DoGooderTV: A Video Sharing Site for NonProfits Friday, February 1st, 2008 by Juliana Rincón Parra DoGooder.tv is a website for videos with a cause. Through it, non-profit organizations can promote their cause for a specific audience: one that is already interested in hearing what they have to say, and figuring ways in which they can help out. See3 CEO and DoGooderTV´s creator Michael Hoffman was kind enough to grant me an interview, and in his own words, this is what they do: DoGooderTV is a project of See3 Communications. See3 is all about helping nonprofits tell their stories on the web. We primarily use video and social media / websites to tell the stories. We have been helping our clients use existing tools, such as YouTube and the dozens of other video sharing sites and social networks. Some of our clients kept telling us that they had a problem with these sites. They were OK, but they worried about control of their brand, and whether the audience and the surroundings were appropriate for their messages. So they decided to create DoGooder.tv , where nonprofits can brand their videos to a specific audience that is interested in making the world a better place. The idea is that any person interested in non-profits and their body of work will see the videos on DoGooderTV and they´ll be able to read more about the organizations and their causes, inform themselves about volunteering and donation opportunities, create a community around the issues they care about and share their experiences and their efforts with other like-minded individuals. Following is a 1:04 minute video uploaded on dogooder.tv by international human rights organization Witness' The Hub project, “a participatory media website for anyone, anywhere in the world to upload, view, share discuss and take action on human-rights related media.” Every day DoGooder.tv is growing, as more non-profit organizations from around the world register on the site, uploading their videos. They discover about DoGooderTV though word of mouth, through articles read on other websites which mention it and many have joined drawn to their Annual Video award contest . This year´s contest theme is: From the Ground Up: Using Technology to Engage Constituents and Make the World a Better Place . Nten (the Nonprofit Technology Network) and See3 have joined to invite the winning organization who posts on DoGooder.tv the best animation, video or mashup used to engage constituents, to an all expense paid trip to the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference . The following video is last year´s winning entry: Avaaz foundation ´ s 2:31 video Stop the Clash of Civilizations, a call for action and peace in the Middle East. For anyone wishing to be a part of the contest, there´s until February 15th 2008 to submit your videos on the DoGooder.tv website . I asked Mr. Hoffman for his advice for a nonprofit organization who doesn´t know much about online video but wants to participate: My first advice would be, just start. If you don't have video, make some. You can get inexpensive cameras, you can find volunteers. Or if you have the resources, nothing beats professional video. And if you have video, my advice is not to let it sit on a shelf. If you have anything longer than 5 minutes, look to cut it up into shorter engaging pieces. And then distribute those pieces on your own website, on DoGooderTV and on the social networks that are likely to have people who will support you. You can't just put something online and expect that something will happen. You have to work the communities. You have to seek out the influential people online who already care about your issues. There are many many organizations.And the ones that do not begin to SHOW their stories and document their work are going to have a harder and harder time getting attention — for fundraising, for policy change or for education. So whether you are a nonprofit interested in getting people to know about what you´re doing, if you are a viewer who wishes to see the efforts others are making to change the world a little bit at a time and if you want to know how you can help out, DogooderTV is a good stop along the way. This last video, by the Center for Global Development, shows the way a woman´s life in Bolivia could be changed through action.