Lever for Change initiatives require applicants to submit a short video with closed captioning. Full guidelines for the video are included in the application. The following resources showcase example videos and provide technical guidance on creating and captioning videos.

Requirements:

You are required to submit a video that captures your organization’s work and its track record. The video is an opportunity to showcase your passion and to pitch your story in a succinct format. We want you to share your vision with reviewers in a way that is different from the written proposal format. This does not need to be a professionally produced video; a video shot on a smartphone is acceptable.

In order to complete this part of your application, your team will upload a short digital film using YouTube.

Please ensure the “Allow Embedding” setting on your video is enabled and set the Privacy Settings on your video to Public or Unlisted – do not set them to Private. This will be viewed by peer and Evaluation Panel Reviewers of the initiative.

Your video may be extracted from your submission and made available to the public and other donors. Appeal to a broad audience. Video submissions should follow these guidelines or else it will render the registration ineligible:

• A length of no more than 90 seconds.
• Your video must be in English.
• Your video must be captioned. Please refer to these instructions about YouTube video captions.
• Your video should not contain any images of individuals who have not given their permission to be part of the submission and should not contain images of children (under age 18) without express parental consent.
• Your video should not include any copyrighted material (including, but not limited to, music) for which you do not have a license.

Here are general suggestions for delivering a high-quality video pitch:

• Introduce yourself and your organization.
• Describe your community, including what shared geography, shared identity, and/or shared needs define it.
• Describe the obstacle(s) to improved well-being faced by individuals and/or families in your community.
• Explain your organization’s approach to addressing the obstacle(s) and describe your success in doing so.

Please Note: while we appreciate high-quality pitches, we do not require videos with high production values. We do not expect you to spend a lot of time of money on producing a pitch. It will not affect how your your application is evaluated.

Examples of effective videos from past Open Calls can be found here.