Sarah ArcherProfessional Speaker, Organisational Consultant & Coach, Lemon Squeeze Limited · International Speaker | Speaking Coach | Top 1% Podcast Host | Helping Organisations Unlock Business Transformation & Growth Through Strategic Storytelling | Helping Experts & Business Authors Nail th

Does Your Speaker Reel Have This?

16 Jun 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:34

In this segment, the speaker explains how documentary filmmaking techniques can be applied to nonprofit fundraising videos. She emphasizes the need to construct a compelling, human‑focused narrative that evokes emotion and motivates viewers to engage with the organization, even if it doesn’t directly result in a million‑dollar donation. She outlines the process of building a “human case” from start to finish, drawing on her background in documentary work and noting that she now shares these insights as a speaker at RailsConf.

Chapters

When you're making a documentary for nonprofits that need to raise a lot of money, need to raise $1 million for the weekend or for the video, you have to build a pretty compelling case that this is a nonprofit that's worth giving money to. So you have to create a story that is compelling enough to evoke emotion in someone. And it doesn't equate to a million-dollar check for a donation, but it does equate to emotional engagement in that video, which equates to, oh, I wanna talk to this person. How, how do we build that very human case from start to finish? Which is what I did. I did documentary and now I do and speak at RailsConf.