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My goal for the book is to end up in the center of three topics.

This book shows how non-profits can thrive by telling great stories.

• Learn what it takes to communicate a narrative in the digital space that gets results.
• Acquire and cultivate your audience at the same time.
• Further your organizations communication with engagement, connection and more donors.

I’m really excited to share this information and study with you very soon.

Sign up for our email list to be the first to be sent a chapter from the book before anyone else!

And check out the book page – The Non-profit Narrative

Here’s a picture:

With nearly 1,000 views in just 48 hours since it’s launch – we’re thrilled to be producing collaborative high quality shorts. Plus, Michael is bringing the funny!

Watch the short here.. and don’t forget to vote!

Ben Stiller and Stiller Foundation launched a video 2 weeks back about an organization involving Jennifer Aniston and the idea of her being naked. This video preys on the natural behavior on the web (that many people want to see her naked) and give it the old Bait and Switch (because she’s not going to be naked) I’m sure this results in some serious clicks.

Sadly, clicks are not the name of the game when it comes to donor development and brand champions. This video is a great grab for acquisition to a whole bunch of people that probably don’t get asked to help kids in Haiti. (Which is fantastic!) Here’s a breakdown on the video launch.

What he did that was great:

Splash – Using the star power super effectively, Stiller uses his and that of Anistons for fun and with purpose. I applaud Stiller for the brash nature of what he’s doing. The status quo is not getting it done in Haiti so bucking the system is a great start.

A Talkable Video – It’s highly sharable and because of the nature of the video saw exposure on morning talk shows and lots of blog posts. So many nonprofits just communicate facts and forget that they’re crafting a narrative around their brand. Stiller knows this and doesn’t forget.

What could’ve been better:

Nonprofit Youtube Channel – There’s great use of title cards at the end. They show where you can connect to the Stiller Foundation but it would’ve been super hot to allow users to just click the annotations in the video. I’ve written about Annotations inside YouTube videos before (Thanks again for talking about it Weber Shandwick, call me!) and they put a potential donor really close to engagement in your campaigns. Any 501(c)3 can apply for one at google.com/nonprofits

What’s Next? – The question that is always asked. If I do decide to visit the site, the call to action is to support the foundation financially, also a bold move, but it looks like that’s it. There’s connection if I want to click to facebook or twitter (also good) but what about a call to join the email list? Is there an email list?? I couldn’t find one easily. What if in that email was a system of 2-4 auto-responders that explained why Ben felt so strongly to spend his money, effort and energy in this idea. That’s a great story and you’d have me hooked and I’d guess a lot more people too.

Interesting to note:

Impact – With nearly 2 Million followers on Twitter I’d expect a 2 week old video to have more impressions (call me picky). It’s a great video (for reasons mentioned above) but it tells me that the impact for cause related media is not why many of his followers are there. I’d be thinking through how to convert them from observers to participants.

PS. My favorite role of Stiller has to be Tony Perkis in Heavyweights.

A prequel to the Ocean’s franchise – Michael Jr shows what it looks like before Danny Ocean was involved.

As a continuation in his series of cinematic shorts like Blackberry, “O1″ takes it to the next level of funny.

Portnoy Media produced the video, coordinated the shoot and brought in top notch talent to make it possible.

We’re pleased to continue our partnership with Michael Jr. Check out his site here