Using ecommerce & social networking to help 52 causes a year

Target audience: Nonprofits, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, cause organizations, brands, businesses, general public.

Guest post by Ryan Wood
Director of Public Awareness, Sevenly

Many Socialbrite readers may not have heard of the social enterprise Sevenly, so here’s a quick explanation of what we do and how we came about:

For every shirt you buy with Sevenly, we give $7 to a charity, and we focus on a different cause every week — 52 charity T-shirt campaigns per year, like this week’s effort for hunger relief efforts in Haiti. We’ve raised more than $400,000 so far toward charitable causes with this simple model: For every T-shirt purchased, $7 goes to charity.

We’ve run campaigns for organizations such as Autism Speaks ($22,855 raised), the Somaly Mam Foundation ($14,812 raised), The Girl Effect ($8,218 raised) and Pencils Of Promise ($9,884 raised), with many more on the way. Our ultimate goal is to help people, fund worthy causes and offer the magic kick some charities need to keep changing the world.

The big idea: Birth of a new kind of cause campaign

Before founding Sevenly, Dale Partridge and Aaron Chavez were both running highly successful businesses with incomes to match. They had always dreamed of becoming successful entrepreneurs because of the freedom it allowed, but soon realized that they weren’t giving back to society. So in April 2011 Dale and Aaron created Sevenly. After nearly a daylong conversation about how to tackle poverty, the idea of Sevenly emerged. They came to the realization that the biggest problem is not the fact that millions of people are in need; it’s the fact that billions are watching it happen. Sevenly was developed around the belief that people matter, and we figured that if we could just get people to start giving, then we could get them to start caring.

How nonprofits can get on Sevenly’s list

Sevenly supports seven causes: the eradication of slavery in all forms, clean water, medical needs, hunger, aid (with nonprofits like the Breast Cancer Foundation and Love Without Boundaries) and poverty and disaster relief. Every seven days we partner with a new nonprofit. We design a unique, limited-edition T-shirt that represents the featured nonprofit’s cause, and promote and sell it on our website for seven days. For every shirt sold, $7 is donated directly to that week’s partner. Since our launch last June 13, almost 2 million people have shared our campaigns across their social networks.

What kind of nonprofits do we support? An organization must be passionate about their cause and must be implementing processes and executing projects that are having a tangible, positive impact on the cause they’re representing. As long as the nonprofit’s cause falls into one of the seven that we support, we’ll review your campaign application. Our most popular campaigns to date have been mostly domestic, such as Autism Speaks, Jessie Joy Reese Foundation, etc. While we will continue to support our seven declared causes, our main focus areas in 2012 will be hunger, medical and sex trafficking.

Here’s how nonprofits can apply to run a campaign with Sevenly.

What moves the needle? Lessons for cause organizations

We’ve learned that online fundraising is most effective when potential donors are intimately connected with the cause. This is much easier to accomplish in person, but with the next generation being mostly savvy about technology, learning how to master descriptive copywriting is crucial to your nonprofit’s online fundraising initiatives. Use pictures that clearly display your message, create a sense of urgency for the overall objective, and most of all, don’t just ask people for their donations, give them a tangible, relatable reason to give.

The integration and execution of  “share goals” within each campaign has been key to Sevenly’s model. On our homepage you’ll notice the prominent placement of our Facebook and Twitter share buttons. During each campaign we run, we strategically set a social media “share” goal so that our customers — whom we consider Sevenly’s “co-givers” — can spread the word across their own social platforms. This does two things:

1. If the customer is unable to purchase a shirt for the week, they’re still able to donate a share or a tweet.
2. It creates a good surge of virality for every campaign. Buying a Sevenly shirt is only a vehicle for engaging our customers with the cause that they love. Sharing or donating their influence is just as valuable.

Here is this week’s cause, with our nonprofit partner Heifer International, to help alleviate hunger for Haitians still coping with the 2009 earthquake.

We launch a new campaign every Monday morning at 10 am PDT. Due to a code of secrecy within Sevenly, I can’t release the cause or organization we’ll be working with next week. But visit us Monday and find out!

What do you think of the idea of buying a tee for a good cause?

The post Sevenly: Your T-shirt purchase helps a great cause appeared first on Socialbrite.

Target audience: Nonprofits, social enterprises, NGOs, foundations, cause organizations, Web publishers, small businesses.

As regular readers know, I’ve been a longtime proponent of visual storytelling to advance the missions of nonprofits, cause organizations and businesses. (Heck, I co-founded Ourmedia.org before there was a YouTube.) People take action on behalf of a cause only when they feel an emotional connection, and yet nonprofits in particular are famously bad at telling their own stories.

What we tell people in our Socialbrite bootcamps and in our consulting work is this: Every nonprofit is now a media organization (the same goes for social enterprises and businesses). Never before have the tools of visual storytelling been so inexpensive, easy to use and accessible to the masses.

So why aren’t you taking advantage of visual storytelling yet? (Or are you? Tell us in the comments!)

There are dozens of ways to convey your story, and we’ve laid out lots of ways to get started — see the links at the bottom of this article.

Today we’d like to highlight a few best-of-breed examples of visual storytelling so that you can think about how to take a similar approach for your organization. At least one of the examples cited below should trigger an insight — an idea that resonates or an approach that you might consider using with your team or with a production partner.

Remember, it’s not about the tools or the technology. It’s about finding people who encapsulate what your core objective is all about — and conveying their stories with power, genuineness, passion and humility. Some can be elaborate productions, with narration, titling and musical score all working together. Others can be as simple as holding up a video-capable smartphone to capture a moment.

One you have a visual story, or several, that you can draw upon, you’ll be able to begin using it in your public outreach: on your website or blog, on your Facebook page, in your annual report, in your email newsletters. And don’t forget to enter contests like the DoGooder Awards, TechSoup Storytelling Challenge or CurrentTV’s just-ended The Current Cause, where $15,000 in prizes will be awarded.

Here are seven great examples of nonprofit storytelling:

1/ Classic video advocacy

“Breathe,” by Repower America

advocacyLast month’s 5th annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards, presented by YouTube and See3 Communications — See3 is at the forefront of nonprofit video storytelling — drew 1,350 submissions from 750 nonprofits, with 16 finalists and four winners.

Among the winners were:
• Best thrifty video: It’s In Your Hands, by Watershed Management Group
• Best large organization video: A Public Service Announcement Not Approved by AJWS, by the American Jewish World Service

Some entries I liked better included:
• Breathe, by Repower America (1:33, embedded above)
• The funny, celebrity-studded Seriously, Serious PSA (featuring B.J. Novak & Friends) by malarianomore (1:01)

Sign up to receive See3’s Daily DoGooder: a daily cause video delivered to your in-box.

And here were the 2010 winners. Observe how other organizations are telling their stories — which style did you like: earnest, funny, polished, grassroots?

2/ Digital stories using photos & narration

“Mountaintop Library Expands Horizons,” by Room to Read

digital storiesI’ve been involved in the digital storytelling movement since 2004. A vastly underutilized medium, digital storytelling uses photos, video, film or found materials, combined with voice-over narration, to convey powerful, evocative stories with a rich emotional dimension.

Our in-depth tutorials Digital storytelling from soup to nuts and Digital storytelling: A tutorial in 10 easy steps offers some great examples. But for a simpler way to do this, look no further than the winner of February’s TechSoup Storytelling Challenge.

The first place winner, Mountaintop Library Expands Horizons, by Room to Read (embedded above), took advantage of visually stunning photos taken in Nepal and weaved together a simple 60-second story about the San Francisco nonprofit’s global literacy mission. Nicely done — with no video at all. This is something your organization can do on its own, no?

3/ Videos with a call to action

call to actionSince YouTube rolled out a free “call-to-action overlay” feature for nonprofits in March 2009, a lot of nonprofits (but too few) have made use of the technique. Nonprofits can place an “ask” in the opaque pop-up overlay. As YouTube explains:

“Adding a Call-to-Action overlay to your video is easy. First, run a campaign to promote your video on YouTube. Then, go to the Video Details page under My Videos and fill out the fields in the section marked ‘Call-to-Action overlay.’ All you have to do is include a short headline, ad text, a destination url, and upload an optional image, and the overlay will appear whenever someone watches your video. Clicks on the overlay will be tracked in YouTube Insight.”

YouTube also offers tips on how to run an effective campaign.

Two examples:

• World Water Day Video from charity: water, with a 15-second ad overlay at the beginning, earned charity: water $10,000 in a single day, largely thanks to YouTube placing it on its home page. The overlay url takes users to its Donate page.

• StillerStrong, stealing great ideas from other charities to build schools in Haiti, with an ad overlay throughout. I think we’ll increasingly see requests for text2give mobile donations, as shown above.

4/ Mobile devices: Video on the go

mobileSometimes, simple is better. Video producers and photographers often say, the best device is the one you have with you — and that gadget is increasingly a smartphone — an iPhone, Android device or Nokia phone — or a Flip cam or other portable device.

Here are two examples:

• Flip Video and Save the Bay

• Save Our Sounds, by J.D. Lasica, interview conducted in London with a Flip HD Ultra.

5/ Animation

“Do You Own Stuff Made by Slaves?” by Call + Response

animationSome subjects are best told using evocative imagery or animation rather than documentary or traditional video techniques.

Six examples:

• The Girl Effect, by girleffect, is almost without peer.

• Do You Own Stuff Made by Slaves, by Call + Response (2:01) doesn’t have celebrities, but it contains a compelling, little-heard message and inventive animation.

• The EACH Campaign, by LegatumMedia, is visually arresting, though may lack a sufficient emotional impact.

• Prospera: A new way of doing business in Mexico: a social enterprise story.

• 300 Years of Fossil Fuels in 300 Seconds, by the Post Carbon Institute, won the Best large organization video in the Do Gooder Nonprofit Video Awards.

• Closed Zone, by Ground Report: life in Gaza.

6/ Creative mashups

mashupsOne of my favorite flavors of nonprofit storytelling is the kind that takes advantage of the visually interesting styles you can get by using sites like RockYou, Slide, Animoto and Stupeflix. (We covered them in Mash up a visual story for your nonprofit.) The creative possibilities are boundless.

One example is the Will Steger Foundation Mashup Video, showing climate change made accessible.

7/ Personalized videos

personalized videosThis is a risky technique — the line between engaging and gimmicky is a thin one — but I’m still a fan of videos that let viewers insert themselves into the storyline. For young people in particular, personalization is part of the new media ecosystem.

Note: These videos have been removed.

• beyond oil, by Moving Beyond Oil, lets you “make this video about you” by adding your name and email address and forwarding it to President Obama.

• Glenn Beck Attacks Progressive Voter, by cnnbc (aka MoveOn.org), is a funny takedown of the wacked-out Fox News show host — using clips of his own rants — who was recently fired by the network. One lesson: Someones humor works in a field where we take our work very seriously.

8/ High-end professional productions

Trailer of Burbax, Ethiopia from A Glimmer of Hope on Vimeo.

high-endI saved the high-end professional productions for last because most nonprofits look at these, throw up their hands and say, I can’t do that. Well, two answers. First, maybe you can, by partnering with an organization like Storytellers for Good, a small outfit in San Francisco that’s doing some amazing work with nonprofits (see video at top). Second, don’t get distracted by productions whose budgets outstrip your budget — people don’t expect every visual story to be a masterpiece.

If you hook up with the right storytelling organization — ActiveVoice in San Francisco and Free Range Studios in New York are also good places to start — or if you have a decent budget, then find a local video production outfit and go for it.

Here are seven high-end professionally produced videos that caught my eye:

• LTBH Feature – Austin 2009, by A Glimmer of Hope, at the top of this story. A Glimmer of Hope also offers some wonderful examples of storytelling with images.
• Trailer of Burbax, Ethiopia, by A Glimmer of Hope — the music chokes me up every time I watch it.
• Mama Hope, by Storytellers for Good (above)
• Charity: water’s September birthdays — or almost any charity: water video
• Jai Pausch Public Service Announcement by the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network at pancan.org
• Rooftop Gardens, on CurrentTV — while I love CurrentTV, they could benefit from a big splash of variety.
• And, of course, let’s not forget the Official music video for OK Go’s “White Knuckles,” benefiting the ASPCA — 9.7 million YouTubers can’t be wrong.

I’m sure you have your own favorites — please share. Which kind of storytelling do you like, and why? What did I miss? Let us know in the comments!

Related

• How nonprofits should be using visual storytelling (Socialbrite)

• Visual storytelling checklist (Socialbrite)

• Mash up a visual story for your nonprofit (Socialbrite)

• Digital storytelling: A tutorial in 10 easy steps (Socialbrite)

• Roundup of resources on how to create media (Socialbrite)

• Create video stories for your nonprofit in 6 steps (Socialbrite)

• How to maximize your nonprofit’s impact with YouTube (Socialbrite)

• Vimeo channels for nonprofits

• How to run an effective campaign (YouTube)

• Secrets to Nonprofit Video Success (CitizenTube)

• Kivi Miller’s Delicious bookmarks on nonprofit storytelling

The post 8 great examples of nonprofit storytelling appeared first on Socialbrite.