AGC Success Stories: Challenge winners get creative with video

Recently, we announced the winners of the 2009 America’s Giving Challenge. These winners - and all of the Giving Challenge participants - have unique and amazing stories to tell, not only about the work they’re doing, but also how they were able to motivate and rally their networks to support them during the Challenge. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll highlight some of those stories and outreach strategies, so others may be able to learn from them. One fun and effective technique used by many of the Challenge participants is video. As Michael Hoffman of See3 Communications wrote in his recent guest post on sustainable nonprofit video strategies: There is something magical about video. Video brings your supporters into the world you live everyday; it lets people share the work you’re doing in their own communities; it can even turn a stale issue on its head. But video shouldn’t be magic—it should be strategic. Two organizations that stand out with their savvy use of online videos to promote their participation and encourage supporters to donate during America's Giving Challenge are Atlas Corps and Darius Goes West, both $10,000 award winners. Of course, they had other strategies that were crucial to their success, such as those detailed in this Chronicle of Philanthropy interview with Scott Beale of Atlas Corps. Atlas Corps is an organization that is described as a reverse “Peace Corps” and brings talented individuals from abroad to the US. Scott, the founder and CEO, started using videos to promote their participation early on in the competition to get people ready for the Challenge, throughout for support, and then a final rally push. For those who paid attention at all to the Giving Challenge this year, it's hard not to have heard about the Atlas Corps “captain” who pledged via video to ride his bike 30 miles from Washington DC to Great Falls in his underwear if he could get 100 unique donations to the cause. Of course, they did, and he did. The video of his ride had 339 views as of today! Darius Goes West not only had creative use of video to promote and encourage participation, but video is at the heart of their organization's fundraising strategy. Darius Goes West is focused on finding treatments and a cure for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). They created a documentary about Darius, who has DMD, and his cross-country adventure to raise awareness; the organziation's main fundraising goal for the year was to sell 1 million DVDs, with proceeds benefitting the cause. Clearly an organization that understands the value of video, they also used humor to spur support for the Challenge with this video of Darrius and John Madden (ok, it wasn't actually John Madden, just Darrius with a wig, but it's hilarious), and the follow-up one below, which had 597 views as of the last time I checked today! After their success in the Giving Challenge, they went on to participate in the Chase Community Giving Challenge, and of course, created another fun video to promote their participation. A quick search on YouTube produced the list of videos below of Causes that used video in their participation in the Giving Challenge this year. Did you create a Giving Challenge related video or come across one not on here? If so, add it to this list via comments!