I nerd out with Diane Hatz, founder of Sustainable Table, talking about the difference between Slow Food and sustainable food, the secrets behind making a viral video, and why she believes "you can tell people there's a problem, unless you can offer a solution."

I recently wrote about Tu Diabetes' use of Twitter and the strategies the online community has employed to find and engage with new people.  Today, I want to take a look at another social media tool Tu Diabetes is using successfully: YouTube.

The next Net Tuesday San Francisco on September 9th will feature Nikki Serapio, the Director of Community Marketing for Involver. Involver facilitates companies and organizations building, launching, promoting, managing and monitoring video campaigns on social networks.

Chirag Shah, Special Projects Manager at Kiva.org, will also be on hand to talk about Kiva's experience using Involver.

If you don't live in the Bay Area, an audio recording of the speakers will be available on the NetSquared Podcast (thanks to David Collin) and a video will be posted on the NetSquared Blip TV Channel (thanks to Ross Chapman) after the event.

If you do live in the Bay Area, RSVP on Meetup, Facebook or Upcoming!

As we have said in previous post the power of the video have no limits. Just think about the images that we saw coming from the Beijing Olympics ceremony, or the images we saw coming from the quick war between Russia and Georgia.  But there are other important issues that go uncovered. There are heart-breaking stories that go unheard. What news networks tend to cover are the political side of the issues, but hardly the human side. The reason being that they think they are not news worthy.

Engaging the youth!

What does it take? Whether you're on the board, on staff, or a volunteer, this is on every nonprofit's mind. And if you're looking around yourself at all, you're attempting to plan ahead. Developing support for your nonprofit means communicating. A lot.

What about making people laugh?
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=529102816568&ref=nf

Online volunteering expert, Jayne Cravens, is looking for examples of online videos for new volunteers, like the one she created for the Aid Workers Network:

You can post your examples in the comments of her blog post, or send her an email using the contact information on her site.

I wanted to share with the NetSquared community a recent success we experienced at the Diabetes Hands Foundation.

By getting in the radar of YouTube's Nonprofits & Activism channel, we were able to get the video below (called "Drawing Diabetes: Diabetes Through the Eyes of Children") to be featured on it, resulting in more than 26,000 views.

We are very happy with the results and highly recommend making sure you contact the people (Sending them a Message through their YouTube channel page, once you have a video for their consideration) managing their Nonprofit Vlog.

The future of the media today truly is online. The amount of people switching to the internet for their daily habits such as reading the news, watching the news, shopping, research... everything can be found online, and can be used to our advantage. It shouldn't be any different for humanitarian-based initiatives. Non-profit organizations can use the internet and the power of voice and visual aid to their advantage online. That's where a website like www.goodtube.org can come in handy. It is completely non-profit, completely free to use, and is a channel for non-profits to use and share their videos with others.

Nikki Serapio of Involver left a comment on the July Net2ThinkTank question:  How Can Nonprofits Use Online Video to Raise Money? about Involver's Pilot Program that I thought you might want to know about:

"Just a heads-up to the social change community ... we recently launched a Pilot Program. We're accepting applications until Friday, August 15th.

The program is an opportunity for Involver to offer significant value through close one-on-one consulting. We want program participants to have an excellent user experience all around (in setting up custom video plugins, in creating their own branded Facebook applications, etc.), but we also want to make sure that, at the end, these initial campaigns are successful and reach and engage their intended audiences.

There are already numerous nonprofits that are using YouTube to raise money -- yours could be next. One way is through membership in the YouTube Nonprofit Program. Nonprofits who apply and are accepted have the opportunity to embed a Google Checkout button on their YouTube channel and viewing pages to drive fundraising.