What is the Youtube Nonprofit Program?

We’ve discussed that a Google for Nonprofits account has a whole host of benefits and one of those is access to the Youtube Nonprofit Program. Youtube is a massive video platform with engaged viewers, which makes it a major opportunity for you to make meaningful connections with supporters.

The Youtube Nonprofit program makes it even easier to use the platform to expand your reach and increase donations, and they’re always looking for new ways to help people fighting for social good. Best of all, accessing the program is free, so you’ve got nothing to lose!

In this article, we’ll give you a rundown of what features the program has to offer (or will be available soon) and how you can gain access to these tools.

For more general information on using Youtube as a nonprofit, check out our article 10 Tips to Improve Your Nonprofits Youtube Channel.

 What does the Youtube Nonprofit Program offer?

Access to Youtube’s Creator Academy

The Creator Academy and Youtube’s Social Impact page both provide information tailor-made to help you increase your outreach, convince people of your cause and gain donations using Youtube’s platform.

You can access easy to understand lessons and information on everything from how to properly set up your channel, how to make money through youtube and how to make a meaningful social impact.

If you make the most of these lessons, it will be easier than ever to optimise your channel and start raking in the benefits. After all, who knows how to use YouTube better than YouTube themselves!

Early Access to Creator Spaces

Youtube spaces are purpose-built locations that offer creators access to studios with the latest production resources, conference rooms, workshops held in the building and more, to take their videos to the next level.

Accessing the Youtube community this way can help you to increase your outreach, and Youtube studios allow you to make an incredible professional video for your channel.

The nonprofit program allows nonprofits to access these spaces once you have 1000 subscribers, regular channels have to get to 10,000 before they can benefit.

Once you’ve hit that goal, you can go on to the Youtube Space page to locate your closest (for UK nonprofits there’s one in London), then complete the online orientation and start accessing these amazing spaces!

This is a great opportunity to improve your channel with free resources for exactly what you need.

Link anywhere cards

You can add cards onto your videos to make them more interactive and link your viewers elsewhere. These are available to all Youtube channels but the nonprofit program offers you the opportunity to add cards that link to any external page.

This is a great opportunity for you to drive viewers towards your donation page, or to your website for more information.

Use link anywhere cards wisely. Add calls to action on appropriate videos using cards linking to dedicated landing pages related to that videos content. For other videos, you could use a card to link to a page on your website with more information on the topic you’re covering.

Features yet to be released

Youtube is currently testing extra features to help nonprofits raise money. If you put in the effort making your channel as effective and popular as you can, you’ll be best positioned to make the most of these new features when they become available to everyone.

Youtube Giving is a suite of tools recently introduced to help nonprofits receive donations via Youtube. It is currently only available to US nonprofits and creators but should be released more widely soon.

Here are the main features of Youtube Giving and how they can help your nonprofit increase donations.

Fundraisers

Fundraisers will allow nonprofits to embed a campaign right next to their videos, meaning viewers just have to click a donate button to start donating right then and there.

This will make the donation process easier and more direct for supporters and so could seriously increase donations for your nonprofit.

Community Fundraisers allow multiple channels to display the same fundraiser, and raise money together for the same cause. This will display the total amount of money being raised by all of the channels involved.

You could use this tool to capitalise on influencer marketing, by contacting Youtube influencers and asking them to support your nonprofits campaign. Popular channels supporting your campaign could massively increase your outreach.

Campaign Matching

Campaign matchings allows fundraisers to receive matching pledges to their fundraiser from other creators and businesses on Youtube. These will be displayed within the fundraiser in order to inspire others to donate what they can.

This means if a Youtube creator starts a campaign for a nonprofit, others on Youtube can not only donate to that campaign but pledge to raise/donate the same amount. This could seriously multiply the amount of money raised for the chosen charity, which could be yours.

Super Chat for Good

When creators go live on Youtube, there is a message system for viewers to send comments that can be viewed by the creator, and the rest of the audience.

Super Chat means viewers can pay to boost their comment in a Livestream so that it is more likely to be seen by the creator.  A Super Chat comment is highlighted in a bright colour, and stays pinned in a visible spot in the chat for a longer amount of time than a normal comment (how long depends on how much you pay).

Super Chat for Good means the money paid can go directly to a campaign. So if you or a supporting creator start a campaign and enable Super Chat for Good on their live stream, whenever people pay to post a super chat, the money is donated to your cause!

This is a simple way for people to donate to your nonprofit by doing things they would do anyway.