Podcast: How to Use Video to Strengthen Your Capital Campaign Messaging

Season 5, Episode 12

In this episode, Amy Eisenstein and Andrea Kihlstedt explore how nonprofits can use video to connect with donors, share impact, and bring their campaign stories to life. They discuss why video has become such an essential communication tool, replacing traditional brochures and static materials, and how organizations can use it effectively throughout every phase of a campaign.

Tune in to learn how your nonprofit can use video to show progress, express gratitude, and inspire giving one clip at a time.

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Andrea Kihlstedt:
Videos are ubiquitous, and if you’re not using them, you better get with the program.

Amy Eisenstein:
Hi, I am Amy Eisenstein. I’m here with my colleague, my partner, my co-founder, Andrea Kihlstedt. And today we are talking about the important role that videos play in campaigns, but really in our everyday lives.

Andrea, we were just talking about estimating how many videos do we think we either watch or scroll by or watch even for five or 10 seconds every day. And it’s probably hundreds, just whether it’s scrolling through the New York Times these days, it’s not print, it’s video. So, whether you’re scrolling on social or anything else, video is an integral part of our everyday lives. So,

should be part of your campaign, and I think that’s the point of today’s conversation.

Why Are Videos So Important for a Capital Campaign?

So, why don’t you get us started on how did we think of this topic? Why are videos so important in campaigns?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Well, videos are important in campaigns because videos are important everywhere, right?

Amy Eisenstein:
Yes.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
I mean, I don’t know, Amy, do you watch baby elephant videos? I got to say that I do watch now and again, baby elephant videos.

Amy Eisenstein:
They come up in my feed.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yes. And it’s hard not to watch them because they’re so darn cute. So, the thing about watching video and being trained to watch video as we all are, is that we don’t stop and read so much. It is more of a chore to actually stop and read something.

So, if what we’re doing as we go into a campaign, as we go through a campaign is to want to present our case and our organization in a way that our donors and our constituents are going to actually look at it. It can’t just be in big or complex written material anymore. It’s not the way we function. It’s not the way the society or our first world functions.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah, I think that’s such an important point. And we sort of got to this topic on a roundabout route. We started talking about the idea that brochures are no longer appropriate campaign collateral, and still we hear board members starting with brochures or wanting to start with a campaign brochure. And of course, for years now, we haven’t used a campaign brochure in the early stages of the campaign. But honestly, I think most of the campaigns we work on now probably don’t have brochures in what we think of them in traditional format because everything is online and video.

And so we were talking about how to communicate with donors, and of course we wiggled into this idea of a video, short, long, different formats, early in the campaign, late in the campaign. And I think we can touch on some of those topics, but I just want to remind listeners that as you’re thinking about starting a campaign and building a case for support, we don’t want you to think about it as a brochure or even a video for that matter. Your case for support is really a set of ideas that can be used in various formats, in a multitude of formats and how you use it depends on the audience and the stage of the campaign. But for today, we’re going to talk about video.

The Rise of Personal Video

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right. So, let me add another kind of big idea about video. So, we’ve talked so far about how most everybody in our world watches video, but the other thing that’s happened is that most everybody in our world makes video that you pull out your iPhone and you click a little button, and lo and behold, you have a 10-second video. This morning, one of our cats, we have two Siamese cats, one of them loves to jump on my shoulder, and he does it whether I’m facing him or not facing him, he does it whether I know he is going to do it or whether I don’t know he is going to do it. And my husband thinks it’s very funny when the cat jumps on my shoulder, he really does.

So, he has been trying for the longest time to take a video of it. And lo and behold, this morning, he pulls out his phone and he pushes the button and he gets a video of the cat jumping onto my shoulder and he sends it to a whole bunch of people, cat people that we know and are kids because it’s funny, right? That’s how easy it is to make a video and how personal it is to make a video. Now, that’s a big deal. That means that video is both video with a small V, the little personal opportunity we have to communicate with people, whether they’re donors or otherwise family or whoever. And with a big V to actually hire a company who will do a very high end professional video. Those are two different things leading to products that are of our times and we need to get good at using them both.

Amy, I think you have a good story about the talk that you just gave.

Different Cuts that Tell Different Stories

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah. Well, we were talking about this because I just gave a keynote talk and I hired a professional videographer to come in with three cameras and capture three different angles and shots to sort of a highly produced video.

Now then once you have all this footage, you think, well, what am I going to do with it? So, there’s a three-minute version, there’s a one-minute version, and there’s a 15-second version. And the way that I’m going to use those videos everywhere from social media to sending to future conferences to try and get booked as a speaker, I’m using different clips in different ways, in different formats for different purposes and different audiences.

So, I think that’s one lesson, but to your cat story, I think nonprofits should be not running around with their cameras on, but intentional in terms of talking to clients, if that’s appropriate. I mean, some places it, some missions, it is. In some missions it isn’t, but as it’s appropriate, but you can be talking to staff and videoing little clips of what’s going on at the organization, what they’re excited about, why they’re thankful, what progress they’re made, what challenges you’re having as you gear up and get into a campaign. So, different stages, different audiences, different purposes, depending on whether you want a formal video that’s highly produced or little clips just from your phone.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, talking about the formal video that’s highly produced, that’s been an early way in which we, in the campaign business, have used videos that it seemed that everybody needed for their campaign kickoff. They needed a video and they would hire a company to do a video often at pretty significant expense, mind you. And the kickoff would be a fancy dinner and people would be thanked and the chair would introduce people, and there might be a little keynote speech, and then there would be a video which captured hopefully, in glowing terms, the power of the mission and why it’s important to be raising this money.

And the kids or the people or the animals whose lives are getting better because of the campaign. And some of these were terrible, I have to say. Some of them were homemade and would go on for 10 minutes. And if there’s anything worse than a lousy five-minute video, it’s a lousy 10-minute video. I mean, videos like that, these highly produced videos have to be good. You have to know what you’re doing. In the little personal videos like my cat jumping onto my shoulder. It doesn’t matter if it’s particularly well-crafted, you could take a video of something in your organization that doesn’t have to be fancy. Nobody’s looking at it that way.

Amy Eisenstein:
One of the examples that we just came up with was before a campaign, talking to people potentially that are on your wait list, that you can’t serve or somehow conveying that there’s a need to grow, that there’s a need to expand, to evolve or to serve the community in some bigger way.

So, early in the campaign, you can tell one story, and as you progress, you can tell different stories. That’s the beauty of having the video camera right at your disposal in your pocket, right?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah. I’ll give you another great example of a good use of video. One of our clients was building a new building. It’s a music organization, and it’s they’re building a new building, and they wanted to convey to people the fact that the bulldozers had dug the hole, the construction had started. So, one heads of the organization is a violinist, and he went down into the hall and put on a hard hat, and he took his violin and he started playing some Bach, and someone videotaped him in the hole playing Bach, and they cut it to, I don’t know what it was, 15 seconds or something. Maybe it was a little longer, but it very tidily conveyed the fact that music was coming to this place, and they didn’t have to say really much of anything, except you could see construction had started. This is all about music. There was a home for, the music organization was in the making.

Amy Eisenstein:
Right. I mean, that’s such a good example because instead of writing a report to convey progress, you can show these 15, 30-second clips, and that’s how people are consuming information these days. I think that’s the point we started with, is that people are getting information in different ways, and we should be communicating in ways that people consume information. So, you can use video.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
That’ll be another example, Amy, before I’m off my example.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah, go ahead.

Personalized Thank You Videos

Andrea Kihlstedt:
I once gave, I made a gift, a nice gift to an organization that I support, and I sent it in. And within a day of when they received my gift, I got a video from them. And what they had done is that several of the staff members had gone up under the roof of their building. They had held up the video camera, and they had been, “Yeah, thank you, Andrea.” Right? I mean, that’s all it was, but it was clearly personal. They didn’t have to say very much. They had all gotten together. They were waving at me, they were thanking me in a way that felt very genuine, and it didn’t take anything to do that, except to get a few people together and go up to the roof.

Amy Eisenstein:
And you just need a selfie stick.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
That’s right. With a selfie stick. Exactly. So, there’s another great use of video, not only to convey the progress in a project, but to thank donors in an immediate and personal way. Now that’s not creating one video and sending it to everybody. What was neat about that is that it was highly personal. It was my name. They were waving at me. I knew them, or at least some of them. It was much better than a week later getting a formal thank you letter.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah. Yep. And you can do 10 of those in six minutes. You can take up your list of donors, you can gather a few people in the hallway, and you can sort of put, I don’t know about a script on the wall, but just thank you, Andrea for blah, blah, blah. Two sentences that everybody sort of says together. And that’s, it takes 15 seconds and you’re done.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right. Totally easy.

The Downside of Video

So, let me talk a little about the downside of video in terms of a way to communicate with your donors. I mean, some people use slides when they actually meet with donors or videos when they meet with donors, and that always makes me a little queasy because I’m somewhat uncomfortable about meeting with a donor and then turning the donor’s attention to a video screen.

Amy Eisenstein:
And sitting in silence.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
And sitting in silence. That doesn’t feel to me like a great use of the use of a video sitting side by side and watching a video together. If you’re going to use a video for a donor, send it in advance and ask them to watch it, and then you can talk about it or after. But don’t bring it with the intention of watching it together. That’s watching a movie together, or whether it’s a movie in a movie theater or somewhere else isn’t a great way to come together.

Amy Eisenstein:
So, let’s bring up slides just because you mentioned it in terms of sitting next to a donor. So, I agree with you that you don’t want 12 or 20 slides and sit there and go through them on your iPad with a donor, but if you bring up one slide of your blueprints or whatever it is, you may have an electronic version of some show and tell, but as long as it’s interactive, you show it and then you close it. Don’t leave it up for the whole meeting. Don’t let it be a distraction. Don’t depend on it. Bring it up, talk about it for a second, close it and then move on.

I can imagine somebody sitting with an iPad scrolling through slides or video, and it is the same kind of thing. You want to be able to have a conversation and develop that relationship and ask questions and engage donors. If you’re sitting there with a slide deck or a video, it’s likely that you’re leaning on it to do the work and you’re not engaging your donor.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, it’s so important. The idea of using slides and then turning them off is such a good idea. And for some reason it’s hard for people to do that, right? I mean, you and I know that. Amy and I do a lot of webinars together, and we have for some years now, and it took quite some time to realize that we could use slides and then get rid of the slides so that people are just looking at us and not the slides, and then bring the slides back if we needed them. But that didn’t happen immediately. It took some awareness that we only needed slides sometimes for specific purposes and that we could be very intentional about when we needed them and when we didn’t need them, and that when we didn’t have them, people’s attention was more focused where we wanted it to be focused.

It’s similar though. It’s close. I mean, whether it’s video or anything on screen, I mean, the connector is digital communication, I suppose, but video is certain. Let’s go back to video. You’re right. We digressed.

Examples of Video to Use Early in a Campaign

Amy Eisenstein:
I think we’ve come up with some good examples of video that you can use early in the campaign. I think the important thing to think about is who your audience is, what stage of the campaign you’re in, how and when you’re going to use video, when it can be informal and rough cut, as they say from your iPhone. And when you need to invest in more sophisticated help with your storytelling, with your content creation and with the quality of the video.

Honestly, the point you made about shorter is almost always better. Don’t forget, I showed the three-minute version of my speech to my kids. My son’s reaction was, “There’s no way I’m ever going to watch that.” Oh my gosh, he’s in college. He doesn’t have the patience to watch a three-minute video.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Of his mom.

Amy Eisenstein:
Of his mom. I know of his old mom, so I get it. I get it. But his point was that people are accustomed these days to 30-second videos, 40-second videos, and if you can say what you need to say in a shorter amount of time, I mean, it’s the same thing with writing, but just remember that when people are pushing for a five-minute video, a 10-minute video, there’s going to be a certain percentage of people that tune out and turn it off. So, the shorter, I think usually the better.

Learning vs. Outsourcing a Video Editing

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Amy, I just want to say one more thing while we’re on this subject, which there is a lot to learn about video. There’s a lot for us to learn. We’re still young in this video business as well. I think that there are many ways that you can learn, that you can take online courses, that you can learn how to frame things, that you can learn how to use your iPad, that you can learn how to edit well, that you can learn how to construct a 15-second or a 32-second video. I think there is a ton of stuff. There are a ton of ways that you can actually learn and get better at it rather than just being so-so.

So, I encourage anyone who’s interested to actually look and see what kind of courses there are or learning that you might do to improve your video skills.

Amy Eisenstein:
All right. So, yes, and let me acknowledge that most of the people listening are already overworked and don’t have time or resources or maybe the interest in doing that. So, there are plenty of online platforms to hire people who are fairly inexpensive to help you cut together videos. You can have this outsourced even if you need help with the ones in your pockets.

I think there are people in your communities and people outside your communities. You don’t need to use a local person, find someone who has these skills, who charges affordable rates and can do it quickly and easily so that it doesn’t become one more burden on your development team.

So, it’s just another thing on the plate of busy development directors to become video editors. So, I’d like to see it outsourced if at all possible, or have an intern help with it or a volunteer. This would be a great volunteer job, actually, someone who could help for an hour a week with video.

Final Thoughts

All right, Andrea, great conversation today. I think it’s an important topic and ever-present-in-our-lives, video. And anybody doing a campaign should be incorporating a video into their strategy and really thinking about how they’re going to work it into their campaign.

So, thanks as always, and we’ll see you next time.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
I’m going to go watch some baby elephants.

Amy Eisenstein:
Go watch some baby elephants. All right, thanks, Andrea. We’ll see you next time.