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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.Read More

(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]

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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.Read More

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