You see it all the time. An organization collects video stories from advocates and then drops them all onto a webpage where they gather dust in the hopes of someone coming to visit them.
Storytelling videos are a great tactic. But, they’re just that, a tactic. The key to maximizing their impact is thinking through what you want the videos to achieve and which strategies they will support. This should happen before your advocates ever hit record.
Here are three high-impact ways to use video stories that will make your advocates and your ask impossible to ignore.
Use Case #1: Pre-lobby day introduction to Capitol Hill staff
Let’s warm up those Hill staff meetings before your advocate arrives in Washington. The week before your fly-in, have your advocate record a short video (up to 60 seconds) introducing themselves, associating themselves with your organization and mentioning that they look forward to meeting with the lawmaker’s staff next week.
Keep it personal and simple. No issues, no ask. You don’t want the office to cancel the meeting because they feel like they’ve already heard the pitch.
The advocate should send a personal email with a link to the video to the appropriate legislative assistant (LA) in each office they’ll be meeting with. Even if the advocate ends up meeting with the legislative correspondent (LC) instead, when they pass the information along, the LA can now put a face to the name. That kind of relationship-building has real value long after lobby day is over.
Use Case #2: Recruit for your highly-engaged advocate program
Your current advocates are your best salespeople when it comes to recruiting for your highly-engaged advocate program (e.g., ambassadors, champions). Too often, recruitment campaigns come in the form of long emails or over-stuffed web pages that drone on and on about the benefits and responsibilities of the role.
Instead, ask one of your current advocates to record a video explaining how the program has been meaningful to them and the impact it’s allowed them to have. Let that video be the feature of your recruitment page. You can still include all of those program details, but move them lower on the page where passionate recruits will still find them.
There’s a reason so many organizations use peer-to-peer fundraising. The approach works. Let’s leverage a video story to recruit that next great Ambassador, too.
Use Case #3: Make your leave-behinds more dynamic
If Capitol Hill staff had a nickel for every bullet-point, data-driven fact sheet they received from an organization, they’d be able to fund their boss’s re-election campaign. So let’s make that leave-behind more interesting and expand the reach of your advocate’s story.
Ask your advocate to record a short video that includes their personal story and your legislative ask. Have them explain the “street-level impact” of the issue — how passing your bill will benefit an individual person or company in that lawmaker’s district.
Then add a QR code to your fact sheet linking to the video. Yes, it requires creating custom pages for each lawmaker, but there is strong value to putting a face and story to the facts. And if you’re already using AI, it can make the task even easier.
You know that lawmakers love stories from their constituents, so let’s give them what they want.
💡Bonus: This can be a great first step for helping that advocate secure an in-district meeting during recess.
Maximize the power of your video stories
Video stories can be a powerful way to influence lawmakers and build relationships with their staff. Maximizing that power means collecting and deploying those stories in a strategic way that is fully aligned with your campaign plan.
Today’s tools make these stories easier than ever to collect, whether you’re using Quorum’s built-in video tool, a third-party application like Gather Voices or Vocal Video, or just asking your advocate to use their cell phone.
Your advocates have stories to tell. Let’s get them to the people who need to hear them.
Brian Rubenstein, president of Rubenstein Impact Group, helps nonprofit organizations build powerful grassroots programs by increasing volunteer engagement in advocacy campaigns and developing sustainable volunteer leadership programs. You can follow him on LinkedIn at in/brianrubenstein and contact him at [email protected].
