While packing your bags to head off to camp this summer, don’t forget your video camera(s)! You’re already going to take lots of great photos. You’re probably already planning to get some basic video footage of kids at camp and the incredible sunset over the waterfront, too. If not, please read this recent blog post from Socialbrite that discusses steps for creating video stories for nonprofits. The 8 minute video and 6 easy steps will help you get some great video this summer. If you have already been making videos at camp, the blog post still has a lot of tips to help you make your efforts even more effective.

There are a few points from this blog post that especially resonate with camp:

1. Camp is an ideal time to interview campers, staff, alumni, board members, and donors about what makes camp so special to them. Personal stories are ideal for communicating the unique impact of camp. You can record short videos and longer written stories to be used in eNewsletters and blog posts. For example, Herzl Camp’s Alumni blog offers good examples of stories and insights from alumni themselves. All of these stories can be collected while at camp.

2. Do you have a virtual tour of camp on your website or Facebook Page? You can easily take a Flip Camera and a basic script to show online visitors what is special about camp. Ideally, the video tour would be broken up into short segments, focusing on story.

3. Be ready with your camera for special events at camp. Have any reunions planned? Visiting Day? Other special celebrations? These are fertile ground for collecting stories and images that can be shared all year long.

4. If you haven’t already done so, consider asking campers to thank donors on video. They can be edited and merged to create powerful stewardship messages.

What can we do with all these videos?

Once camp is over, you’ll have a treasure trove of pictures, videos, stories, etc. that you can use all year long to help engage your constituency. Want to post a video montage of campers thanking donors for their gifts? You’ve got it. Hoping to share a story of alumni and what they are doing today? You’ve got it.

Of course, all that content can actually seem a bit overwhelming. Don’t worry – there is a simple way to help you spread out all of this great content over both time and various communications channels: the Content Calendar.

Content Calendar

A Content Calendar simply allows a team to plan what content to distribute when and via what channels. It can be as simple as a shared Outlook or Google Calendar. It could also include additional details about what content can be shared over multiple channels. Do whatever makes your work most effective.

Things to consider:

1. What is the best use of the content? Is it great for recruitment? Stewardship of donors? Solicitation? Or multiple uses?
2. How should it be communicated? Is it a simple photo that can be posted on Facebook or via Twitter? Is it a long-form story that should be blogged and sent via an eNewsletter? Can it be repurposed over various channels?
3. When will this have the most impact? Would it be great to use the story or photo to kick off the Annual Campaign? Could it help garner interest for next year’s Alumni reunion? Would it be an incredible touchpoint in stewarding legacy donors?

The important thing to consider today is: how do we capture this content? If you don’t capture the content this summer, you won’t even have the option of engaging your constituencies in this way. So get your cameras out and get those videos and stories!

by Natasha Dresner

One Summer seven years ago, a major Jewish philanthropist had a few visits with a Jewish Summer Camp in the Berkshires. Those visits wound up putting nonprofit Jewish Camping on the map and changed its landscape forever. How? Well, for starters, the philanthropist was none other than Harold Grinspoon. But even more importantly than that, the camp scheduled the visit and then showed and told him their story in a way that resonated with his personal and philanthropic interests.

Soon after those visits, Harold created the Grinspoon Institute for Jewish Philanthropy, which at last count provides 74 Jewish nonprofit Summer camps and over 800 of their professional and lay leaders with free consulting services in Strategic Thinking and Planning, Board Development, Fundraising, and Technology, as well as Matching Challenge Grants, which to date have helped raise almost $60 million.

The point I want to impress upon you is that all of this started with a simple camp visit. I hear some camps say they’re too busy during the summer and can’t afford to do it. Well, I say you can’t afford NOT to. Not every camp has a Harold Grinspoon, but every camp has a major donor waiting to be invited, and you need to do it NOW!

Next to the fun, safe, and high quality summer camp experience you promised your campers and their families, engaging your major donors and prospects through special, individually tailored, and well-planned camp visits – whether for cultivation, solicitation, or stewardship – is the next most important thing lay and professional leadership must dedicate their time to. Now let’s focus on how.

The following five tips will help you have a successful visit. To learn more, join us on April 27^th at 1 PM EDT for a webinar, Show and Tell: Successful Camp Visits for Donors and Prospects.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good - all of the above tips should help ensure a great visit and a desirable outcome; a less than perfect visit is better than no visit at all.

Remember, it all starts with a single visit!

I recently picked up a copy of the Spring 2008 edition of the Amherst College Alumni magazine. The cover story was a profile of 15 different graduating seniors. Each profile included a picture and answers to a series of questions such as:

• What activities have you been involved in while at Amherst College?
• What will you do after graduation?
• What’s been your most defining experience of your four years at Amherst?

You can find these profiles online. Amherst College has also provided the option for ANY alumni to provide their own answers to the questions, to learn even more about their alumni and what they care about.

To make this their cover story is a big statement about the importance of these personal stories. Obviously the Amherst College Alumni Association feels that this information is a useful way to continue to build connectedness among their alumni.

I believe camps can harness the same power of the personal story.

One thing the camps truly have an abundance of is personal stories from their campers and alumni. Camp touches each camper in a unique way. Alumni, campers, and parents can all relate to these unique stories of camp experiences. These are stories that can and should be captured each summer. They can be captured as simple interviews with standard questions, as Amherst College did. They can incorporate formal pictures (like Amherst) or candid pictures of the camper/alumni while at camp. They can even be shared online on the camp website and/or at video sharing websites like YouTube as short video interviews. Obviously permission to share the camper’s information (from the parent and/or camper) must be granted.

No matter how the information is captured, it can be shared via the camp website, a camp blog, and/or an alumni eNewsletter.

There are many questions that could be asked of current campers and alumni about their experiences at camp. For example:

• What is your favorite camp memory?
• What is the greatest lesson you learned at camp?
• Do you plan to keep in touch with friends from camp? How?
• Etc.

There is a great side effect of this effort, too: Building connectedness with profiled campers before they even leave camp. Try it out and – as always – let us know about your successes and lessons learned.