Good Works Grapevine

Recently, YouTube created a new channel for non-profits and as a promotion offered a free video camera to the first 300 organizations to sign-up. As this seemed like a great opportunity (and what group couldn’t use a new video camera?) - I signed us up. This took place around Christmas. About a week later, I received an email advising us that we had been approved - Yea! So I immediately set-up our channel, added our favorite videos, customized the look - the works. To date, we have not been “added” to their Non-Profit Channel. I started poking around the Web to find that many non-profits have had issues with this new program. I have tried contacting YouTube about the issue, but can’t seem to get anyone who can help. I did find a lovely lady through Facebook.com that is having the same issue and actually had the number of a human at YouTube that she has been calling (poor guy). So she has taken on my cause as well to try to get us posted. We haven’t received a mention of a video camera (let alone the actual camera). I’m pretty sure we were one of the first 300. So this leads me to ask…While I’m sure that YouTube’s intentions are good - execution is key. Are they truly ready to support the needs of non-profits? YouTube is an effective, wonderful resource for non-profits to spread their message, attract donors and members and have fun doing it. But, lack of support and technical bugs may be the channel’s downfall. These organizations have a difficult time making time to set-up and maintain a YouTube account, much less chase down problems.

So, I am still hopeful that they will get their act together (and that I’ll hear from them soon), but the jury is still out on whether this program will be an asset to the non-profit community.