Video Volunteers

Struggling to find the resources to make videos for your organization? YouTube Video Volunteers, which launched yesterday, allows organizations to empower YouTube users to create videos to promote their causes.

Ramya Raghavan, nonprofits and activism manager for YouTube, says though YouTube has had a nonprofit program since 2007, many organizations still struggle with content creation due to shortages of resources and money. At the same time, a large number of active YouTube users make videos about causes they care about. The Video Volunteers program acts as "a bridge between those nonprofits that need help in creating content and those users who were just talking about causes because they cared about them," Raghavan says.

Video Volunteers is powered by All For Good, a new Google program launched in partnership with the White House where citizens can find volunteer activities in their communities, share volunteer activities with friends, see what friends are interested in and track volunteer activities they're interested in.

"On All for Good you're going to find all sorts of volunteering opportunities," Raghavan says. "You'll find the traditional ones like going to a soup kitchen or volunteering at an animal shelter. But what we're trying to do at Video Volunteers is really expand the definition of service. So you can certainly go to the soup kitchen and the animal shelter, but you can also make a difference sitting in your bedroom in your pajamas making a video for a cause that you care about."

Nonprofits can post video volunteer opportunities on Idealist.org, VolunteerMatch or Serve.gov; using the words "Video Volunteer" in the post ensures it shows up on Video Volunteers' All for Good feed, where citizens who are interested in helping nonprofits can find video-specific information.

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