In my previous post, I presented the first part of an interview with Michael Hoffman, CEO of See3 the parent company of DoGooderTV. To catch you up: DoGooderTV is a video hosting site, similar to YouTube, specifically for non-profit organizations. What follows is the rest of the interview with Michael.
Carol: What is the social networking aspect of DoGooder TV and what advantages does it have for nonprofits?
Michael: We believe the social networking idea has legs, and not only for MySpace. Our goal with DoGooderTV is to allow people who get excited about an organization’s mission, to share this excitement with their friends, and to seek out others who share their interest. We need a mechanism for “friends telling friends” and then to begin to rely on their friends opinions of worthy causes and organizations.
Relatively few Americans donate money to non-religious nonprofits. If social networking can be tapped to get people to act we are all for it and we want to be a leader in this regard. I must say there are others doing social networks built about issues, such as progressive politics. Where we think we will add something is that our network will be built around video, which we think is a much more interesting frame of reference than say, annual reports.
Carol: Is this a service that is best suited for large, national nonprofits? If so why? If not, why not?
Michael: We have thought a lot about this question. On the one hand, large national nonprofits have likely invested more money in more video, and so they will have a leg up. On the other hand, small nonprofits with a single great video piece will likely benefit disproportionally from being in front a new audience. The large national nonprofits already are reaching lots of people through lots of marketing efforts. The small nonprofit who has a video that gets the attention of a national audience will see a much larger percentage impact.
Carol: How hard is it to create a quality video? Is it something that is within reach of small to medium sized nonprofits?
Michael: Not so hard! A great example is David Pogue from the New York Times. With a home camera and a tripod and free or low-cost software, Pogue makes great little videos about technology subjects. Go to nytimes.com and search for video and take a look. The great thing about YouTube and the explosion of online video is that people now do not expect everything to be super-produced and nonprofits need to take advantage of that.
We offer training to organizations so that staff can produce decent video. It is amazing what half-a-day of training can do.
While professional video is not cheap, I think nonprofits need to look at what they spend on print material and consider whether they would get more bang for the buck with video. There are other things organizations can do that are cost effective, for example, we help organizations create slide shows with voice. Great photos and a compelling voice over can be produced inexpensively and have similar impact to video.
Carol: What is the basic equipment needed for making a video and what tips would you give non-profits for creating a good video?
Michael: Obviously you need a video camera to make any video. There are lots of great cameras out there and I won’t get into specific brands. There are decent choices at every price point. Why spent $3,000 when you can spend $300? In addition to the picture quality, the big thing to think about is sound. People will watch bad video with good sound, they will not watch good video with bad sound. One thing you get with higher cost camera is the ability to have external sound inputs.
In terms of tips, we are working on some video tutorials and hope to have them on the See3 and DoGooderTV sites in a few months. We also offer full-service production as well as camera training and handling equipment purchases. If this is something you believe you need to be doing, See3 can help you get there with a combination of internal organizational resources and our professionals when needed.
Carol: What is the promotion plan for DoGooderTV?
Michael: We are planning an aggressive PR strategy as the primary way to educate individuals about the site. We have a strategy and a staff that will work MySpace, Facebook and other social networks, inviting those with expressed interest in specific issues to come see the video on DGTV relevant to their interest. We also expect that many of our nonprofits will promote the site to their constituents, as a way to showcase their videos, and because they understand that the growth of the whole community benefits all of the participating organizations.
If we look at the growth of other social networks and video sites, the viral aspects and word of mouth are clearly the biggest factor in community growth. If the content is good, and there is enough of it, I am confident the people will be there.
So, in terms of promotion, much of our efforts now are spreading the word among organizations and gathering video.
Since our Alpha site went up in February we have received submissions and interest from a wide range of nonprofits, over 100, who have begun to hear about us through blogs and word-of-mouth. We are on target to have more than 150 organizations on board before the end of October, which is the goal we set for ourselves.
We are now working, with the American University’s Center for Social Media, on the first nonprofit video festival. The festival is being designed as an annual event to attract and honor the best of nonprofit video and to give nonprofits a showcase for all the great video that is out there. We are talking to a wide range of co-sponsors and we will let you know when we have an official announcement with more details. Of course, all the video submitted for the festival will be on DoGooderTV, which will act as the official site of the festival. We believe that the festival, the reach of the cosponsors and the PR it will generate will bring in more video than we have been able to attract thus far.
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DoGooderTV is in Alpha release right now. Michael says that they expect to roll out the beta release in November 2006. Some of the new functionality that will be available with the beta is the social networking portion and nonprofits will be able to directly upload video and categorize those videos. Michael suggests that future functions will be guided by the nonprofit customers they serve.
Tags:DoGooderTV, nonprofit, YouTube, fundraising, Social Networking,
I happened across the website DoGooder TV at the beginning of September. I looked around and was intriqued by what I saw.
I quickly shot off an e-mail to see if I could find out more. In the true beauty of the blogosphere and this delightful time of new businesses understanding the value of interactive marketing, I was delighted when I got a message back from Michael Hoffman, the CEO of See3, the parent company of DoGooder TV.
Now– Michael is no slouch (quite an entrepreneur and has significant nonprofit experience) and he’s got quite an impressive set of talent working with him. He also seems to be a nice fellow who really has a genuine passion for nonprofits, causes and the social sector. I think like many of us, he sees the exciting and emerging potential for interactive and social media to really transform how DoGooder’s do business.
So I’ll share our discussion…
Carol: Tell me about the business and philosophy behind See3.
Michael:I was a nonprofit fundraiser in Washington, responsible for about $10 million in annual gifts from mostly family foundations. What stuck with me was that there is a gap, sometimes small, sometime huge, between what a donor sees and what the hard-working people on the ground were doing. We had these study tours, where donors could go to the places where the work was happening, meet the people on the ground, get inspired. These were so powerful and the folks who went on these trips were always the most dedicated supporters, even if they didn’t start out that way. Of course only a small percentage of people were able to participate in these tours and I have always been thinking about how we can close the gap between the daily work and the information nonprofits get out to their stakeholders.
Post-bubble 2001 I [was] looking for something to do and my friends at the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation asked if I could do some consulting about nonprofits and technology. Then I was asked to build a website and ended up building a web development shop, specializing in working with nonprofits, that now has 20 employees.
About a year-and-a-half ago my partner Danny Alpert and I had that eureka moment. I was telling him that the web is changing, that broadband will change how we think about the web and websites. That the broadband web was not the same as the web we have known until now. That what I do as a web development company for nonprofits will change quickly. I told him that, mark-my-words, we will be seeing video all over the web very soon.
Danny, an Academy Award and Emmy Award nominated filmmaker, [PBS film (A Doula Story) (http://www.adoulastory.org)] was telling me how film, emotionally powerful stories, can move people to action and be the centerpiece of campaigns to raise money, raise awareness and educate. See3 was born from this conversation.
The company combines my experience on the web and Danny’s experience as a filmmaker. Our philosophy is that organizations need to think beyond the gala dinner video and understand that the web opens up many additional opportunities to use video. That not every video needs to be super-produced, and that media materials – audio, video and photography – need to take more and more of those print budgets.
Carol: What is DoGooder TV and how did it come about?
Michael:Our clients have said to us, how do we maximize the investment we are making in video? We make a great video, and we show it at our events, and then what? Our answer to this question is what lead us to the development of DoGooderTV.
First, we tell people that when they produce video for their gala dinner, for example, that they also need to create additional videos from the same footage. For example, that dinner video might have three stories in it, and these three stories can live independently integrated into different sections of your website, or attached to your regular e-newsletter. Once they have this material, we show them how to bring stakeholders to these videos by integrating it into their existing communications programs.
We have answered that question in a couple ways. First, we help organizations get their video on YouTube and MySpace and Google Video and all of the other free places to post video. But lets be honest – if you don’t have a super-compelling, edgy, snarky, funny, video – then no one will see you on YouTube, except the people you send there.
Many organizations have raised another point about these sites; Does putting our video – which deals with serious subjects – among videos of stupid pet tricks and teenagers lip-synching to some heavy metal song, help us? Is this good for our brand? Is there a place where grown-ups who are interested in things that matter go to see video online?
That’s how we got to DoGooderTV. A place where the audience has a proven interest in issues and the organizations working on those issues. We can call them more qualified leads, to use marketing language. For us, the nonprofit is our client, and DoGooderTV is being created to service their interests.The primary interest of organizations in this regard is exposure to people who are likely to become interested, to act on policy questions, to donate, and to other wise get involved.
Carol: What can DoGooder TV do for nonprofits?
Michael: DoGooderTV is being built as a community for people who care about issues and organizations. Our goal is to bring this qualified audience into the work of organizations through. Once emotionally hooked by watching their videos, the audience will be able to act – to donate, sign-up or learn more.
DoGooderTV gives all of those gala dinner videos a new lease on life, and organizations a way to leverage the existing investments they have made in video material by getting it in front of new audiences.
- In addition, DoGooderTV will be supported through sponsorship. The sponsorship revenue will be split, 50-50, with the nonprofits who post video.
- Best of all… we will be syndicating nonprofit video content across the web! We are very excited about this. The DoGooderTV audience will decide what videos they like the most. These videos (and PSAs) will then be made available, at no charge to the nonprofit, across a network of video web sites. This video network currently has 50 million members and includes the sites of major media companies. All of our legal agreements are not in place yet, so I can’t give more details than this, but those organizations that take the time and effort to create good video content will be rewarded with large audiences.
- And, last but certainly not least, DoGooderTV will allow nonprofits to embed their video, without sponsorship, within their own websites on a pay-as-you-go basis. Meaning, organizations can post all their video to DoGooderTV and any piece they want on their own site can be moved with a few clicks. This high-quality hosting (built on the Akamai network) will be available to organizations so they can have a single integrated hosting source.
Carol: What is your biggest dream for DoGooderTV?
Michael:My biggest dream is that DoGooderTV leads to a kind of renaissance in nonprofit support in this country, attracting millions of people who otherwise would not be exposed to the great work being done and moves them to donate and get involved.
A smaller dream is to move the nonprofit world to understand the benefits of video and, through DoGooderTV, see a real increase in nonprofit investment in this kind of communications program.
We want to be able to say, look at what our work did for this organization. See how they grew, see how they were able to achieve their mission through the support of people who experienced their work through video.
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Michael was quite generous with his time and I have much more to share with you– so please stay tuned for for part 2. In the meantime, if you are a nonprofit organization interested in looking into this new way of getting the word out about your organization, please drop by DoGooderTV .
Please know that more features will be launched in November 2006.
Tags: DogooderTV, Michael Hoffman, YouTube, Videos, Nonprofits, Social media, charity
