10 video blunders that many nonprofits commit

1. Making your CEO your default spokesperson

Many organizations gravitate toward having their CEO or highest-ranked leader narrate their video. This choice might seem logical, as well as politically expedient.

First, ask yourself: Is he/she a good storyteller? Is he/she a good communicator?

What makes a video effective is engaging the audience. If your CEO is weak as a storyteller, it’s best to choose someone else on your staff to speak. If need be, your CEO can have a smaller role in the video.

2. Not having your video in your brochure

Don’t mistake video as an opportunity to regurgitate your latest marketing brochure. It’s a completely different medium.

You can show it all on video, from the people you serve to how you serve them. It offers a different opportunity to showcase a dimension of your work through imagery and sound in a way that no other collateral can.

It’s not about facts and figures; quite frankly, those make for boring storytelling. Focus instead on capturing the human spirit of your organization. People want to meet the men and women who are the pillars of your success. They want to meet those individuals—patients, clients, beneficiaries—whose lives you’ve touched. Those stories beg to be told.