Have a great visual story? Enter the DoGooder Awards

Annual video contest now open, with winners unveiled at NTC

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, educators, video producers, multimedia specialists, storytellers.

All of a sudden, it feels as if nonprofit video storytelling is busting out all over. Tonight I’ll be heading into San Francisco for the Storytellers for Good film festival and fundraiser.

Over at TechSoup Global, the annual Digital Storytelling Challenge begins April 1 — here are the details (though the TechSoup website is experiencing a planned temporary outage).

And the 7th DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards opened for entries on Tuesday.

As in past years, the multimedia consulting firm See3 Communications, YouTube and NTEN are teaming up for the contest. They’re accepting submissions now through March 22.

For the first time ever, they’ve expanded the contest to accept submissions from individuals who are making videos to change their communities or the world. So if you’re a YouTube creator trying to save the whales one video at a time, or if you made a video on behalf of your favorite nonprofit this year, visit YouTube.com/DoGooder to nominate your video.

There are four separate categories in this year’s DoGooder Awards: the ImpactX Award for videos that drove clear real-world impact; Best Nonprofit Video; Funny for Good, recognizing effective use of comedy; and the Change Agent Award, for individuals who’ve gotten involved and produced their own cause-focused video.

Prizes include $3,500 in grants, free admission to the Nonprofit Technology Conference and an appearance on the YouTube home page April 12. Here’s a big ol’ video that explains the contest.

The winners will be announced next month at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Minneapolis.

Want some inspiration to get started? Here are last year’s winning entries.

Visit the contest website and submit your videos today! Here are the contest rules.

Bonus: A daily dose of inspiring, dynamic storytelling

Want to get a daily dose of nonprofit video goodness? Check out See3’s Daily DoGooder Widget. Our friends at See3 say:

Our new Daily DoGooder Spark widget curates fresh video content direct to your site. All you have to do is a single embed and we’ll do the rest! Videos will aggregate over the course of the week, so viewers can peruse more compelling content and share through social media.

Share it with your team members or your readers.

And hope to see you at the DoGooder Awards in Minneapolis next month (yep, I’ll be there)!JD Lasica, founder and former editor of Socialbrite, is co-founder of Cruiseable. Contact JD or follow him on Twitter or Google Plus.