Your new video can use old parts to inspire and stir emotion

SOS Children’s Villages – USA and MiniMatters teamed up to warm the hearts of Americans with an international SOS Villages story, told through a new video. This is Mouna’s Story pleads for support to give loving homes to orphaned and abandoned children around the world. The first thing you’ll see if you play the new video below, is that right at the beginning there’s an annotation that calls on viewers to sponsor a child and change his or her life forever. As we have described in past posts like this one, the YouTube Nonprofit Program provides convenient ways to link from your videos to donation or other pages, just as this one directly links to SOS Children’s Villages – USA’s sponsorship page. If your organization is not part of this program, look here to learn about the other way to create YouTube annotations like this one to link to sites outside of YouTube.  

How to make a new video from an old one

When SOS Children’s Villages – USA contacted MiniMatters, Mouna’s story had already been inspiring people–but in Dutch and Finnish, on Netherlands TV and online in Finland.  Digital Marketing Director Viviana Pagán-Muñiz and her team realized that with a new voiceover and subtitles, they had all the ingredients for a cost-effective new video that would win hearts and minds to their cause. MiniMatters worked with the team to develop a new script in English, record the voiceover with a professional voice artist, adjust the subtitles, and also obtain royalty-free music to enhance the message of the new video. SOS Children’s Villages – USA later consulted MiniMatters for advice for how to turn the excellent viewership of the video into a higher probability of sponsorship. We suggested adding a link to the donation page right at the beginning of the video, and increasing the time that the annotation at the end of the video appeared on the screen to make it easier to click. Anyone who’s viewing the new video who finds Mouna’s sweet face compelling from the beginning can get to the donation page even before they finish watching, and those who are impacted by the whole video can do the same at the end. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. A moving picture, a video, may be worth even more, especially to an organization focused on connecting those of us here in the U.S. with children in need abroad. As Ms. Pagán-Muñiz described in a recent conversation, “People pay more attention through a video, and it gives you the power to tell a story,” which is why “video can be what catapults a campaign.” She notes that “it’s very very powerful for nonprofit organizations, and more and more it’s an important aspect of any digital marketing strategy. If you have fundraising goals, it’s a really important thing to have.” She also said that an outside video producer with an affinity to your cause, as MiniMatters has for her organization’s, and the knowledge to do “brilliant things with not so much