With so many incredible videos submitted to this year’s contest it was no easy task, but judges in the 6th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards have narrowed down the field of entries to 16 finalists. Now, the YouTube community has the opportunity to get involved and cast their vote for the best nonprofit videos of the past year.

The 16 finalist videos can be watched on the Contest homepage. Participation is easy: just select your favorite video or videos in each category. You can vote once per day. Don’t forget to tell your friends and social media buddies to do the same.

>> Vote on the 6th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards!

Winners will be announced on April 5, at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco. It’s a great finale to the whole awards program and we anticipate a really exciting finish. Contest Sponsor Cisco, will be awarding $3,500 in prizes and up to $3,500 in products to the winner of each category, and the Case Foundation is awarding one $2,500 grants to the four organizations with the most fearless videos submitted to this year’s contest. In addition, the winners of each category will receive free registration to next year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference. Oh, and each winning organization will have their video featured on the YouTube homepage on April 5th!

For nonprofits, video is a great way to share your mission, get out a message and tell the stories of the people and issues you support. The medium educates, inspires and moves people to action. The DoGooder Awards recognizes nonprofits that understand this and are going the extra mile to create media that moves important causes forward.

The excitement is moving to a finish! Check out the finalists and lend your vote to the video that moves you.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• This is What a Librarian Looks Like – I love this example of a Tumblr blog used for a perspective-changing campaign. It's a great case study of how individuals and start and drive a campaign and the way that a concept can translate across cultures and countries.
• 12 Digital Fundraising Trends for 2012 – "Back at the start of January I set myself the target of publishing twelve posts on trends I think are going to prove important to digital fundraisers this year – both as a means of kick-starting my own thinking after the holiday season and to help inform your planning considerations at this key time in the year." Check out the 12 Trends, from Personalized Video Thanking to Ebooks to Digital Fundraising Staffing!
• NTEN’s Technology Leadership Academy Returns for 2012 – "We're excited to announce that the Technology Leadership Academy is returning in 2012. Even better, thanks to the generous support of Google and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we're able to offer the Academy at no charge to qualifying organizations. The Academy gets at the very heart of what NTEN does. We believe that with improved tech leadership, nonprofits like yours will provide more and better programs, inspire more communities, and involve more volunteers to share their time." The deadline to apply for the next learning group is February 24th!
• Digital Storytelling Challenge from TechSoup – "TechSoup’s annual Digital Storytelling Challenge (TSDigs), powered by Lights. Camera. Help., combines professional instruction and friendly competition into a hands-on media-making project." Learn more about the various educational programs planned and how to submit either your one minute video or five photo presentation to the competition!
• INFOGRAPHIC: The Rise of the Planet of the Apps | App Annie – This infographic and accompanying data is a great overview of the changing landscape of mobile applications around the world. It's also a great example of how infographics can help illustrate data, but coupling them with more complete narrative can ensure readers really understand what the data is saying.
• 2011 Online Giving Report – “'2011 did not have the 35% year-over-year growth rate in online giving that happened in 2010, but online fundraising did not lose its mojo,' said Steve MacLaughlin, co-author of the Report and Blackbaud’s director of Internet solutions. 'Every sector in the analysis has had double-digit growth since 2009, but as with all large numbers, the bigger the overall percentage gets, the slower it tends to grow.'In 2011, online giving was up 13% on a year-over-year basis when large International Affairs organizations are removed from the analysis. International Affairs is the only sector that didn’t experience positive growth in 2011, due to the tremendous amount of online giving in 2010 in response to the Haiti earthquake. When these organizations are included in the analysis the overall online fundraising growth rate drops to 0.3%."

Are you a nonprofit? Did your organization create impactful videos in 2011? Do you want your organization to be recognized for making great videos and maybe win some incredible prizes? Perfect.

The 6th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Contest is taking submissions starting February 1st. The contest is presented by YouTube and See3 Communications and generously sponsored by Cisco and us, NTEN. We’re seeking out and celebrating the best videos that nonprofit organizations have created to advance their missions using this powerful medium to create meaningful change for the better.

So what do the winning nonprofits get for participating?

The four best videos will each receive:

• $3,500 in prize donations
• An additional gift of up $3,500 (US) worth of Cisco products to help each winning org harness the power of human and technology networks to multiply their impact on the people and communities they serve.
• Free registration to the 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference, provided by NTEN.

This year’s contest features a special category for all orgs, regardless of size: “Best Video Storytelling” will celebrate videos that employ narrative and tell the real, human stories of people, organizations, and issues.

The winning videos will be announced at this year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference and featured on YouTube’s homepage on Thursday, April 5th.

You read that right: the winning videos will be featured on the YouTube homepage.

At the end of last year’s contest, the winning videos received almost 1 million new views after being featured there for just one day.

For nonprofits, video is a great way to share your mission, get out a message, and tell the stories of the people and issues you support. The medium educates, inspires, and moves people to action. The DoGooder Awards recognizes nonprofits that see the importance of this. This contest is meant to show nonprofits of all sizes they can win by making video part of their communications strategy.

Organizations are more video savvy than ever. Last year’s contest had nearly 1,400 entries from 821 organizations in 4 countries. There were 24,000 votes cast by the public and a surge of views on YouTube for the entrants. That’s encouraging, but 2012 is a new year and the contest organizers want to make sure as many amazing nonprofits enter as possible.

Here are some details to get you started:

• Submissions for Best Small, Medium, and Large nonprofit organization as well as Best Video Storytelling must be videos made between January 1st 2011 and February 29th 2012 . Each nonprofit can submit as many videos as they would like, but the contest encourages only the best work from each organization.
• Entries cannot exceed 10 minutes in length and are limited to nonprofits from the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. See contest rules here.
• All nonprofits are welcome to enter their video. There are no specific types of missions we are looking for. The contest is about recognizing nonprofit organizations for outstanding use of video to create meaningful positive change.
• You can submit your videos from February 1st until February 29th. Tell your friends at other orgs to submit as well!
• Starting March 14th, voting is open to the public, so be sure to share the word (Email, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, carrier pigeon, smoke signals, etc.).
• Important: Your organization MUST be a member of the YouTube Nonprofit Program. If you’re not already,make sure that’s the next thing you do after you read this post (it’s quick, easy and free to eligible orgs). If you’re picked as a semifinalist in the contest, YouTube will make sure your organization’s application for membership is approved in time to be eligible for public voting.

Start thinking about which creative, compelling, and interesting video your nonprofit wants to submit, then plan to rally your supporters to vote in March. Good luck!

This message is cross-posted from the NTEN blog.

—–

Whether you are part of a nonprofit organization, an action campaign, a local community, or a school, you know that it is through stories you can showcase your work, change people’s minds, inspire them to make change, or join you to make a difference. As we all continue exploring the vast horizons of the internet and the social tools it offers, be sure to check out the applications that help you continue telling stories with the power of video, maps and more. Here are four that currently have my vote – please share yours!

1. Historypin

Historypin is a new (and free) application for Android, iPhone, or the web that arranges photos, videos, and text in the context of time and location (leveraging the Google Maps API). Ever since it launched earlier this summer, I haven’t been able to stop using it both to learn and to share. For example, when I travel to a new neighborhood or city, I open the app as I walk down the street to explore photos and stories of my exact location across history. I also have been taking photos of buildings and locations and sharing them back to the community to continue documenting the world around us. The potential for how organizations can use a tool like this is endless – the ability to easily and accessibly put together your stories and content with the locations where it all takes place is so exciting! Be sure to check it out for yourself or watch this video to take a tour.

2. Animoto

Animoto isn’t a new tool, but it is still in my top five. And for good reason: I love tools that help make quality content and storytelling something that all of us can create. With Animoto, you can put together photos, slides, and text with audio and video to create a compelling story from all the various elements you may have created separately or gathered at an event. There are terrific examples I’ve seen, like Epic Change’s Tweetsgiving campaign video, and you can previous more examples on the Animoto website. Bonus: nonprofits can apply to get Animoto Pro for free!

3. Posterous

When it comes to sharing stories, we all have our preferred methods of how to post, and where, and even who to share with each time. Posterous is a blogging tool, that is really so much more. You can, as with traditional blogs, have a site that shares your posts with the world. You can also create groups to share privately across a team, and organization, or a network. Plus, you can add authors to a blog to be sure it isn’t just you that’s responsible for posting. The best part is that you can post in a manner of ways: from the platform, from your email, from your phone, etc. This way, you can build community amongst your volunteers with a private group for sharing lessons, build momentum during a campaign with all your organizers posting to one stream, or create a dynamic blog for your organization with all kinds of media and posts. Oh, and it even has auto-posting so when you’re spending your time creating change, you don’t have to remember to cross post to Twitter! Check it out and see if it’s right for your team.

4. Storify

Have you been to an event or conference where many people were tweeting highlights from speakers and taking photos, but then when you searched for the content there was just SO much of it? With Storify, you can search across multiple social platforms and pull together the content that’s of interest, as well as add additional text, to create a story (whether it’s a recap of an event or a chat, or highlights from the news) that’s shareable and includes voices from across the community. You can also use it to pull together content you and your organization have shared across the web to tell the story of your work. You do need a Twitter account to use it. Even if you don’t have an event or campaign going today, try out Storify with a topic of interest or just use “#nptech” to pull together content from the nonprofit technology sector. Give it a go!

5. Bonus: Instagram

I couldn’t include this one in the main list since Instagram is only available for iPhone users at this time, so I’ve added it as a bonus. I am an Adroid user, but all of my friends with iPhones have great feedback about this application that allows you to take photos, apply filters, and share all from your phone. There are also complimentary tools like Tweegram to add Twitter text to your Instagram timeline. I definitely think there’s potential here for building out features and opening up the application, as with anything, if the community calls for it. So join me in saying, “I’ll try that, please!”

Looking for more resources for turning your organization’s stories into digital engagement? Want to check out examples from other organizations already testing and learning? Be sure to visit TechSoup Global’s digital storytelling section for webinar archives, blog posts, and chat archives!

What are your favorite tools or tips for telling the story of your work and impact online? Be sure to share links to the tools you love so others can check them out!

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Five Social Media Must-Haves for Crisis | Social Media Today – "Organizations and businesses that don't plan for crisis will be left behind when the inevitable happens. Thorough crisis plans don't have to be 50 pages long, but you need to have one. Your organization's crisis plan should include a social piece in the communications section. Real-time is the fastest way to join the conversation, provide help and information, and direct the messages. Social helps you be your own media. So, how can social media play a positive role in crisis? Here are five social media must-haves in crisis."
• Online Competitions: Lessons from MIT’s Service Innovation Challenge  – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – "For the last three years we’ve worked at the MIT Public Service Center – in collaboration with the MIT Alumni Association, MIT150, and numerous stakeholders – to translate a campus-based innovation competition into an online platform that engages the worldwide MIT community. We’ve cracked the competition process open, leveraging a combination of workflows and social tools to produce a compelling experience of real participation in key activities. We’d like to share a few of our major aims and reflect a bit on some lessons learned that we hope will guide our approach in the future and prove helpful to others designing competitions, challenges, and prize giveaways online – in particular those focused on social benefit and public service. We are indebted to our partners at Idea Couture for their thoughtful, patient, imaginative, and generous work with us. "
• Azavea – Augmented Reality for Cultural Institutions – Augmented Reality by PhillyHistory.org – What do you do with 93,000+ historical photographs and the power of Augmented Reality on smart phones? Azavea explores this topic in a newly released whitepaper and documents how they built a prototype mobile app (for iPhone and Android) that overlays historical photos on the modern city streets of Philadelphia.
• Making Stories Work for Your Org: What the Data Says | NTEN – "Don't count on a personal story to transform your fundraising appeal. Instead, tell stories that explain your mission and your impact. Recognize that these stories aren't enough to compel someone to give. In the story that gets people to give, the donor — not the organization — is the hero."
• Twin Cities marketers queuing up with QR codes – TwinCities.com – A great example of an interesting way to use QR codes! "Visitors to Chino Latino restaurant in Minneapolis recently found something new sticking out of their drinks. The paper umbrellas were gone, replaced with a diminutive, square-shaped code made up of black and white rectangles. If this had happened two or three years ago, the visitors likely would have been baffled. But now, a rapidly increasing number of them know what to do: Whip out their smart phones, fire up an app that can decipher the code and discover where it leads. "

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Open Source Zanby Announcement | Zanby.com – I'm so very excited to see this group/community platform go open source! If you aren't familiary with Zanby, I encourage you to read the news and check out the platform today! "As of May 13, 2011, we are releasing the code for our community software platform, the Zanby Enterprise Group Family System, under a GPLv3 license. We are also launching a community to encourage software developers to collaborate with us to evolve and improve the Zanby codebase. We hope you will join us."
• Nonprofit Uses QR Code, Quora to Make Cause Marketing More Transparent | Cause marketing for nonprofits – Here is a really interesting case study where an organization is using both a QR code and the answer platform Quora to engage and inform supporters. "This month my fellow Dummies writer Joanna MacDonald and I are putting Quora to the test with a QR code on our latest pinup that will be sold at iParty and Fuddruckers locations throughout New England. Trying scanning this QR code with the QR reader on your smartphone. When consumers scan the code with their smartphones (try it yourself!) it takes them to this Quora page where they can comment or ask a question about the campaign. We plan to monitor the page regularly so we can answer questions quickly and accurately."
• How To Use Hashtags on Twitter to Spread, Share and Organize Information | Movements.org – Looking for a resource on hashtags, what they mean, how to use them, and how to really get value from them? Look no further! This is a great run down that you can share with colleagues or reference yourself as you dive into the world of Twitter, join a twitter chat, or start swimming in the stream of real-time information!
• Hey Admins, Get A Load Of The New Pages Dashboard – "Facebook has added some more organization for administrators, in the form of a new dashboard that shows complete details about all of the pages an admin manages. A tab labeled pages now appears on the home page, in the left-hand set of navigation links…"
• Demand Dignity: Amplifying Voices Across Multiple Platforms | MobileActive.org – "Amnesty International has launched a campaign to amplify the voices of poor people around the world. Demand Dignity is an economic, cultural, and social rights campaign for the organization and the online platform, DemandDignity.org, was launched in May 2009. Since then, the site has collected 57,384 comments, or “voices,” from people around the world, via SMS, Twitter, and on the Demand Dignity website. "

Presentation

Resources

Community & Content

I’ve documented the community and content mapping processes before, you can use the slides above to see the process or review the blog post with instructions.

You can also use these links to get the templates:

• Community Mapping template
• Content Mapping template!
• Metrics Tracking template!

Analytics and Metrics

During the class, we talked about the importance of tracking and the possibilities that exist for tracking usage beyond just your organization’s website. Here are some of the resources to help get Google Analytics set up elsewhere and make the most of it:

• http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2010/google-analytics-for-facebook-fan-pages/
• http://blog.wikispaces.com/2008/07/google-analytics-for-your-wiki.htm
• http://mashable.com/2007/05/09/27-google-analytics-features/

We also talked about user testing and storytelling with data. Here are some links to help you get started:

• http://www.nten.org/research/lets-talk-how-open-apis-can-change-how-nonprofits-manage-data
• http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/awesome-free-tools-infographics
• http://www.wildapricot.com/blogs/newsblog/archive/2010/05/25/make-your-own-infographic.aspx
• https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/splash?hl=en

Learning in Action

One of the case studies I used in our discussion was last year’s To Mama With Love campaign from Epic Change. Well, as of yesterday at noon, this year’s campaign is off and running! I shared my story and my heartspace on the blog yesterday, and would love to hear what you think of their campaign, if you’ve donated or contributed a story, and whether you think love can change the world. To Mama With Love is also completely open for anyone to participate in, so visit http://tomamawithlove.org and get started!

One more thank you to Laurel for inviting me to participate and to her class for the terrific discussion!

Location: New York, NY

Topic: Nonprofits & Social Media

Description: This class is part of the Master of Science in Public Relations and Corporate Communication program at NYU. I will join Laurel Hart’s class to discuss some of the key ways social media has impacted nonprofit organizations and the opportunities for the social impact sector to leverage the social technologies available today and in the future.

Resources

• Course page
• Notes and slides

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Report Release: The 2010 Nonprofit IT Staffing and Spending … – "Nearly 1,200 nonprofit professionals filled out the latest annual survey, sponsored by NTEN and The NonProfit Times, providing us with another year of benchmarks and data concerning: salaries, outsourcing, recruiting, organizational structure, and other aspects of Information Technology practices in the nonprofit sector. One of the findings that stood out to us: Only 40% of respondents reported that their organization has some type of formal technology plan. And much less than that (22%) reported that their organization had ever evaluated Return on Investment (ROI) of technology projects or programs."
• World Bank’s Mapping for Results launched – Check out this deployment of the Ushahidi platform for digital storytelling and reporting: "This weekend at the World Bank annual meetings the World Bank launched their new Mapping for Results platform. The initiative visualizes the location of World Bank projects to better monitor project and impact on people; to enhance transparency and social accountability; and to enable citizens and other stakeholders to provide direct feedback. All 79 IDA countries, the lowest income nations, are included with the geographic locations of projects, financing, and sector identification such as water, transportation, governance, etc. There are also indicator data including maternal health, infant mortality, malnutrition, poverty, and population. The tool is meant to openly share and visualize the operations of World Bank financed activities down to as local a level as possible and compare these with actual need and monitor the effects over time."
• Conversation is the New Attention – "This article is adapted from their SXSW 2011 talk, Toss the Projector: Redefining the Speaker/Audience Dynamic. In the talk, Tim and Chris unveiled Donahue, a new experimental tool designed and built by Arc90 and Behavior Design which tears down the wall between audience and presenter, allowing the audience to interact directly with the presenter’s ideas to begin a conversation."
• 2011: The Year the Check-in Died – "Early last year, "checking in" was the cool new craze. No visit to your favorite tech news site could be had without getting buried in a tsunami of articles about Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, BriteKite or a myriad other startups. The big guys quickly followed suit: Yelp introduced "Check-Ins" while Facebook launched "Places" and most recently, Google Latitude updated to incorporate check-ins and check-outs. But here's the thing: the trends aren't actually that good."
• Hey, Let’s Fix The Internet – What do you think – can we change? Change the internet? Change the way we associated with others on and offline? This post has me thinking about many different perspectives on community organizing and community engagement and I'd love to hear what it triggers for you!