You’ll find no shortage of blog posts throwing stats at you about how video makes up some huge percentage of internet traffic, or gets some huge multiple more shares than text. I’m not going to do that here. Those numbers get copy-pasted from blog to blog every year, half of them are years old by the time you’re reading them, and none of them tell you whether your organization actually needs video right now.
Here’s what actually tells you something, what’s changed in the DC nonprofit and association world specifically, because that’s the market we actually work in every day.
RFPs and grant applications increasingly expect a video component or a case study reel, not as a bonus, as part of what a competitive proposal looks like now. Annual reports are pairing with a short video more often than they used to, because a board or a major funder skimming a PDF gets a very different impression than one watching thirty seconds of the program in action. Hybrid events didn’t quietly go away once in-person meetings came back, they became the permanent default, which means the quality of your livestream or your recap video is doing real work now instead of being an afterthought.
None of that is a global internet statistic. It’s what we’ve actually watched change, project by project, with the kind of organizations we work with. BUT here’s the honest test if you want one that actually applies to you: look at what your peer organizations are already doing. If the associations and nonprofits you consider your competition are showing up to board meetings, grant reviews, and member communications with video and you’re still sending a PDF, that gap is the real signal, not a Cisco stat from five years ago.
Video isn’t optional because a statistic said so. It’s worth taking seriously because the organizations you’re actually being compared against have already figured that out.
Working on a video project in the DC area?
We handle event videography in Washington, DC for conferences, galas, and annual meetings, and we can turn a single day of coverage into months of content. See our event videography packages, or learn how we approach corporate video production for organizations across the DC metro area.
