Michael Hoffman explains how you can harness the power of video and make your fundraising pitch hit home

At the organisation where I served as a senior fundraiser, we had a programme that allowed donors to travel to our projects overseas. On these trips, they would meet the people working on the ground, hear directly from those served by our work and see for themselves the impact of their investment. Every one of them came back more committed to the cause and to the organisation.

But you can’t send every donor on a trip. How, I asked, could we bring to life our work for more donors?
The answer is video.

Using video, organisations can bring their work to life for their donors. You can bring it to meetings with funders, use it to set the tone, and make it a shared experience between the donor prospect and the fundraising professional.

Remarkably, some of the best videos are made by small organisations with very limited budgets. The key is to create an authentic story, told with passion.

Keep it short

Donors, especially high-net-worth individuals, are very busy. The video should therefore not take up more time than it needs to. While there are some amazing 30-minute videos, they are the exception that proves the rule. Somewhere in the five minute range will work just fine.

Set realistic and clear goals

Before you start your project, ask yourself exactly what it is you expect the video to accomplish. You cannot expect the video to answer every question a potential donor may have. If you try to put all the information in the video, it will end up being too long and too boring to be of any use. Instead, the video should be designed to set an emotional tone for the meeting, to make the donor feel something powerful.

Know your audience

Different audiences require different messaging. For example, older accomplished businessmen might be swayed by a solicitation that focuses on project success, replication and statistics. The challenge is to design your entire message around your audience, and then see what role the video will play. For example, if you make a highly emotional video, you might need an accompanying set of slides to show the hard data to the businessmen in order to put that story into context.

Use a small story

The single biggest problem with video made for fundraising is that the people making them think the video needs to tell the complete story of what the organisation does. The viewer will only remember how it makes them feel. Almost always, a small story of a single person impacted by your work will be the most powerful video you can make. A video about one little girl will not explain the overall strategy of the organisation, the logistics of moving food across borders, or the rate of return on peanut paste investments. It doesn’t have to. The fundraiser can fill in all of this detail.

Show, don’t tell

The power of video is that it is visual. Too often, organisations use video to tell their story. You have certainly seen the video where the executive director of the organisation is speaking to the camera and saying, “our organisation does this work, which is very important”. Don’t tell me, show me. Let the people who have been impacted by the work, or the people working on the ground, tell the story. If you build houses, show the building of a house, and then let the person who will benefit from this house say why it is so meaningful.

Communicate urgency

Why is it so critical that I donate now, today? What about today is different than yesterday, or last year, or tomorrow? Without urgency, there is no need for me to donate. Marshall Ganz, an expert in storytelling for social change from Harvard, calls this ‘The Story of Now’. It is a critical element in getting people to act.

Make the donor the hero

One thing we know from successful fundraising is that you have to make it about the donor. Without making the donor’s role central to your story, you will not be as successful. The donor is the hero, the one who can, with the stroke of their pen or the swipe of their credit card, save the world. Let them know it!

A word on costs

The cost of a professionally produced five-minute video can range wildly. While you might need to hire a professional editor, you can reduce costs by shooting the video yourself. With a little training and a lot of practice, many people can shoot video that will work. One aspect that many first-time directors forget is to make sure you obtain good-quality sound. Use an external microphone if possible.

Michael Hoffman is CEO of See3 Communications

This article first appeared in The Fundraiser magazine, Issue 16, April 2012