Using YouTube Annotations to Create Change

Causes.com has teamed up with YouTube to make your Causes campaign petitions, pledges, videos, and fundraisers easier to distribute to people outside of your community. The new feature provides the ability to add annotations to videos, allowing for your campaign links to travel right along with your multimedia content. From the official YouTube team blog:

In April, we announced the ability to crowdsource funds for creative projects with video annotations linking to Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Now we want to help you fundraise and raise awareness for causes you care about by teaming up with Causes, Change.org, RocketHub and DonorsChoose.org. You can now add annotations to your videos that send viewers directly to projects on these sites, which all use the power of crowds to create social change.

Sydney Fleischer, Director of Community and Support at Causes, noted that the new feature makes participating in a campaign — whether it’s signing a petition to support new legislation or donating to the nonprofit you care about most — a much more fluid experience. “If you have a video telling people why something is important, people want to take action right away. YouTube’s new feature is a great way to get people to do that whether they are on Causes, YouTube, Facebook, or wherever their video is placed. No matter where they find the video, they will be able to participate in the action.”

Many of our users, from independent community organizers to nonprofits, use videos as a vehicle to raise awareness around an issue or campaign. Jessica Dahl, Director of Campaigns at Causes, thinks the new tool will put the power in the hands of the video creator and the viewer. “YouTube is a powerful place to post videos that can teach and engage people on issues in a way that text and other mediums can’t. Videos get people excited or enraged about an issue but also leave people wanting to do something more. With annotations, we are now able to direct people to the next step so they can take the information and the learning that they gained from those videos and do something about it.”

Check out the step-by-step guide on how to create a YouTube annotation with your campaign or fundraiser. We’d love to know how you’re using the new tool. Feel free to comment here to keep us posted!

To learn more about the new YouTube annotations tool, visit the YouTube Creator Blog for more details.