A Great Video Annual Report

Ian Rhett speaking at the 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference
Ian Rhett

on

June 2, 2011

A Great Video Annual Report

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VolunteerMatch.org (personally, a BIG favorite .org)  recently released their first Video Annual Report and it's AWESOME!!  It's such a great, and low-cost idea for producing a compelling story of an organization's successes.  Getting to make a rich, human connection with an organization's staff and the people/organizations they're helping is amazing. It's moving to hear how the organization is having an impact from the people it's actually helping. The only thing missing in this presentation is the lack of any clickable calls to action. Doing clickable overlays in YouTube is easy and would be (I would think) an obvious staple of the Video Annual Report. It's a shame not to harness the good feelings that arise from watching a video like this. That being said, it's still a great idea.

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Sumit Kataria June 3, 2011
So inspiring. Thanks for sharing Ian
Robert Rosenthal (not verified) June 2, 2011
Ian - thanks. Knowing all the great projects CivicActions has been involved in over the years, it's great to hear words of support from you on this... means a lot for our first video annual report.If you hold on until the last few seconds of the vid, there are a few YT call to action overlays. You may have missed them, which makes me wonder if we didn't implement them quite as well as we ought to.Should they have come earlier in the video? Been more visible on the screen? I'd love to hear your advice on specific implementation as I KNOW you've got some good opinions on the matter. Keep up the inspiring work,Robert RosenthalVolunteerMatch(twitter: @volmatch)
Ian Rhett June 5, 2011
Hey Robert! Yeah, I didn't see them in the version I saw, in part because while I tend to watch the credits in a movie theater, I'm not so paitent on the web.  At the very least, I think you should put the call to action before the credits start rolling.  I think it would also be interesting to have overlays in your Annual Video Report that link to various landing pages that amplify the details of topics being talked about at that moment in the video.   Perhaps in the next round of production (if you choose to do another VAR) you can build the video with a companion mini-site in mind.  We've done online annual reports, but I think having a Video summary of the AR as a viral piece that points to different landing pages of a mini-site is really cool. You might also consider putting one line calls to action / links in other places in the video as well.  When used judiiciously, I think they can be pretty unobstrusive.  I'd look for the first "emotional" or impact moment of the video, and put one right after that. Also, I definitely think you should explicitly ask people to share the video, too and make it really easy to do that.  Explain how.  I'm thinking of the Elephant, the Rider and the Path, here.