Basic video equipment

With the affordable equipment available these days plus user-friendly editing apps, it makes a lot of sense for nonprofits to develop capacity to produce their own video content in-house. Here are some of our recommendations to build your video production kit.

We recommend using a smartphone camera to start with instead of investing in a new DSLR camera right out the gate. Remove as many barriers as possible and just get started!

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✨ Grab our PDF of 10 video ideas for nonprofits (along with a bunch of other helpful stuff) ✨

Gimbal + Tripod

Great for both stabilizing your phone so you can shoot your own footage at an event AND holding your phone in position so you can record yourself in your office. It's kinda techie (you have to install an app and operate it with the joystick on the handle) so not recommended if you think of yourself as "low tech" 🙃

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Mini tripod (get the phone clamp too)

A sturdy little tripod that allows you to raise your phone up to get a better angle. (The gimbal above doesn't give you that option.)

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Phone clamp (goes with the mini tripod)

This screws into the mini tripod so you can attach your phone to it. It's not as fun and multi-functional as the gimbal, but it's a sturdy setup and there's less room for getting annoyed when the tech doesn't cooperate 🤪

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A Great Little Mic

This microphone is great for recording with a phone or DSLR camera. We’ve been using it instead of a regular shotgun mic because it’s so sensitive and Nolan really likes the quality of the sound.

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To Connect the Above Mic to Your Phone

The little mic above comes with a cable that connects it to a DSLR camera, but if you want to use it with a phone you’ll need this patch cable, along with a headphone adapter that works with your phone (search for “headphone adapter for” and the type of phone you have).

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Ring Light

This is the light we use for our desktop setup. It works great to light one person. If you’re wearing glasses, raise the ring light up a bit and point it down to minimize the reflection.

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Color Lights!

These are Nolan’s FAVORITE. He uses them in the background of our live streams, and also to enhance the background for our client videos (i.e. adding orange to enhance wood paneling or a hint of blue to add dimension to a white wall). We have two, each one is mounted on a tripod and that’s enough to splash color on a large area of background.

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Panel Lights

These are great little lights, we’ve been using them for all of our interview shoots and virtual events.

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Panel Lights (option 2)

We don’t have these specific lights, but it’s a decent brand (we have other lights from this company) and this one allows you to change the RGB color of the light.

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Softbox

We’ve been using this softbox with the panel lights linked above, it diffuses the light nicely and it’s easy to fold up.

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Key Light

We don’t feel comfortable recommending the light we use because it’s so expensive, but we’ve seen this one recommended by a lot of people who create their own content and it looks like it does a great job.

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We did some episodes related to video equipment when we were doing the Easy Peasy Video School, check them out and feel free to reach out if you have any questions 🤍

Check out our podcast! It's a talk-story session with people here in Hawaii, some well-known and some regular folks like us.

Nolan also has a YouTube channel which is part everyday life, part mental health journey.

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