your Nonprofit, NGO, Charity
or Other Mission-based Organization Should Have Online.

Video continues to surge in popularity among online audiences - and not just young people. That means every nonprofit, big or small, needs to be thinking strategically about what videos it needs to produce and share - and where it should be sharing those videos.

Videos aren't difficult to produce: if you have a smart phone that records video and/or audio, you can create videos to share online about your organization. That includes Androids, not just Apple devices. Even if you have only photos, you can use them to create a video with audio for most of the proposed activities below. See this resource for producing videos with just the tech you have.

This page on my web site doesn't just talk about platforms; it emphasizes content. So many articles about how a nonprofit, NGO, community group, etc. should be using online video just talk about platforms. But what nonprofits struggle with is content - what should they be talking about or showing in these videos, particularly micro-video sites?

One of the challenges to offering this advice is that social media and video-sharing platforms keep changing. How many seconds or minutes they allow a video to be, or the limit in a videos size can be, also changes. I've written this advice to be of use no matter what platforms come along. But double check the information here regarding such limits before you invest in making a video for a particular platform.

A message for Executive Directors: you cannot want your staff to leverage video for your nonprofit, or to use a particular video-sharing platform, unless you are ready to give them the time and encouragement they need to produce such content and unless you are regularly viewing such content YOURSELF. Just because you heard on CBS This Morning that there's some social media trend happening now does mean you should tell your marketing staff to start doing it too. If YOU aren't engaging with such content yourself, you are not the expert.

Video-sharing platforms:

Please note that you do NOT have to use every social media or every video-sharing platform! The vast majority of nonprofits not only do not have the time to maintain a presence on everything, they don't have a reason to.

In addition, platforms change frequently in terms of popularity. Remember Vine? My Space? When you invest in using a social media platform, accept the reality that the platform may not be around in even two years. That means you need an offline archive of all videos you produce specifically for such channels! If you find yourself looking at a lot of videos on Instagram, for instance, for even personal reasons, that may mean you need to invest time in posting videos for your nonprofit there - if a platform is popular with you, it's probably popular with others.

YouTube and Vimeo are terrific for videos for anything three-minutes or more.

Note that for the "reels" function on Facebook and Instagram, the "shorts" function on YouTube, and for SnapChat and for Tik Tok, your videos need to be SHORT and pithy, measured in seconds, not minutes. 

As of now, TikTok videos can be as long as 3 minutes. The reality is that the videos that are 60 seconds or less are best for this platform, as well as on reels on Facebook and Instagram.

Depending on the video post type, Instagram videos can be between 3 seconds and 60 minutes in length. It breaks down by post type like this:

Whatever platform you use, make sure the text description that goes along with that video is as full as it can be. Someone looking at that video, no matter what platform it's one, should know what organization it comes from, what it is, why you are sharing it, etc. Use key words and phrases in the accompanying text message or description as well, so it can be found by others looking for such based on certain keywords.

Volunteers can help:

If you don't have an employee that can produce these videos, volunteers can be a great help.

Volunteers may have even better video recording devices and software editing than what your staff has.

Volunteers can also provide closed captioning and transcriptions of videos.

You could recruit online volunteers specifically for these video production and editing tasks!

Volunteers can also help you brainstorm ideas for videos your nonprofit should create.

Always encourage volunteers to share video they take while performing volunteer service, or about their volunteer service, for possible use by your organization.

Before you record:

Long-form videos:

Long-form videos are those that are three minutes or more. Three minutes may not seem like long, but anything longer than three minutes is too long for some platforms.

Note: you can repeat audio and images in different videos! For instance, if you have a great testimonial from a client, that can be featured in multiple videos, as appropriate.

• Overview video that introduces your organization. No more than five minutes. This video states the full name of your organization, where it's based, its mission, who is served by the organization or program, why it's worthwhile, etc.. It may talk about the history of the organization or it may be focused more on what the organization is now and why it matters. If people watch only one video about your organization, this is the one to watch. It's the video your executive director will show when doing a speech for a group to talk about your work, the video you will ask all new employees and volunteers to watch, etc.
  

• A video that talks about why the mission of your organization is important. This is not about your nonprofit, specifically, as much as it's about why the nonprofit has the mission that it has. If the nonprofit encourages people to repair trails in public lands, the video should talk about why public lands are important. If the mission of the program is to involve parents in schools, the video would talk about why that matters, how it improves student performance, etc. If the nonprofit discourages young people from vaping, it should be about the dangers of vaping. If the nonprofit is a community theater, it should talk about why live theater matters, why it's something worth caring about, how it can revitalize a downtown and benefit other businesses, etc. If the nonprofit is focused on helping dogs and cats get adopted, the video should talk about why that issue is happening at all.
  

• Testimonial from clients and community members about why this nonprofit matters, how it's affected them personally, etc.

• About volunteer engagement at your organization: what volunteers do, why you involve volunteers (and NOT because you can't pay them/to save money), etc. It should end with a link to a web site to find out more and to apply to be involved. This video should be both to recruit new volunteers and to recognize the essential contributions of volunteers to your organization.

• Staff speeches, presentations and webinars your organization has hosted or created. Make sure the audio is excellent on such videos. In many cases, audio is more important than video - people will tolerate poor video if the audio is easy to understand, but they will not tolerate bad audio no matter how clear the video is, unless it's something salacious. You can edit such with title pages, intro music and more, so that it feels more like a video than a recording of a speech, presentation, etc.

• Recordings of live events. If you had a live broadcast of something on your YouTube or Facebook channel, why not have it available on-demand for viewing anytime? You can edit such, taking out "dead air" time or lulls in an event, and add title pages, intro music and more, so that it feels more like a video than a recording of a speech, presentation, etc. You can also edit it down to just highlights. 

• How to videos related to your mission/service delivery. If you need to tell people how to participate in an upcoming event you are having, how to participate in a contest, how to submit something, how to participate in an online community, what auditioning at your community theater is like, how your dog adoption process works, how to create a compost pile, etc. videos are a great way to explain such. 

Note: you may want to use clips from all of the aforementioned to create 30 second, one-minute or three minute videos to share on other platforms.

Short-form videos:

Short-form videos are three minutes or less. They get shared on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Their purpose may be to build awareness about your organization or the cause that it promotes. Their purpose may be to just give a fun, human feeling to your organization, to make it feel more approachable.

These short videos need to be tagged appropriately in their descriptions or comments so they can be found by people looking for such, and your staff, volunteers and clients should be encouraged to always like and share them. Examples of short-form videos for nonprofits:

• Volunteers, employees or clients having fun, or delivering services. You can have just images and music (though you always need a version of such videos with audio commentary for people who have sight-impairments, if such audio commentary would be meaningful to a person who is blind and wants to learn about your programs). These can be very informal videos - like staff rushing out of the office to play in the first snow. Or silliness erupting in a Zoom call, like a staff member using a puppet or getting camera bombed by a pet. These can also be very slickly-produced videos, with music, text displays and special effects.
  

• A “bite-sized” (or byte-sized) resource, tip and advice related to your mission. For a history-related nonprofit, a quick accounting of a historical fact. For a nonprofit that helps young people with preparing for life after high school, a quick piece of advice about choosing a university. For a nonprofit animal shelter, a quick tip on keeping your pets safe in extreme weather conditions, or why chaining your dog in the yard is a bad idea. 

• A montage of people attending an event.
  

• A montage of photos from a recent event or activity.
  

• A very short, INTERESTING clip from a speech, presentation, testimonial, etc.
  

• A short recognition of a national or international day that relates to your nonprofits mission: For instance, if you are an environmental group, you might want to do something to recognize March 22, World Water Day, or May 20, World Bee Day. You can see a complete list of United Nations designated days here.
  

• Best wishes from the executive director or all staff for a holiday or time of year or end of a program year: Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, Eid Mubarak, Joyous Winter Solstice, Have a Great Summer, Happy New Year, etc.