Live Streaming For Nonprofits – 5 Tips For Successful Live Video Fundraisers

Are you looking for tips on live streaming for nonprofits? That’s a noble cause, and it deserves some attention.

There are several benefits of live streaming for nonprofits or charitable causes. For one, their reach allows you to be in front of thousands of people.

Second, your overhead costs are negligible.

Third, you get excellent engagement and support through live streams. When live streaming for nonprofits, you get to put a “face” to your organization (or for your cause). Plus, it helps replicate the magic of attending in-person fundraising events.

More than 18% of Americans stated that supporting individuals and organizations is important for them -- across different causes such as disaster relief, animal protection, global health, environment, education, and medical research.

Nearly 3 out of 4 adults are willing to raise money for causes they believe in. An average American supports 4.5 charities, and more than 69% of Americans give charitably.

On top of the main advantages of live streaming for nonprofits (mentioned above), you also get to be authentic, develop trust, and deliver a more personal experience to your supporters.

Here are a few tips to help nonprofits with live streaming to reach more donors and rally more support for your causes:

Live Streaming For Nonprofits: 5 Tips For Successful Live Video Fundraisers

1. Start Small. Start Easy.

To succeed with live streams for nonprofits, all you need to do is to start. Start with a low budget, pick the essential live streaming gear, and sign up for StreamYard.

With StreamYard, you can live stream to multiple destinations such as YouTube Live, Facebook Live, LinkedIn Live, and even custom RTMP destinations to help reach more supporters.

You can also interview guests in your nonprofit live streams, play background music, use different backdrops, add overlays, and much more to liven up your broadcast.

2. Take Your Live Streams Seriously

Treat virtual fundraising events and live streams as large-scale, in-person events. Imagine that each event will be attended by the world’s “who’s who,” the press, media, and celebrities.

Once you take your live streams seriously, there’s a tangible gravity to your live streams that you can’t get otherwise.

Whether you are working alone as a solo fundraiser for events you care about or an organization, you can take your events to a whole other level. Here are some ways.

• Create a buzz around your nonprofit live streams
• Put in the work to consistently promote your live streams (even if they are for a nonprofit cause)
• Bring in the power of collaboration by letting the world know (and share about your events) on social media
• Make it easier for people to share on social media -- use appropriate graphics, create hashtags relevant to your event (and your brand), and get the word out about your nonprofit live broadcast

3. Keep Looking For Nonprofit Live Stream Ideas 

Did you know that the ever-so-popular Ice Bucket Challenge that went viral on social media a few years ago was a nonprofit event? The Motor Neurone Disease Association (MND) Association raised £6.8 million from the “Ice Bucket Challenge.”

There are at least 25 such viral fundraising events you could quickly read about here. In the United States, you can note what some of the most popular and top 100 charities do.

Take a cue from some of the most popular fundraising events that you might know of.

Here are some fundraising event ideas for nonprofit live streams you can borrow for your event.

4. Promote Your Live Streams [Before, During, And After] 

To promote your live stream for nonprofits, consider these basics:

• Blog Regularly: Write articles and blog posts about events, trends, and insights related to events or nonprofit causes. This should be a regular endeavor -- publishing 1X, 2X, or 3X weekly.
• Search Optimization: Optimize each live video for search engines, aided by some effort upfront -- such as appropriate keyword research, choosing the right titles, and following a few more SEO best practices listed in this handy guide.
• Social Media: With multiple platforms and networks available for you, pick a cluster of social media channels most appropriate for the kind of audience you’d like to reach while doing live streams for nonprofits. Share updates on social media, engage with others on social media, and distribute the content (such as blog posts, original social updates, videos, and live streams) regularly.
• Repurpose And Reuse Content: Each recorded live stream session or event becomes a video that you could broadcast to YouTube and other platforms. Your nonprofit live streams can then be split into smaller segments to allow you to share on social networks. You can also turn videos into blog posts or even podcasts. Here are more ideas on live stream repurposing that you can try.
• Use Email Marketing: For all of the effort you take (above), in addition to actually doing live streams for nonprofit causes, you’ll now steadily build up some traction -- traffic, regular attendees for your live streams, and people visiting or consuming your content. At this point, you’d need to collect email addresses (so that your audience is in your control). Check out this guide to learn more about collecting email signups during live streams.

If you want to learn how to promote your live stream for more live viewers, watch this video:

5. Engage & Ask When Live Streaming For Nonprofits

When you are live streaming for nonprofit causes, focus on not only engaging your viewers but also asking them to take action.

Primarily, you would want to ask your audience for donations. Your viewers must know the causes you represent and with which live streams, virtual events, and all of your content are aligned. Then, it would be best to ask for donations and state clearly how these proceeds and funds help.

Engage and ask for funds to help support charitable causes by using:

• A mix of visual cues by utilizing banners, lower-thirds, scrolling tickers, live stream backgrounds, live stream graphics, live stream overlays, and so on
• Actual voice requests you’d make (before, during, and after) live streams, often repeating that any help would be appreciated
• Leading viewers to take action by inviting them sign up to your email list, have them scan a QR code, or click on a link to take action

Check out this video to learn more about interacting with your viewers and other guests in your live video fundraisers:

Conclusion

With these handy live streaming tips for nonprofits, when will you go live?

Join our official community of live streamers and find more tips to deepen engagement, generate more revenue, and improve overall fundraising.