As a nonprofit foundation or granting organization, your mission is to change lives. You focus your time and resources on ensuring the causes or movements you support remain supported. So much of your energy goes towards maintaining the day-to-day operations and keeping up with your grant cycles that often – if you are like the 40+ nonprofits we’ve worked with – sharing the success of your grantee’s programs becomes an afterthought.
Even with a social media coordinator or a marketing manager, it may feel like an uphill battle to create the type of social fodder that gets attention – the type of collateral that hits. You know what you’d like to produce, in a perfect world: engaging videos that highlight the community-wide impact you catalyze through your grants, and perhaps an eye-popping newsletter series to move folks further down your fundraising funnel.
You do your best to keep up with trends. You know video is big right now, so you ask your grantees to interview themselves and send you the videos so you can post them, editing without industry expertise and likely strapped for capacity. You survey your supporters and gather insights that you (hopefully) turn into materials that attract more like-minded people into your fold.
But if that work isn’t focused where it should be, or if you feel like you’re doing it just to do it, you are essentially throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks. Some of it will, for sure, but not for long, and the impact might fall flat with the very folks you’re trying to engage.
You want to connect organically with others who are purpose-driven and share similar values. But without a cohesive, authentic approach and media-rich, high-quality content, your views and engagement will slip, and you’ll be back here once again.
So how do you make sharing the good news of your work sticky?
Center your grantees and their stories
Imagine you scroll past a video post on social media. The CEO of Foundation XYZ is telling you about the impact their grantee’s work has on the community. They tell you about how important it is to support the foundation’s efforts to continue awarding grants to “organizations like these,” and ask you to consider a donation today.
Now imagine you scroll past another video on the same social platform. A grantee personally shares their story of how receiving funding from Foundation XYZ was game-changing for them, and shows the impact first-hand: the park being revitalized, the folks being fed, the voters being registered. The video and audio are engaging and professional, and you come to clearly recognize the organizational branding of both the grantee and the foundation. At the end, you are asked by the granting foundation to “join the mission.”
Which video would lead you to action? Which would cause you to pause your scroll, take note, and consider an investment of your time or money? The first example points inward – towards the granting organization – and the second, outward – towards the impact of the work being done. Towards the community being changed.
Centering your grantees and their stories is a winning strategy.
Here are two reasons why committing to this strategy and approach increases the chance of engagement and ROI:
You show your target audiences the impact of your work instead of telling them
Words tell stories, yes. But the difference between the words being written and the words being spoken affects how folks absorb them. If you punctuate the story being told with video footage of boots-on-the-ground and transformational action, you are now showing your audience the transformation of the work being done instead of just telling them.
A shift away from “if you could only see the impact” to “look at this impact!” highlights purpose over promises. The power of persuasion when presenting real results has been used in product marketing campaigns worldwide. Who doesn’t love being shown a good before-and-after story—a transformation—to drive a point home?
You center your audience and the impact they experience instead of your own
The power of persuasion isn’t the only power at play when you show instead of tell. When you show the results of your grantees’ work and let them share their first-hand experiences in their own words, you are allowing your target audiences – future funders, future nonprofit grantees, and potential supporters of your Foundation or granting organization – to see themselves and their communities in your work. Let them imagine how it would feel to be part of the stories, don’t just tell them. Add some slick video production and you have a winning campaign every time.
Centering your audience and their experience instead of your organizational experience as a grantor gives your audiences more reason to share these stories, as well.
You’re gifting your current grantees crisp, professionally-produced social assets that assist with growing their missions and programming. You’re essentially ensuring your granting funds go further. Organizations need visibility to grow their movements and to foster collaboration. When the impact is clear, local and national coalitions form to support the movement. Folks searching for organizations to support see how your work transforms their communities and/or causes they care about, and they follow your work and the work of your grantees – which raises all ships.
You are moving all folks down your funnel faster, further deepening their connection with you.
TL:DR: videos create a deeper connection
It’s no secret videos grab more attention online than any other type of content. The algorithmic magic awarded to videos increases your reach and engagement (likes, comments, and shares), which in turn leads to increased awareness for the good work you and your grantees are performing. This allows you to build the momentum of movements ALONGSIDE your grantees and their supporters.
But compared to text-based or picture/graphics-based content, videos can eat up both time and resources. You may not physically have the ability to film anything. You likely don’t have an in-house video editor. You might not be able to locate proper equipment and you might worry about capturing quality audio or video with what you currently have.
And once you get into the field, how comfortable are you with sharing the stories of change-makers? Even though you believe wholeheartedly in your grantee’s cause or mission, could you be affecting the candidness or quality of the conversation you want to capture because you don’t share their lived experience?
Are you asking the right questions or centering the right issues? How can you ensure the grantee’s message cuts through above your own? How culturally distant are you from the audience you want to reach? Are you missing a connective, organic opportunity?
Ensure the stories you share connect organically – partner with Amplify Pledge.
As part of Amplify Pledge’s vision of creating powerful digital content in collaboration with our partners, we work one-on-one with values-aligned brands and orgs just like yours.
Amplify Pledge provides video production support from beginning to end, including taking the lead on ideation, leveraging our extensive, multicultural, Gen Z network, and engaging new audiences.
When you partner with us, you get:
- high-quality videos, graphics, and written copy that document the work of you and your grantees, presented seamlessly within your brands
- positioning of your work for both your development and communication goals, increasing the impact and cohesion of your investment across your organizations
- full-service support from a Gen-Z-of-color-led team of digital strategy and content production experts who have supported the work of 40+ nonprofit orgs all across the nation.
We build your audience trust and ROI through a network model that meets folks you target wherever they are online. Our clients experience sustained earned media. When you partner with us, you have the potential to reach even more folks on key issues that establish your organizational brand integrity and increase your brand affinity.
Ready to learn more? Ready to show the impact your granting programs make, not just tell? If you believe in a just and equitable future like we do, we wanna work with you – let us help you grow a strategic, community-centered partnership with REAL people and REAL transformations that resonate with target audiences and reflect our collective vision.
