2012 TechSoup Digital Storytelling Challenge

1. 2012 TechSoupDigital Storytelling Challenge Metrics + Learning

2. Intro The third annual TechSoup Digital Storytelling Challenge took place in February 2012, and involved: • 3 video production webinars, led by Lights. Camera. Help. • 1 Nonprofits Live Interactive Online Show • 3 live Tweet Chats • Special/dedicated digital storytelling page • 4 Main Judges Award categories • 9Honorable Mentions • 2 Community voted “Audience Choice” photo and video awards Overall, this year’s event had a huge increase not only in the number of entries, but also to traffic to the TSDigs page, global participation, and community engagement. Here are some of the results:

3. Entries There were 261 submissions for the Digital Storytelling Challenge. Of those, 206 were videos and 55 were photo entries. 59 came from organizations/individuals registered with TechSoup. For comparison, that is over double of the submissions from the 2011 Challenge (+151%), and almost double (+46%) the amount of participation of TechSoup members.

4. Webinars Although Webinar participation was strong, it was one part of the Challenge which we saw decline. There were a total of 911 participants across the three webinars and one Nonprofits Live events. In 2011, there were 1,263 participants for two webinars. Of the webinar participants, 31 submitted entries and 61 made donation requests. This is an increase from last year, where only 16 received donations.

5. Storytelling Main Page This year, we purchased “TSDigs.org” and redirected to the main storytelling page on TechSoup, replacing tiny.cc/tsdigs. Besides being easier to remember, we believe this helped in sharing. The page was viewed 10,482 times during the month of the campaign, up from 2,763 for the campaign last year.

6. Summary Overall, 388 registered organizations were involved in the 2012 Digital Storytelling Challenge, either by attending a webinar, entering a digital story, or receiving a donation after visiting a digital storytelling page or resource. Although the number of registered organizations decreased from 519* in 2011, the number of first time registrations, first time ordering, and number of donation requestsincreased. Donation requests of featured products also doubled, from 21 to 47. *The number of registered orgs participating in 2011, was also calculated differently and should not necessarily be compared “apples to apples” to this year’s TSDigs Challenge.

7. Snapshot

8. TechSoup Members & Donations

9. Event Dates

10. SocialMedia

11. Twitter

12. #TSDigs Impressions

13. Twitter + Community Community Guest TweetingNew way to involve and showcase partners and experts. Guest HostingCoordinated with #commbuild chat to host storytelling themed chat during TSDigs and TechSoup was the guest host.

14. Insights • TweetChats still proved to be a good way to promote TSDigs and engage participants. • No significant difference in rate of growth of social channels. Perhaps next year look at ads or specific ways to drive subscribers. • This year more focused on tweet chat theme and inviting topic professionals, vs. last year having guest expert. Both work. • Kept time to 11am to match the webinars, which was good for simplicity, but next year would like to look at co-organizing with global partners or participating in at least one different time to support broader geographic participation. • Guest tweeting Thursday turned out to be a great way for us to involve and showcase Lights. Camera. Help. even more and was positively received by the community and person guest tweeting.

15. Facebook Demographics 59%Female 39% Male 73% 25 – 54 y.o. Talking about TechSoup 2,709: Engaged 61,678: Mentions Total Reach (Based on Unique/Day) 137,242 Countries United States Canada Estonia United Kingdom India Australia Romania Cities San Francisco New York, NY Washington DC Los Angeles Oakland Chicago Tallinn, Harjumaa, Estonia

16. Insights • Users seem to be more social media savvy and saw we were tagged more in posts. • Skewed 20% more female, last year was closer to 50/50. • Social media seems to be reflective of offline TechSouppresence – San Francisco represented highest, and global partners Australia and Romania in top 10 countries. • We did not place ads this year, and still had the comparable growth rate.

17. Post-Event Survey(135 Responses) How did you hear about TSDigs? What was your involvement with TechSoupbefore TSDigs? 13% Learned about TechSoup through TSDigs.16% New Members 26% Received donated products Email continues to be number one way people learn about TSDigs/events.

18. Post-Event Survey *Survey sent to 1000+ who participated in any part of TSDigs (webinar, entered digital story, tweet chat, forum, judge, etc.). Percentages based on 135 who answered. Results are a good sampling, but should not be used as only indicator of effectiveness of certain TSDigs features/programs (eg, SecondLife/Nonprofit Commons).

19. Suggestions/Comments(from post-event survey) “The learning opportunities were very helpful. More great trainings please!” “More webinars on how to get best content.” “I love Tech Soup, but often I don't feel like I can take full advantage of all it has to offer due to too much to do, too little time.” “The promotion to enter the contest was great and staff responded quickly. The screening went well. The contest website, layout and voting system needs improvement.”

20. Kudos "Thank you for this opportunity. Kids love making videos!" -Los Alamitos Youth Center, Inc. "Thanks for having the contest! This was very much a learning process for me. It was my first time using this video editing software." -National Forest Foundation "Thank you so much for motivating us to tell and share our story with the world!" -Starfire Council

21. Thank you! -Online Community & Social Media Team