Founded in February 2005, YouTube is the world’s most popular online video community, allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform and inspire others across the globe, and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers. YouTube allows users to upload and share video clips on YouTube and through websites, including social media sites, mobile devices, blogs, and e-mail. Users can see first-hand accounts of current events, relive their favorite TV moments, find videos about their hobbies and interests, discover new artists and filmmakers, and even uncover the quirky and unusual.
People watch hundreds of millions of videos a day on YouTube and upload hundreds of thousands of videos daily. Every minute, ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. Its user base is broad in age range (18-55), evenly divided between men and women and spans all geographies. 51% of YouTube users visit YouTube weekly or more often, and 52% of 18-34 year-olds share videos often with friends and colleagues.
Candidates and political parties are using YouTube to gain momentum and build support. Comedian Al Franken in Minnesota’s Senate race has his own channel. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sends videographers out to key states to profile Democratic Senate candidates in their ‘Road to Victory’ program. Results are compiled in a YouTube playlist and posted on a Google map on their website. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has been active as well, releasing video press releases often.
The Obama campaign has been using video since the beginning of the You Choose ‘08 program. In May, the Obama campaign posted its 1,000th video to YouTube. A dozen of Obama’s videos have over 500,000 views and the campaign posts about 2-3 videos a day.
The YouTube Insight tool shows a demographic analysis of your channel by region, age and gender. Candidates can use this tool to develop communities around content aimed at particular demographics and to evaluate their success. Check out this video about YouTube’s reporting tool, “Insight.”
Content on YouTube is organized through categories and tags. For example, you can subscribe to the tag “women” and all videos with that tag are automatically delivered to your YouTube inbox. Additionally, YouTube allows you to geo-locate videos—typing a particular location, (e.g. San Francisco) into the YouTube search bar will turn up videos from that location.
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Fundraise from Women on YouTube
YouTube is a particularly helpful tool for campaigns because it can inform women and encourage them to interact with their network by sharing powerful videos. Campaigns can educate women donors about a candidate by uploading videos of speeches, debates, town hall meetings, rallies, news appearances and other campaign events. 41% of online women donors have viewed the video section of a campaign website and 41% of female Internet users have watched some form of political video online. Campaigns have a tremendous opportunity to craft inspiring videos that will inform their supporters and potential contributors about their platform in the campaign’s own voice. These videos can then be forwarded to exponentially increase their impact.
To get started
Sign up at YouTube
YouTube Glossary
Save, collect, share, and blog videos
To Learn more about Fundraising
Create and maintain channels
Learn more about the Non-Profit benefits on YouTube
Visit the Non-Profit YouTube channel
