Putting a video on your campaign can give it that extra personal touch that can greatly increase interest from potential donors. A few paragraphs of text will get your message across, but people love seeing a real face telling a real story.

The problem is, making videos can be complicated – especially for those who don’t know much about cameras or editing. But have no fear, I’ve created an easy-to-follow outline so that you too can have a beautiful video uploaded to the internet and featured on your campaign, all in 30 minutes or less!

STEP 1: Record

[Est Time: 5-10 mins]

Don’t have a professional camera? Not to worry! Most of us these days have a quality camera sitting right in our pocket that we often forget about. iPhones have quickly become equal competitors to many professional cameras, and they make recording a video easier than ever. If you don’t have one yourself, you can ask around the office and a friend is sure to lend you their iPhone for a hot second.

Before you start recording, find a quiet place with a simple non-distracting background and make sure your face is well lit and easy to see. To start recording, simply open your camera app, hit record and start talking! It’s best to organize your subject matter into an Intro, Conflict, and Solution. Don’t feel like you need to put on your formal broadcaster’s voice, just talk like you normally would!

How your potential supporters feel watching the video will be influenced by how you’re talking to them. Have you ever watched a public speaker awkwardly stumble through their words and you start to feel a little awkward yourself? The same effect can happen with a video. If you speak comfortably yet with passion your viewers can reciprocate that feeling. For more awesome info on how to present your campaign we have these awesome articles you may be interested in:

 The Anatomy of an Amazing Online Fundraising Campaign

STEP 2: Edit

[Est Time: 8-15 mins]

If you just want to record a quick message and start uploading, you can skip this step entirely and go to step 3. However, if done correctly, adding an intro/outro slide and light background music can have a really great impact on your video. To do this, you won’t even need to put your phone down. There are several apps for the price of a coffee that will let you arrange clips, add music, and upload right to YouTube all from within the app. Which one you use is completely up to you, but my top three are:

• Videoshop
• iMovie
• Splice

Each app has its own perks and special features, but all of them have been designed to learn and use within minutes. If you know how to get your clips onto the computer and prefer editing there, great! In this instance though we’re simply looking for the quickest way to get your message online.

STEP 3: Upload

[Est Time: 2-5 mins]

Your masterpiece is complete! Now it’s time to upload and share it with the world. There are a couple easy ways to do this, depending on how you’re working with your video. If you have the YouTube app installed on your phone, you can upload the video to YouTube right from whatever editing app you’re using. Just look for the ‘Share’ icon. This icon will almost always look the same, just placed in slightly different places. Here are some screenshots to show examples of this:

If you don’t want to download the Youtube app, you can simply sign in to Youtube from your internet browser of choice. Be sure to fill in your video information with a relevant title, description and most importantly – tags! Tags are what will allow your video to be discovered when users type in those search words. Once you’ve filled out all of the necessary fields, click on ‘Publish’.

And now…. STOP THE TIMER! Did you make it under 30 minutes?? Let us know in the comments below!

Once your video is finished uploading, you can add it to your campaign under the “Tell Your Story” section of your campaign editor. To read more about this you can check out this support article for extra tips and advice. Happy shooting!

P.S.

It wouldn’t be fair unless I put myself under the same challenge, so I came up with my own “example organization”. I propped the iPhone up by leaning it against my laptop, edited everything in the iMovie app, and started uploading within 17 minutes!  Think you can beat me?