Claire is a rising senior at Hamilton College with a double major in economics and art, with a focus in oil painting and animation. She just returned from a semester abroad at Tyler School of Art in Rome where she studied Italian, fresco painting, and figure modeling. She is excited to transition from the classical to the digital art world at Planet Nutshell this summer.

When she isn’t at Hamilton, Claire works as a children’s figure skating coach at the Skating Club at Dartmouth, and as an art teacher at AVA Gallery in Lebanon, New Hampshire. She is a Vermont native, and often goes on backpacking and backcountry skiing adventures in the Green and White Mountains in her free time. She can also often be found on the water, between training with Hamilton’s rowing team and ocean sailing in the coastal waters of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

If you’re not thinking about making a nonprofit fundraising video, you’re missing the boat. Consider these astounding numbers from Indiegogo: Crowdfunding campaigns that feature a pitch video get a 114 percent boost in funding over campaigns that don’t. On top of that, funders open their wallets wider for campaigns with a video. The average contribution is 12 percent higher when a video is present.

Video should absolutely be a part of your next fundraising effort, but how do you craft a fantastic nonprofit fundraising video, a video that will offer an amazing return on investment and get funders excited about your cause? Here are some tips:

1. Your Nonprofit Fundraising Video Should Tell a Great Story

It’s not enough to explain what your organization is doing, and why it’s great. As I mentioned in a previous post, you have to tell a story about your organization, and about how real people’s lives and/or places are impacted by your work. In many cases, that can mean telling a story about a single person or place.

When we brainstorm story approaches with our nonprofit clients, they’re often reluctant to focus on just one or two people or places. The fear is that this won’t impart the full scope and complexity of what they do. But by keeping it simple, your audience stays focused on a narrative that has emotional and intellectual impact. And a simple story that’s well told can stand in for your entire operation if you trust your audience to universalize the story.

Here’s an example we recently completed for Roca. On its face, it’s just a story about one woman, but her experience stands in for so much more.

2. Produce your Nonprofit Fundraising Video for Maximum Engagement

A recent study from Microsoft found that the average attention span of humans in 2013 was eight seconds, down from 12 seconds in 2000. The average attention span of a goldfish? Nine seconds. So, when it comes to your audience, you’re essentially dealing with goldfish. That’s why videos must be short. They must grab attention right away and never let go.

At Planet Nutshell, we commonly produce videos between one and two minutes long, and only occasionally  longer. We also focus on creating a visually interesting opening that draws a viewer into a story.

There’s that word again, story. Story has the unique ability to wrap less interesting information in a welcoming and engaging exterior that keeps people watching. Story is the sugar that helps the explanatory content, the “medicine,” go down.

Here’s an example: To drive donations, Shriners Hospitals asked us to explain how their new fundraising platform, which is powered by Classy, works. Let’s be honest, explaining a bunch of user interface functions can be a bit boring, but we wove the UI overview into a story about Amanda, a former Shriners patient.

3. Your Nonprofit Fundraising Video Should Focus on Impact

Nonprofits are under ceaseless pressure to demonstrate and prove impact. Funders at every level are looking for that, too. A strong nonprofit fundraising video should demonstrate impact and, where appropriate, a simple assertion of impact should be integrated into the larger story of the video. While many viewers will be motivated to give by the emotional, character-based components of your video, the video must address the intellect, as well. Good stories target the head and the heart, and they make it clear in the call to action that your continued impact depends on the viewer’s support.

Here’s a screen shot from another video for Roca that shows the impact of their program for at-risk young men.

Storytelling, engagement, and impact. Those are the three key elements of a strong nonprofit fundraising video. How will you put those concepts to work for your next video project? Let me know in the comments, and always feel free to reach out and chat with me. I love to talk about this stuff!

Once again we were able to work with our friends at Roca to create the story of Isabela, just one of the 18- to 24-year-olds in Roca’s Young Mothers program. Watch the video to see how Roca is transforming the lives of young women and giving them a shot at a better future.

Recently, a prospective client called looking for a video that would dazzle investors and entice them to commit millions of dollars to their startup idea. As we discussed Planet Nutshell’s process, some past work, our storytelling philosophy, and other details, one of them asked a simple question: “Can you prove why your approach is the best?”

Now, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I have no definitive proof that our approach to making animated explainer and educational videos is the best. We’ve never run a scientific test comparing our approaches to others.

So, I stammered a bit, casting about for an answer.

A few things flashed through my head: First, there are lots of statistics that attest to the power of online video, and most people get that video is a crucial online marketing medium right now. We’ve also gathered some very positive data from our clients, including Google and The Environmental Voter Project, about viewer behavior after they watch our work.

But what makes a good video, a truly effective one? That’s a tougher nut to crack, but here’s what we’ve settled on, and what I told the prospective client: Story is what matters.

Now, the words “story” and “storytelling” are two very overused terms in marketing and communications right now. That said, it can be a meaningful term. Storytelling has been with us for millennia. Before writing, it was how we effectively transmitted information in a memorable form.

So, what’s a story?

A story is about things happening, a chain of cause and effect that arrives at a destination. That means that a good story does more than impart facts or bullet points. For example, consider this video we recently created for Roca, a Boston-based non-profit. We convinced them to focus on a single character, Andre, and let his journey to redemption and a brighter future stand in for the hundreds of people Roca has served over the years.

Good stories also depend on empathy, emotion, and viewer identification. To help drive awareness of Arctic oil drilling we suggested that the World Wildlife Fund focus on two things: A story their audience already knew about (the Deepwater Horizon disaster), and dramatic imagery that would drive empathy of the plight of animals, people, and habitats that would be endangered by drilling. This is the cardinal rule of storytelling: Show, don’t tell.

You might be thinking, well, my company or product isn’t about redemption, or journeys, or environmental causes, or spiritual quests or any of that stuff. How does story apply to me? The answer is that it applies to you more than you may think! Even the slightest story elements can make your explainer video more memorable and relatable. Consider the simple love story embedded in this video for WhatsApp:

The next time you want to make people feel more excited about your idea, perspective, or product, consider telling them a good story instead of explaining it to them. Let me know how telling stories has made an impact on your communications. I’m always up for a good story.

If you enjoyed this post on storytelling, and want to hire a great one for your next video project, get in touch and let’s chat!

PS: The client hired us.

(artwork by John McGowan)

We worked with our new friends at The MENTOR Network to create a story that shows how their network of foster parents is improving the lives of kids across the country. Learn more about foster care and how you can help at makeadifferenceathome.com.