April 28, 2010; Source: The Mercury News | Three Stanford University MBA students, Karla Gallardo, Lavanya Ashok, and Aastha Gupta, are making an impact nearly 9,000 miles away in rural India. Utilizing the skills developed in the Stanford Business course, “The Power of Social Technology”, the graduate students created a video to promote an organization called Embrace. The video opens with images of adult hands holding various objects: a cupcake, a cell phone, etc., only to reveal a few frames later, an infant small enough to be cupped by adult hands.

Embrace hopes the video will help raise funds to save millions of premature and low birth weight babies born in India by providing a low cost, portable “Infant Warmer”.  The “Infant Warmer” appears to be a sleeping bag and its materials help maintain the baby’s temperature.  It releases or absorbs heat in order to maintain the baby’s temperature between 97 and 98 degrees Fahrenheit.

This video is yet another example of the immediate impact of social media—within the first 10 days that the video was available online Embrace raised $4,000 in donations.  Additionally, the video struck a cord with Gaurang Shah, CEO of Digital Signage Networks of India, who plans to show a version of the video on his billboards throughout India.  The lesson for other nonprofits: a video with such high visibility could be viewed by your organization’s next big donor. Watch for our article on winning nonprofit campaigns in the Spring Edition of NPQ.—Alison Burdo