So far only a handful of nonprofits have experimented with virtual reality. But that may change as the technology gains traction in gaming and journalism and the price of headsets comes down. People who have used virtual reality for social-good projects share their advice for nonprofit leaders considering the new technology.
Make sure virtual reality is a good fit for your project.
The best topics for virtual reality are highly visual and colorful and often include movement, says Michael Hoffman, chief executive of See 3 Communications, a Chicago video company that focuses on nonprofits.
If the subject is boring, he says, “it’ll be extra boring in virtual reality.”
Involve the nonprofit’s clients.
The intimacy of virtual reality could make some videos seem exploitative, says Mr. Hoffman. Charities need to be aware of that possibility and work closely with the people whose stories they’re telling.
Consider alternates to video.
Organizations should imagine the most powerful experience to change someone’s behavior and then figure out the best way to provide that experience, says Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. Sometimes, he says, the answer is video, and sometimes it’s animation.
He points to a study he conducted to see if virtual reality can increase people’s empathy for older people as an example where animation is necessary: “Meeting your future self where you get to see what you’re going to look like when you’re 65 years old, you can’t film that.”
Amnesty International UK has given its street fundraisers low-cost virtual-reality headsets to show people powerful 3-D photographs of destruction in Syria’s civil war.
Asking people to watch a five-minute video wouldn’t be practical, says Reuben Steains, the charity’s innovations manager: “Our street fundraisers have to work very quickly.”
Don’t put the call-to-action in the film.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Action Campaign created a virtual-reality film that follows Sidra, a 12-year-old girl who fled Syria and now lives in a refugee camp in Jordan.
Putting the call-to-action in the materials created to accompany the film rather than in the film itself has meant that it can be used to talk about lots of issues, including the refugee crisis, girls’ empowerment, and access to education, says Kristin Gutekunst, a project manager for the campaign.
“That’s given it a lot more life than just saying, ‘You need to do this right now,’” she says. “It loses its timelessness.”
Keep it short.
For the most part, virtual-reality videos shouldn’t be more than three minutes long, says Sarah Hill, chief storyteller at StoryUp VR, a company in Columbia, Mo. “The video experiences can’t be incredibly long because inside the headsets, the lenses could fog up,” she says.
But there are exceptions. Ms. Hill helped create an eight-minute film for Central Missouri Honor Flight that takes viewers to the memorials in Washington. “Veterans would take off the headset and say ‘Can I watch that again?’ " she says. “It just depends on how compelling the content is.”
Don’t be dazzled.
Because virtual reality is so new, charities should consider anything they try as experimentation, says Mr. Hoffman. But, he cautions, organizations should only take the leap if the rest of their communications are already in good order: “They need their basic things to be done well before they follow the siren call of the shiny object.”
