What Nobody Tells Nonprofits About Making Videos: Part 2, Emotionality
What makes your video a powerful fundraising tool? Strong visuals, compelling stories, and professional graphics are great. But one thing that’s often overlooked is: emotionality. That is, make your viewers get the “feels,” make their hearts palpitate with joy, cry in sympathy, and then sigh with relief when your organization saves the day.
It helps to have amazing stories and clients at hand. But no matter what, emotional storytelling is a byproduct of good planning and thoughtful campaign strategy. Whether it is a fundraising or awareness video, emotion is key to winning people over and garnering the donations your organization needs to keep doing good work.
The CEO of Legal Information for Families Today (LIFT), Sharon Myrie, put it very clearly, “LIFT’s video at this year’s gala made the emotional connection between the personal stories of our families and the work that we do so effective that our guests were moved to make very generous donations that evening.”
When it came to LIFT’s gala video, we pre-interviewed their clients before putting them on-camera. Through that process we discovered that one person’s story was particularly compelling. Taeus, a young father received immeasurable help from LIFT when they guided him through the process of filing, and winning, shared custody of his infant daughter. LIFT helped Taeus through one-on-one legal education, allowing him to navigate the intimidating family court system, confidently speak on his own behalf in the courtroom, and gain shared custody of the daughter he loves so much.
The best part of this success story was that Taeus was surprisingly unguarded emotionally – he was passionate and tearful when talking about the impact LIFT made on his life, his love for his daughter and the gratitude he felt toward LIFT. Through pre-interviewing two other clients, we knew that Taeus was by far the strongest and thus knew in advance that we could effectively shape the video around his story while using the other two interviews to fill-in the gaps to talk about LIFT’s other programs. And from the response the video received at the gala, and the donations that came in, we’re glad we spent extra time on preproduction and emphasizing emotional storytelling.
How can you do the same thing? Do what you are already doing – the hard work – that gets your clients to open up and share their stories. One of the reasons Taeus was so willing to share his story with an open heart is that he already trusts the organization that helped him. While that trust takes time, staff at your organization are in direct contact with clients who are ready to share their story, and might just need to research great, authentic, stories… the stories that deliver the emotional punch that a video can deliver.
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