Words by Smiley Team
After last year’s Charity Film Awards raised the profile of hundreds of organisations, Smiley Movement announced today that the awards are opening again to 2021 entries, with a six week window for submissions (Deadline 6th August 2021).
The world’s largest campaign for cause-based films joined forces with Smiley Movement this March and is encouraging charities and corporate causes to submit films to compete for public recognition. The event will offer entrants access to the combined platform of Smiley Movement and the awards body, along with widespread media coverage.
“We should celebrate how films are an amazing and positive means to create emotions in us that provoke us to act and make the world a better place. So, the awards are not just about promoting great films but about helping people see those films in new ways,” said the awards’ founder, Simon Burton.
“The whole objective of the Charity Film Awards is to get more views for charities’ campaigns,” explained campaign director for the Charity Film Awards Madeleine Johnson. “If we can gain just one additional view for each organisation then that’s potentially one new supporter and one more individual reaching out to their community.”
Encouraging charities to enter, Nicolas Loufrani, the CEO of Smiley™ added: “I hope that Smiley Movement is going to multiply the number of views these great charity films get by at least 10 times, and in doing so that we’re going to enable them to get more volunteers and to generate more donations.”
Burton echoed these sentiments: “I’m excited about the fact that the Charity Film Awards is going to benefit from the Smiley Movement’s profile and power, but most of all from Nicolas’s passion and the team’s passion for doing good.”
Any registered charity, charity media agency or brand with a corporate social responsibility initiative is invited to enter a film in the awards, provided it was created in the last eighteen months. Companies are encouraged to submit films for projects or campaigns that benefit society or the environment.
Charities are categorised based on income generated in the last financial year, a People’s Choice category and overall winner. This creates a level playing field so that smaller organisations are just as likely to receive an award as the larger, more established ones.
Burton explained: “Charities from household names like Unicef, the NSPCC and the British Heart Foundation take part as well as smaller local charities and they all benefit from the power of the awards’ story to create engagement and connect with old and new supporters.”
Johnson added: “It’s not to say that everyone’s a winner, but one of our main objectives is to allow as many people as possible to share in the success that the awards offer.”
More than 1,500 films have entered the Charity Film Awards in its five-year history. Over a quarter of a million members of the public have voted and millions of additional views have emerged for the participating organisations.
For such a young awards body, the event reaches an impressively large audience through social media and press coverage. Each year the awards have received local, national and celebrity press attention, and have trended on Twitter in the UK.
“Considering the small size of our organisation, that is a massive achievement. It is largely down to our efforts, as well as the charities’ engagement with their audiences to amplify the content further,” said Johnson.
To expand the horizons of thousands of charities even further, this year the organisers are calling for potential partners to get in touch who can share news of the awards across their platforms.
In 2021 Smiley Movement hopes the awards will expand to audiences of thousands of charities, reaching potential supporters on a scale even greater to that experienced in the past five years.
Charities who entered the awards in 2020 did so specifically for the increased support the event would offer them. Among the winners, the Shahid Afridi Foundation, an organisation improving basic services in Pakistan, won the People’s Choice award for the income bracket of £100,000 to £500,000.
Their executive director, Saima Khan, reflected on why they submitted a film: “I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to receive more visibility. As a result we were really successful in getting our name out there, especially through our social media network.”
Likewise, humanitarian charity The Salvation Army entered a film to raise the profile of their campaign tackling modern slavery, which won the People’s Choice Award for a turnover of over £100 million. “Awareness is absolutely key to combating modern slavery,” explained PR and communications officer at the Salvation Army Isobel McFarlane.
Such heightened awareness often translates into tangible improvements in the lives of vulnerable people. McFarlane explained: “We need the public to know what slavery looks like so that when they see something suspicious they report it. That’s the only way we’re going to rescue the tens of thousands of people that we estimate are still living in slave-like conditions in the UK. So for us, it was wonderful that the awards offered multiple opportunities to share our film and ask people to support us.”
To keep updated on the Charity Film Awards, sign up for alerts here.
Launched five years ago, the Charity Film Awards is the world’s biggest campaign to promote cause-based films. Since its creation, more than 2,000 causes have benefitted from the awards, gaining exposure, donations and volunteers. More than a quarter of a million members of the public have voted in the awards, between five and ten per cent of which also donate to the charities. Through media coverage the awards have reached nearly 500 million people around the world, boosting the profile of organisations and raising awareness about their causes.
Smiley Movement (CIC) is a nonprofit, sponsored by the original Smiley™ brand. With a focus on positive solutions journalism, Smiley News covers the work of inspirational charities changing the world through their frontline work in the community. With a mission of driving positive change, Smiley Movement empowers people and organisations doing good. It connects them to new resources and supporters through their matchmaking for good network, and through their Smiley Talks, inspiring other potential leaders and innovators to create a better world for us all.
To learn more about the Charity Film Awards sign up for updates by clicking ‘Get Involved’ on Smiley Movement’s Charity Film Awards page.
