Telling Stories for a Cause: Using Video to Amplify Non-Profit Missions.

Nonprofits can use video to showcase their impactful work. By sharing success stories and testimonials from beneficiaries, nonprofits can humanize themselves while inspiring viewers to support their cause.

These narratives may be difficult to share as they often feature hardship or death, so the challenge lies in telling these tales with positivity in mind.

Nonprofits must be prepared to capture these stories when they occur; one way of doing this is by establishing a system that automatically captures these tales regularly.

1. Tell Your Story

One of the most powerful assets nonprofits possess is their story. Stories have the ability to transport audiences into another world and foster empathy, action, and change in ways nothing else could.

Your nonprofit story needs a relatable protagonist with whom the audience can identify, as well as an emotional hook that draws readers in and showcases a conflict the character must overcome (e.g. illness or lack of resources). Don't forget to describe everything about their environment so they feel immersed.

Testimonials, interviews, and BTS videos are great ways to share the stories of your nonprofit organization while also humanizing it. Reading statistics about its work is one thing; hearing someone directly affected by its efforts can make a tremendous impactful statement about your efforts.

2. Share Your Successes

Nonprofits do tremendous work, and people love supporting it. But this doesn't mean every nonprofit needs to create a grand production; with the right storyteller, even something as basic as a slideshow of photos can be riveting and compelling.

Donors want to see their donations at work, yet also need to know it won't come easy or overnight. By sharing successes with supporters, you can encourage them to continue the fight!

3. Encourage Donations

Nonprofit fundraising requires nonprofits to be as straightforward and direct as possible. Nonprofits lack the luxury of multiple locations or elaborate editing that certain businesses do; therefore, a targeted story that's emotively engaging and donor-empowering is more likely to engage viewers than an impersonal video.

Educational videos can provide your supporters with additional insight into your nonprofit organization and why it was established, along with what it does to change lives around them.

To encourage donations, include text or a button at the end of your video that links directly to your donation page. This gives viewers a simple next step that's straightforward and can help reach your goal faster - particularly valuable if you're trying to build awareness for a fundraising campaign; don't lose potential donors due to confusion about how they can donate!

4. Inspire Volunteers

Your nonprofit explainer videos can be an effective way to advertise its volunteer opportunities by showing potential volunteers what they could achieve by joining you. Explainer videos provide an effective medium for communicating how individuals can become engaged with your cause.

Emotional storytelling can help your audience relate more easily to what you are doing and thus increase the chance that they donate both their time and money.

Inspirational storytelling requires finding the appropriate balance between highlighting both your organization's struggles and its achievements. Too much negative information may make it hard for listeners to relate, while too many happy endings might fail to stir their passion enough.

Make use of video to demonstrate volunteer opportunities by featuring interviews with current or past volunteers, sharing their stories while showing prospective ones just how fulfilling working with your organization can be.