Incorporating Video: The digital storytelling revolution for nonprofits

By Jennifer Gilomen
You’ve probably seen a lot of people in your field jumping onto the video bandwagon, producing everything from videoconferences to digital stories to podcasts. If you’re just getting started, you’ll find a dizzying array of formats and methods of distribution. But taking the first steps to producing and disseminating your own videos doesn’t have to be daunting; it just takes some solid identification of your goals, a prioritization of your audience(s), a reasonable assessment of the expenses involved, and a bit of training in the technology and practices of shooting and editing.

The first thing to do is to ask yourself for what you will be using the video:

• To market your services to potential participants?
• To recruit more volunteers?
• To apply for funding?
• To campaign for an issue?
  

All are valid uses of video, but with very different audiences. Prioritizing your audiences and goals with video before your staff picks up a camera will inform the entire process.

Digital storytelling -- typically defined as the use of personal narrative in multimedia -- has been embraced by the nonprofit community, because it has helped nonprofits accomplish many of these goals at once. When funders, policy makers, or concerned citizens hear a personal story of change from individuals your nonprofit has helped along the way, it brings your “mission statement” to life in a tangible way.

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For example, which would you find more gripping:
A) a video about a youth organization’s forty-year history and mission statement; or,
B) a story by a young person who underwent a real internal struggle and was helped by the organization to change her life?

Try to put yourself in the shoes of each of your primary audience segments: what would move you to do what you are asking your audience members to do? Visualize your audience: will they be watching your video on your web site in the middle of a busy work day? Will they watch your videos at home on a DVD at their own leisure?

Asking yourself the above questions will identify some of your organization’s most prized success stories, as well as define what the final videos could look like and how you will disseminate them to your audiences. It is then time to evaluate your internal capacity in two major areas: 1) staff, and 2) technology. Video production can be as simple as pointing a camera and pushing Record, but it takes time to do it well. Which staff members will comprise your “video team?” Does the team include subject matter experts and participants as well as technologists? What are their skill levels with video? How much time each week can they realistically spend producing? What equipment and software do you already have? If your staff needs training or assistance getting started, how much will it cost?

You might find that you already have a video enthusiast on staff, and that you have some introductory editing software, so you may have enough to get started. The initial investment in terms of technology can be as low as $99, if you’re willing to work with a tiny PureDigital video camera and open source software such as Audacity for sound recording and Windows MovieMaker or iMovie (which now come free on PCs and Macs, respectively) for editing. Try an initial short project and learn from your mistakes before you spend several thousand dollars to purchase a more professional kit. And above all, a little training or a knowledgeable advisor to guide you can go a long way.

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Jennifer Gilomen is lead Developer, Strategic Initiatives of the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) http://www.bavc.org Digital story examples and curriculum for nonprofits are available at the Digital Storytelling Institute Web site: http://digitalstorytelling.zerodivide.org.