Virtual Site Visits

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by Rachel L. Fisher - May 13, 2008

Introduction:
VirtualSiteVisit.org grew out of the Frieda C. Fox Family Foundation's experimentation with video and online promotion of its grantee Non Profit Organizations (NPOs). After several years of trials, errors, successes and research, we feel we have some valuable information to share about best practices in conveying the message and spirit of nonprofit organizations through multimedia and the web.

Through this website we will share information with NPOs and Foundations using two main teaching vehicles, How-To-Guides and Case Studies.

How-To Guides
Online technology changes so quickly that it's not always easy to keep up, and the latest tools often require new skills. There's a whole new breed of media tools and services, like YouTube, Flickr, RSS Feed Readers, Blogger and more.

But despite all the talk about how critical it is for the nonprofit sector to embrace these tools and run with them, we find a shortage of practical, step-by-step guides geared for the nonprofit practitioner. Time is a precious and limited commodity for the busy non profit professional, and we can't take time away from our core mission and services to struggle with new technologies and uncertain results.

So, to make it easier to venture into the world of Internet technologies, VirtualSiteVisit.org will create step-by-step how-to articles demonstrating both the basics and the details of how to get your message out on the internet, so you can concentrate on your message itself.

Case Studies
We all learn from experience, and so naturally we would like to share some of our experiences as a foundation, and the experiences of some of our NPO's so you can learn from them too. Consider this article our first case study - one on ourselves - a window into where we've been and how we got here.

Who is the Frieda C. Fox Family Foundation?:
The Frieda C. Fox Family Foundation supports NPO's in California's Los Angeles and Santa Clara Counties whose programs maximize the potential of children and youth. Named for Frieda Fox, a teacher, musician, mother and grandmother who shared her love of learning with all who knew her, this foundation is the loving tribute of four generations who hope to do the same. They envision all children having the strong and effective learning environments they need to encourage their talent, creativity and excellence independent of their families' household income or socio-economic status.

The Beginning:
The path to VirtualSiteVisit began with a site visit to the Diabetes Society of Santa Clara County, back in 2003. As the program was an educational summer camp, and it was fall, their Executive Director showed our Executive Director a short video to "experience" the camp.    But that video was prefaced with their E.D.'s warning - that they use more modern medical equipment than featured in the video. The video was nearly a decade old, and it showed. She then apologized for the outdated clothes and poor video quality. The organization as a whole came off "dated" and set in the past, but without the video, no prospective funder could see what the summer camp was like.

When this was reported back to the foundation's board, we began to brainstorm. The Foundation's founding donor thought to tap a Hollywood film company to help the Diabetes Society and several of the foundation's other grantees. So in 2003 the foundation collaborated with Film Garden to produce short documentaries as part of a filmmaker internship program, where non profits would provide the subjects for the aspiring filmmakers' projects.   Of the films the Greenhouse produced, 15 documentaries were produced for our grantees, each film was 7 - 12 minutes in length.

Then, the real learning started. Some films met the NPO's needs, others did not. The pieces were well done, so why didn't they all convey the message, the spirit, mission, or program goals well enough? We honed in on a few key areas for improvement. First, there can't be any gaps in communication between NPO and Producer. Second, the Producer must really "know" the organization and understand the intended audience and how the video will be utilized to advance the NPO's stated needs. Third, the Producer must collaborate through the whole process with the NPO to make videos that are on-message, informative and powerful. Fourth, a better dissemination tool is needed than a a few copies of a video on DVD and no plan how to distribute next.

The Foundation was inundated with requests to fund DVD replication so they could mail the video to their sponsors. But there was no way for them to know if this was really beneficial or cost-effective, and often the DVDs were placed on a shelf and brought out only during site visits or special events. This was not a good use of funds or resources for the nonprofits or the FCFox Foundation. We knew that there were many ways these videos could be beneficial to the organizations, and now we had to ask ourselves "Is there a way to spend a little more time and money to make the larger amount of resources that we have already put into the project more meaningful and effective"?

Taking The Next Step:
With several of the foundation's active participants in the Silicon Valley and the technology sector, it was a logical move for the foundation to bring the videos online, hosting them so that they could be seen by a much wider audience with minimal added costs. In 2005 the bandwidth expenses and knowledge to host a video on a website meant a lot of work and money for each nonprofit video. If the Foundation acted as the "hub," we could invest once and provide the service to each NPO video recipient, to avoid each reinventing the wheel. We could promote our grantees, and feature them on our website, to reach their constituents and attract additional foundations and other funders.

In January 2006, shortly after launching our video hosting, foundation members attended a Council on Foundations conference. While preparing for the conference, Kevin Fox and I came up with the idea to load a few of the most recent videos onto our (newly released) video iPods.   That way, we could take the videos with us in our pockets.   The attention we received was amazing.

We were quick to realize that how powerful this tool would be for an NPO. Getting a potential funder to come for a site visit is the hardest step in the funding cycle. Being able to bring the site visit to them in a compelling and effortless way is an extremely powerful tool for our grantees.

Now an NPO could go to a donor meeting with the organization's video in hand, or be ready at any moment for an elevator pitch. It was now possible to plug into most TVs to show off the organization to create interest and generate new volunteers and donor-advocates. It really started us thinking.

We started looking at which videos did best online and on the iPod. How long were they? What was the right balance of statistics and heart? Were there better ways to present the most pertinent information in a short period of time?

At this point we came full circle back to the Diabetes Society. While parts of their documentary were good, they could not use it to show parents or children, because the tone was off for the message they were trying to convey.   They had been seeking a video to promote their summer camps program, and gain the trust of parents that their children would be well cared and safe in professional care of doctors and nurses while at the camp. The children could have fun, and LEARN about how to manage their diabetes and BE with children who faced the same challenges, perhaps for the first time in their lives.

Their documentary focused on issue awareness and how difficult diabetes is, which parents and potential campers already knew. The video needed to drive home the activities and safety aspects in a positive and upbeat way – the way the Diabetes Society approaches the problem.

Looking at the situation, the Fox Foundation's first question was, "how can we fix this without completely starting over?" We offered to try.

The Process:
My artistic background was in theatre and photography, not videography, but I had been playing around with Apple's iMovie over the previous few months and decided to give it a try. My Masters degree is in Arts Management from Carnegie Mellon, and I've worked with NPOs. Dana Marcus has experience as a teacher, lawyer, NPO development director, educator and foundation director. Together, we had a VERY focused perspective on the needs of nonprofits the Frieda C. Fox Family Foundation serves.

We also brought in James Noah, Professor Emeritus of Public Relations and Journalism as well as former Director of Public Relations at San Jose University. Jim graciously offered his time and expertise pro-bono. The team honed in on what were the successful and less successful aspects of short and mobile videos, and focused on short pieces that proved effective in online environments. The key was getting between 3 and 5 minutes, and getting to the point quickly and directly. Jim's years of experience crafting messages would prove a valuable asset.

I'll go more into the step-by-step details of how to build a video in another article, but for the purposes of this case study I will give a brief description of the process that we found successful.

We had several initial meetings with key staff at Diabetes Society where we discussed the intended uses of the video, and the message and key points they needed to convey.

We looked at the documentary and identified which parts (both audio and visual) worked

After getting the necessary permission to use the footage already in the prior video with credits given, I used iMovie to cut the video in pieces. I separated out the audio and video and further split them into pieces, keeping the pieces that worked.

Because the original video was longer than than what we were planning to build I had enough quality audio to craft our message, but we needed more visual assets. Working with the Diabetes Society's archives, we collected photography from many of their summer camps as well as statistics about their services and quotes from campers and their families, all of which could be used for the video.

I arranged, crafted and worked through the data as much as I could on my own and then, through a series of meetings with the FCFox team as well as Diabetes Society, we worked through a few rounds of drafts, leading up to a final product that all were happy with.

We hosted the video online and linked to it from the Diabetes Society website.

The video became an effective tool that staff could show to parents of potential campers, as well as their doctors and nurses, who in turn could make their other patients aware of the program or volunteer for the program themselves. Moreover, it has become an excellent awareness tool for getting potential individual donors and foundations interested in the program. This became our first real Virtual Site Visit.

Next, we wanted to create a multi-media piece from scratch, without depending on video. None of us were experienced videographers, but we had success in the first piece with text and photos, so that was our starting point. We chose to work with Fox Foundation grantee, Project H.E.L.P. in Sunnyvale, California. Their needs were urgent, as interest was coming in from everywhere, including the California Department of Education, so a mobile, visual "elevator pitch" would be a compelling tool. Dana set up our first meeting to discuss the message needs and goals for the piece. We then we set up site visits where I visited several classrooms over a few days. I borrowed a audio recorder, took my camera and dove in to begin to understand the program, documenting along the way. Through our talks, we had all agreed to focus on the story of one family in the program. Project HELP chose a family that they had worked with for several years, who I then met and talked to. With ample material, we began the process of building another video. We found ways to animate the piece and keep viewers engaged even without recorded video. In the process, we found that when the visuals aren't constantly animated, the viewer has a greater opportunity to listen and understand the data better.

Our second Virtual Site Visit was done.

How were these received?
As we continued building and editing videos, hosting online, and promoting the use of portable media players (predominantly iPods) to increase the value of the videos, we started getting questions from nonprofits and foundations alike. "Who created these for you?" "How do you do this?"

The 'how' was not something we could answer easily or in a thorough manner over the phone or email but we did our best to point people in the right direction. In the meantime, we kept experimenting with our own videos, finding ways to make them more effective and engaging. We took photos, and wrote text. We asked the NPO's for their favorite photos and statistics. We experimented with online promotional campaigns and Google AdWords ads with our nonproft Jeremiah's Promise. We experimented with YouTube as it got bigger, and we made lists of the web technologies we wanted to explore in the future because they seemed to show promise for nonprofit use. Over the two years we have been doing this, we have received many more requests from NPOs asking for videos than we could handle ourselves.

We do not take applications for video grants. Our foundation works only with our current grantees, with a preference towards those grantees whom we have funded for several years. Because of an open door policy that Dana Marcus set up early in the foundation's life, many of our nonprofits call or email to ask us questions when they have a problem that we might help with. This keeps us privy to current events at our grantee organizations, and provides Dana with a unique opportunity to identify organizations who could best benefit from a video or online resource right when they most need it.

This system works for us, and it may work for other small foundations, but is not a one-size-fits-all. We hope to hear from other foundations and NPOs about their variations on the theme. We hope this site will be a venue to teach what we know geared specifically for the non -profit sector.

Articles up next:
I can't promise a new article every day or every week, but we will be as diligent as we can, posting new unique content as well as sharing the content we find on the web that others are putting out there. Don't worry, we won't just say "you should use YouTube." we'll show you how to use YouTube effectively, and provide step by step instructions how to embed your video in a webpage so you can show your own page, logo and information without other distractions on the YouTube site.

We're excited, and so are our featured NPO partners, so here we go!
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