Hollywood Popular Artists

May 24th 2013, 20:25

With a presence of 160 million across all of its social channels, it's safe to say MTV knows a little something about social storytelling.

Using our superpowers for good, we teamed up with volunteer platform Catchafire to work with the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO). We put our "creative and social firepower" to work, giving the nonprofit a better way to tell its story.

CEO is in the business of second chances. The nonprofit works to help men and women, with an emphasis on helping those ages 18-25, transition into the work force after they are released from prison. According to the nonprofit's CEO Molly Tarlow, more than "90 percent of 615,000 young people ages 18-24 in prison will return home. 67 percent of those paroled will be rearrested within 3 years and more than half will return to prison." Although the program works, with one study showing CEO saved New York taxpayers $4,900 per participant, the organization needed to tell its story in a way that would get donors stoked about their work. And, let's be real here, there's a stigma attached to helping out people who have a criminal record. So the storytelling has to be REALLY good.

MTV president Stephen Friedman reached out to Rachael Chong, his mentee and the founder of Catchafire, because he was "looking for an opportunity for his staff and for the MTV audience." He told Co.Create that MTV works to make sure "that we are not just entertaining but engaging and being advocates for the audience on social issues." After narrowing down a pool of 70 potential nonprofits, Catchafire eventually paired MTV with CEO.

Over the course of three months, Friedman and a dedicated group of 15 MTV employees worked to give the nonprofit a "makeover."  According to Co.Create, MTV created a new corporate video, "redesigned CEO's corporate presentation template, repurposed its storytelling assets, did a full social media audit and created a toolkit and strategic plan for the CEO staff to follow going forward."

To learn more about MTV's work with CEO, check out the video below and take action with the org in our action widget!

+ Watch MTV & Catchafire Give Nonprofit a Makeover

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