(Cross posted from the Official Google Blog)

The Galapagos Islands are some of the most biologically unique ecosystems in the world. Explorers and scientists alike have long studied and marveled at these islands—made famous by Charles Darwin. The Ecuadorean Government, local conservation groups and scientists are working to protect the Galapagos from threats posed by invasive species, climate change and other human impacts.

It’s critical that we share images with the world of this place in order to continue to study and preserve the islands’ unique biodiversity. Today we’re honored to announce, in partnership with Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) and the Galapagos National Parks Directorate (GNPD), that we’ve collected panoramic imagery of the islands with the Street View Trekker. These stunning images will be available on Google Maps later this year so people around the world can experience this remote archipelago.

Daniel Orellana of Charles Darwin Foundation crossing a field of ferns to reach Minas de Azufre (naturally-occurring sulfur mines) on the top of Sierra Negra, an active volcano on Isabela Island. The Google Maps team traveled for more than 3 hours, hiking and on horseback, to reach this remote location.

Images, like the one you see above, are also an important visual record that the CDF and GNPD will use to study and protect the islands by showing the world how these delicate environments have changed over time.

Daniel Orellana of the Charles Darwin Foundation climbs out of a lava tunnel where he was collecting imagery. The dramatic lava landscapes found on Isabela island tell the story of the formation of the Galapagos Islands.

Our 10-day adventure in the Galapagos was full of hiking, boating and diving around the islands (in hot and humid conditions) to capture 360-degree images of the unique wildlife and geological features of the islands with the Trekker. We captured imagery from 10 locations that were hand-selected by CDF and GNPD. We walked past giant tortoises and blue-footed boobies, navigated through steep trails and lava fields, and picked our way down the crater of an active volcano called Sierra Negra.

A Galapagos giant tortoise crawls along the path near Googler Karin Tuxen-Bettman while she collects imagery with the Street View Trekker in Galapaguera, a tortoise breeding center, which is managed by the Galapagos National Park Service.

Life underwater in the Galapagos is just as diverse as life on land. We knew our map of the islands wouldn’t be comprehensive without exploring the ocean that surrounds them. So for the second time we teamed up with the folks at the Catlin Seaview Survey to collect underwater panoramic imagery of areas being studied by CDF and GNPD. This imagery will be used by Catlin Seaview Survey to create a visual and scientific baseline record of the marine environment surrounding the islands, allowing for any future changes to be measured and evaluated by scientists around the world.

Christophe Bailhache navigates the SVII camera through a large group of Sea Lions at Champion Island in Galapagos. Image courtesy of the Catlin Seaview Survey.

We truly believe that in order to protect these Galapagos Islands, we must understand them. As they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” We hope this Street View imagery not only advances the important scientific research, but also inspires you to learn more about this special place. Stay tuned for updates on this collection—the first time we’ve captured imagery from both land and sea! We can’t wait to share this amazing imagery with you later this year.

Posted by Raleigh Seamster, Project Lead, Google Maps

Do you use Google Earth to visualize your data or tell your stories? Do you need to create more professional and informative maps for printing, or want to know if that new construction site will be visible from your hilltop park? Now you can do all of these things quickly and easily using Google Earth Pro 7.1.

A few weeks ago on Earth Day, we announced the latest update to Google Earth Pro. The update includes new tools that will help with the incredible work you do. To get started using the new features, check out the information and examples below.

Advanced Map Making & Printing

Add cartographic features to the maps you make in Google Earth Pro, including legends, titles, scale bars, north-arrows and text boxes. You can use these features when saving your map as an image or PDF for sharing with your colleagues and supporters, or when printing your map for use in the field. They will help make your maps more professional looking and informative. See this video for details.

Viewshed Analysis

Need to find out whether your field camp is within line-of-sight of the cell phone tower? Just use the viewshed tool in Google Earth Pro. All you need to do is create a placemark, give it an appropriate altitude relative to the ground, and select “Show Viewshed” to see what’s visible from that spot. Find out more here.

I made the map above in less than 5 minutes, and it’s ready to send to my colleagues. Try it out for yourself. If you don’t already have Google Earth Pro, you can find out more here, or if you’re a nonprofit, you can get it for free.

Happy mapping!

Posted by Christiaan Adams, Developer Advocate, Google Earth Outreach

At Google, one of our goals is to help make the web work for you. Today we’re announcing a new series of Learn with Google webinars, which will teach you how to use digital to build brand awareness and give you the tools you need to drive sales and grow loyalty and retention. Each of our sessions gives you deep-dive educational content, across a breadth of products and marketing objectives, in a format that’s convenient for you. Every webinar is led by Google product experts and includes time for audience Q&A. Sign up to start becoming a smarter digital marketer now.

Upcoming live webinars:

May

[YouTube] Driving Direct Response with Video

[Shopping] Google Shopping 101: Google Shopping for Beginners

[Research] New Research: How US Shoppers use Smartphones in Stores

[Mobile] Driving Deeper Engagement with your App Users

[Mobile] Driving Brand Engagement with Mobile Rich Media

[Analytics] Measuring Success in a Multi-Device World

June

[Mobile] Understanding Mobile Ads Across Marketing Objectives

[Shopping] Google Shopping 201: Merchant Center Deep Dive

[YouTube] Building your Business with YouTube Video Ads

[Analytics] Metrics for the Mobile App Ecosystem

[Search] What's New & Next in AdWords

[Analytics] Unleashing the Combined Power of Google Analytics & AdWords

[Social] Growing your Business & Engaging your Audience with Google+

[Shopping] Google Shopping 301: Creating & Optimizing Product Listing Ads

[Social] Launching & Amplifying your Impact Across Social Channels

[Display] Reaching the Right Audience with Remarketing

[Research] Creating Custom Infographics with the New Google Databoard

Webinars are held Tuesdays through Thursdays at 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern.

Visit our webinar site to register for any of the live sessions and to access our large library of recorded content. You can also stay up-to-date on the schedule by adding our Learn with Google calendar to your own Google calendar to automatically see upcoming webinars.

During our last series of webinars, attendees had the chance to win a Nexus 7. Clint Wilson was our lucky winner and he’ll soon be enjoying all of the tablet’s cool features. Check out our upcoming webinars for another chance to win!

Learn with Google is a program to help businesses succeed through winning moments that matter, enabling better decisions and constantly innovating. We hope that you’ll use these best practices and how-to’s to maximize the impact of digital and grow your business. We’re looking forward to seeing you at an upcoming session!

Posted by Erin Molnar, Marketing Coordinator, Learn with Google

Over the past few weeks, we’ve explored how YouTube can help you reach and engage new supporters, long term volunteers and donors on our Google+ page. We’ve shared tips on how to maximize the effect of existing videos, ideas for creating new ones and organizations who are already inspiring action with their Youtube channels and playlists. If you missed it, here are five ways your nonprofit can make the most of YouTube today.

1. Reach goals with your viewers using the Campaigns feature. The Campaigns feature on YouTube encourages viewers to contribute towards goals that you set, such as increasing views or subscribers. We recently launched the ability to set the goal of number views for your whole channel. With the help of Campaigns, Sesame Street became the first nonprofit organization to reach over a billion viewers of videos on their channel. Learn how to create your campaign and begin using the feature here.
   
   

2. Become a regular. Just as it's important for you to maintain a consistent fundraising schedule, the same rule applies to how you program content on YouTube. Stick to a consistent schedule and regularly produce and share timely and relevant videos. Making video a regular part of your fundraising activities can help extend the impact of your campaign. Looking for inspiration? Rainforest Action Network and Oxfam GB create regular thematic content and then organize the videos into featured playlists on their channels.
   
   

3. Turn video views into dollars raised with the Google Wallet “Donate” Button. All registered YouTube nonprofit partners can use a Google Wallet “Donate” button. Once you sign up as a nonprofit, go to your Google Wallet Options, enter your ID and Merchant Key, and choose donation amounts. When you’ve filled in the information, the button will appear on your public profile and on your video pages. You can find the Google Wallet options in the upper right-hand corner of “My Channel” and click on the “Add Donation Module” button. The button appears on both your channel page and the watch video pages.
   
   

   

4. Let your viewers drive with Annotations. If you want to be really creative about how you get your message across, try using Annotations to create an interactive, “choose-your-own-adventure” style video. This video from Droptheweapons.org for the “Drop the Weapons” campaign lets the viewer decide what to do in a series of life or death decisions. It’s intended to educate kids about the consequences of making the wrong decisions.

5. Don’t let your shoestring budget keep you from making great videos. You don’t need fancy equipment and years of experience to tell a compelling story on YouTube. In fact, many nonprofits make the biggest impact with YouTube by posting authentic and scrappy videos on a regular schedule. You can hear these nonprofits’ stories (and more tips) by watching this Hangout:

If you want to learn more about how you can use YouTube to tell your story, your first step is to make sure you’re registered with Google for Nonprofits. If you’ve been accepted into the program, you can start using YouTube for Nonprofits. Then, check out our ‘Playbook for Good’ which is full of best practices and handy tips. We can’t wait to watch the stories you tell!

Posted by Jessica Mason, YouTube Nonprofit team

If you’re a local nonprofit, how do you tell your story outside of your community? When Anaheim Ballet was looking to expand their message and audience, they turned to YouTube. Traditionally, ballet was only available live on stage and at a cost. Anaheim Ballet reduced those typical barriers of entry and made ballet accessible to a global audience by creating YouTube videos that could be seen anytime, anywhere and for free.

Using video allowed them to not only share their stories, but also build an engaged global online community. In their YouTube videos, Anaheim Ballet created a discussion with their viewers by asking questions and seeing responses in real time. Their weekly videos and connection with their viewers has helped this local nonprofit hit more than 46 million video views from all around the world. To hear more of their story, check out the video below.  

To learn more about how you can use YouTube to tell your story, visit the YouTube Nonprofit Program site or check out our Google+ page. Over the next two weeks, we’ll be sharing tips and ideas on how your nonprofit can get the most out of YouTube.

Posted by Katie Kellogg, Google for Nonprofits team

(Cross posted from the Official YouTube Blog) 

Since its inception, organizations and individuals looking to change the world have used YouTube to rally an audience around a cause. Working at YouTube, we love seeing inspiring videos shared around the world everyday. “Good” videos have in turn inspired us to build tools to make it easier to run a campaign on YouTube and turn video views into action. We’ve made a 30-page “Playbook for Good” full of best practices to help you make the most inspiring and impactful cause videos possible and the videos just keep getting better and better.

That is why, for the fourth year in a row, we joined with See3 Communications to run the annual DoGooder Video Awards to recognize the year’s best nonprofit and cause videos. This year there were four different categories. And, for the first time, we accepted videos from creators looking to change the world one view at a time, not just nonprofit organizations.

The finalists chosen in the first round were all excellent examples of how far "cause video" has come since we first launched the YouTube Nonprofit Program in 2007. Nonprofits (and other DoGooders) are becoming increasingly savvy with online video; they're making funny, creative, episodic, and interactive cause-related content. They’re turning video views into awareness, petition signatures, donations, volunteer hours, and more. The four winners were chosen from more than a dozen finalists by public voting. Here they are:

Best Nonprofit Video Award: Follow the Frog 



The Rainforest Alliance’s “Follow the Frog” is a humorous tale of a well-intentioned epic misadventure, showing that sustainability-minded consumer choices can be more effective for change than vigilante conservation.

Change Agent Award: 350km message for women with ovarian cancer



After losing his mother to cancer, Raf Bauer set out on a 350-kilometer walk across Scotland to raise awareness and funds for Target Ovarian Cancer.

Funny for Good: No Joke. Choice Matters. Everywhere.



Pathfinder International’s “No Joke. Choice Matters. Everywhere.” comically portrays the difficulties many women face when trying to access reproductive health care. While presented in a comical light, the video outlines actions to help women for whom a lack of access to health care is no joke.

ImpactX Award: END7: How to Shock a Celebrity



The Sabin Vaccine Institute’s “How to Shock a Celebrity” successfully brought attention to seven Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) and helped generate funds to end these diseases by 2020. The campaign used video to, first, grab attention and then present a solution that donors could easily fund. The video translated into donations that averaged 20 cents per view. At more than 220,000 views, that’s quite a few vaccines, considering it only takes 50 cents to provide one person with treatment and protection against all seven NTDs for up to one year.

You can check out all of the 2013 finalists here.

Posted by Jessica Mason, YouTube for Good, recently watched African Men. Hollywood Stereotypes. [mamahope.org]

Using maps is a powerful way to visually share data and truly make your story come alive. Our partners at Google Earth Outreach are constantly helping nonprofits share those stories. For the last two weeks, they’ve joined us and shared how your nonprofit can get the most from Google Earth Outreach through tips, stories and Hangouts on our Google+ page.  In case you missed any of that information, check out the tutorials below to learn step-by-step how to build, not only maps on Google Earth, but also presentations and movies.

1. Create your own interactive map on Google Earth. Follow the tutorial below to show your users and donors the impact you’re making in a particular area. Enhance your map by adding placemarks, paths, polygons, photos and YouTube videos.

2. Overlay an existing map in Google Earth. If you have a map image such as a trail map or political map that you’d like to bring into Google Earth, check out this Hangout to learn how to overlay your map in Google Earth and customize it to better tell your story.

3. Build powerful presentations using Google Earth.  Google Earth can help you make compelling presentations by adding unique views and perspectives to your locations. Check out this video to see how you can visually walk stakeholders or the public through your story.

4. Make your own movie with Google Earth. Guide your viewers through an issue or project by creating an animated movie in Google Earth. This Hangout will show you how to record your movie and share it with your users.

Need a few more examples to help you get started? We hosted a fifth Hangout with previous recipients of Earth Outreach Developer Grants. The grantees discussed the work their organizations do and how they're each using Google Earth and Maps for good. To learn more about how they are using these products, watch the Hangout. To find out more about the Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants, visit this site.

If you want to see more Google Earth Outreach tutorials, visit the Google Earth Outreach site. And if you have questions as you use Google Earth, check out the Google Earth User Forum and post your question there.

Posted by Kousha Navidar, Google for Nonprofits team

This week marks a milestone for the Google Grants program. What began as the brainstorm of philanthropic minded Googlers ten years ago has evolved into a full-scale program spanning across 28 countries and supporting over 14,000 nonprofits. To commemorate the program’s 10th birthday, we’d like to celebrate the nonprofits that have made it all possible.

Google Grants launched with its very first nonprofit, March of Dimes, on April 1, 2003. By the end of year one, 139 nonprofits were thriving in the beta program, and we decided to extend the opportunity to as many organizations and countries as possible.

So what have these Google Grantees been able to accomplish with their advertising grants? Let’s hear from the nonprofits themselves on how they’ve enlisted new volunteers and donors, reached new constituents, raised awareness about important issues, and so much more!

• GreaterGood.org  "This valuable, targeted traffic source continues to be our main source for new donors and subscribers. Approximately 70% of our 2012 web traffic came directly from Google Grants clicks, but we believe closer to 90% of our total site visitors came as a direct result of the overall program. The Google Grants program has truly been a game changer for GreaterGood.org! "

    - Rian Cool, Online Campaigns Manager, GreaterGood.org

• MitoAction  “Mitochondrial disease is a rare disease. When we received our Google Grant in 2008, our average site traffic was about 6,000 visitors per month. We began a targeted awareness campaign using our Google Grant with hopes of reaching more families suffering from Mito. By 2012, our monthly traffic had grown more than 400%, to 26,000 visitors per month. We know from following our statistics that 35% of those visitors are directly from our Google ads, and even better, we know that more than 10% of those come back as repeat visitors who are now either volunteering, receiving support from us, or participating in our events.”

   - Cristy Balcells, Executive Director, MitoAction

• WOLA  "Adwords has helped us double our web traffic in the last year--from 20,000 unique visitors per month in 2012 to 40,000 this year on average. Adwords helps us to get our messages to the right audience and for the right reason—to promote human rights in Latin America."

    -  Kristel Mucino, Communications Director, WOLA

As we blow out the candle on our 10th birthday cake this week, we’d like to thank all of our Google Grantees who are dedicated to making the world a better place. Cheers to the next 10 years!

Posted by Nikki Lopez, Google Grants team

(Cross posted from the Lat Long Blog) 

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest author is Gabriel Ribenboim from Ritual, on behalf of Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS), a nonprofit organization implementing a large-scale social and environmental program in the Amazon. FAS was the recipient of a Google Earth Outreach Grant for Google Maps Engine, which they used to develop an accountability map for their investments in conservation and poverty alleviation. We are excited to showcase the Bolsa Floresta Platform. Our work with FAS is an example of how non-profits all over the world are using comprehensive, accurate and easy-to use Google Maps, Earth and geo tools to tell their story and help their audiences visualize their cause.

Since 2011, I’ve been working with the Brazilian nonprofit organization Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS) and Google to collect Street View for the Amazon. One FAS’s most significative initiatives is the administration of the Bolsa Floresta -- Brazil’s first internationally-certified incentive program for the preservation of traditional communities and environment in the Amazon rainforest. As the largest payment for environmental services program in the world, Bolsa Floresta serves over 35,000 people, 15 state-protected reserve territories and covers an area of more than 10 million hectares. 

Today, I’m excited to announce FAS’ latest project with Google: the Bolsa Floresta Platform - an online tool that allows you to explore and visualize a mix of social, environmental and economical map datasets for 15 protected areas in the Amazon.

 

Institutional transparency is a challenge for NGOs across the world. Tools that help track the impact of our efforts and present them in an accessible way are rare and normally require a significant investment. The Bolsa Floresta platform, built on Google technologies such as Google Maps Engine, Google Drive, YouTube and Street View helped us organize this kind of dataset in a way that is easy to visualize, understand and share with little in the way of programming complexity or investment. 

Now, anyone can dive into the mapping visualizations of the State of Amazonas, navigate the rivers, forest, and communities through Google Street View imagery, or even browse 3D buildings inside protected areas. Most importantly, partners, government agencies and those who live within the benefited state-protected areas, can explore all kinds of informational map layers, enhancing institutional transparency, global awareness, exchange of sustainability practices and poverty alleviation solutions and improving internal planning capabilities. 

The new platform is just one of the many ways FAS is using Google’s technologies to work towards a sustainable future on behalf of the communities of Brazil’s Amazon. Explore the map now or find out more about us at fas-amazonas.org. 

Posted by Gabriel Ribenboim from Ritual, on behalf of Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS)

Today, we hosted a Google+ hangout celebration in honor of World Water Day. This year we are focused on raising awareness for the 780 million people that do not have access to clean water -- and what we can do together to solve the water crisis.
         
The hangout featured representatives from charity: water, Water.org, Water For People, WaterAid, People Water, Whole World Water and was moderated by YouTube star ijustine. Check out the entire hangout below to learn more about the world water crisis and how you can take action.



If you have questions or want to join the conversation, share them with us. Post your thoughts as comments on the event page for the hangout.

Posted by Alina Kim and Elliot Polokoff, Google+ Community Partnerships team