Documenting the Indirect Impact Of Your Nonprofit’s Work

One of the biggest challenges our clients face is documenting the human impact of the work that they do, especially when they are policy-oriented.   As opposed to a direct-service organization, it is harder for them to demonstrate the impact of their work.  They feel inclined to resort to programmatic videos explaining what they do and how they do it. Yet those have little emotional appeal and often fail to use the medium of film effectively.  One of our clients, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has a broad policy goal of strengthening the US-Israel relationship. For its annual conference, which attracts over 14,000 participants and nearly two-thirds members of Congress, we conceived of a video series that would demonstrate the human impact of the organization’s large policy goals. We looked for strong single character stories with emotional appeal to connect the audience. The other critical criteria was that the characters we documented were impacted in some way by collaboration between the US and Israel.

In “Feeding the Future”, we told the story of one agronomist, who with training from development agencies USAID and MASHAV, is helping small scale farmers grow their agriculture more productively. In “Protecting Lives”, we told the story of one young Iron Dome battery operator who is protecting his small community from rocket fire with the US-funded anti-missile system. In each video, we avoided mentioning the organization specifically nor did we make overt statements about country collaboration. Rather, we used the visual medium of film to tell the emotional story and let the framework of the conference and website to provide the organizational specifics.  This gives the video the room to do what video and film does best: express emotion and enable human connection.  And by establishing this emotional connection, we are better able to impress upon the audience the impact of this organization’s work.

Feeding the Future: For an Ethiopian agronomist, change comes from the ground.

Protecting Lives: A Soldier Protects His Home From Rocket Attacks

Restoring Hope: Innovative Technology Enables a Man To Walk Again

So if you work for a non-profit organization that has a broad policy agenda, don’t be afraid to document the stories that represent the indirect impact of the work you do. Tell the human stories, not the programmatic story. Because in doing so, you are more effectively connecting your audience with the work that you do, and why it’s so important.