Cause Video Awards

Here are this year's Do-Gooder Nonprofit Video Award-winners, announced last night at the 2013 NTEN conference. On Wednesday, Cause Global moderated a panel on cause video at NYU that included Do-Gooder co-founder Michael Hoffman, who joined us for a screening of two of the films—including the winner of the Best Nonprofit Video Award, Follow the Frog (Rain Forest Alliance), below:



The two other top cause videos to win awards (below), co-sponsored by YouTube and Cisco, were Pathfinder International's No Joke. Choice Matters, about the difficulties women across the global face when trying to access reproductive health care, and END 7's How to Shock a Celebrity, which was used to draw attention to seven neglected tropical diseases and raise funds to help end them by 2020.

Here's How to Shock a Celebrity, winner of the competiton's ImpactX Award, a new award given this year for measureable effectiveness in a video campaign:



Here's No Joke, winner of the competition's Funny for Good Award, which recognizes cause video campaigns that use humor effectively to draw awareness to a cause:



Hoffman told our panelists Wednesday night that the use of cause video by nonprofits to boost awareness and fundraise is on the rise. But according to a first-ever survey of nonprofit leaders, co-sponsored by See3, there's still a big shortfall in funding available for good video projects. One key reason, the survey says, is that the nonprofit sector's senior executive leadership doesn't yet fully appreciate the critical power of visual storytelling — chiefly across new social networks — to help generate credibility, engagement and support for a cause.  "Video is becoming a requirement for nonprofits to compete effectively for new donor dollars online," Hoffman says. He said he founded the Do-Gooder awards "to help encourage the creation of more good films to raise more good money for more terrific causes across the digital landscape."

For more on the winners and to see the runners-up, check out the Do-Gooder site.

Got a favorite? Share it with us here at Cause Global!

--Marcia Stepanek