Prompt to Help Nonprofits for Colorado Gives Day

(Copy/Pasted post I thought was valuable on LinkedIn)

Sunday. You're scrolling through your feed and see another nonprofit's Colorado Gives video.

Professional b-roll. Emotional testimonials. Perfect lighting. Text overlays that actually sync with the music. You think: "That probably cost them $3,000. We can't compete with that."

So what do you do? Post another photo carousel with stock images. Or skip video entirely. Or guilt-trip your program director who "took a videography class once" into spending their weekend filming something on an iPhone that ends up shaky and unusable.

Here's the reality: Video gets 10x more engagement than static posts. Donors remember stories they see, not paragraphs they skim. And Colorado Gives Day posts with video raise significantly more than posts without.

But hiring a videographer costs $2,000-5,000. Your staff doesn't have production skills. And nobody has time to learn Adobe Premiere before December 9th.

Here's what changed for me: AI video generation.

Not the janky, obviously-fake stuff from two years ago. I'm talking Sora (from ChatGPT) and Veo (from Gemini). These tools create broadcast-quality video from text prompts. No camera. No crew. No editing software.

You describe what you want. It generates it. Takes 5 minutes.

I used Veo last week to create a 30-second video showing families in a Colorado food pantry. Looked real. Felt emotional. Posted it. Got more engagement than our last 10 posts combined.

Here's the exact prompt:

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THE PROMPT (Copy-paste into ChatGPT with Sora access OR Gemini with Veo):

Create a 30-second video for Colorado Gives Day for [YOUR ORG NAME], a nonprofit that [YOUR MISSION, 1 sentence].

Video concept: [Describe what you want to show - "Families receiving support at our community center" or "Children in our after-school program learning and laughing" or "Seniors at our meal delivery program"]

The video should:

• Feel documentary-style and authentic, not corporate or staged
• Show real moments of impact and human connection
• Set in Colorado (mountains visible in background where appropriate)
• Use natural lighting and warm, hopeful tone
• Include diverse representation of the communities we serve
• End with text overlay: "Colorado Gives Day - December 9" and "Give at [YourOrgURL]"
• No dialogue needed, designed for sound-off viewing with emotional impact

Style: Cinematic but genuine. Like a professionally shot nonprofit documentary, not an advertisement.