How to Ask Better Interview Questions for Nonprofit Video

May 27

Written By

The quality of your nonprofit video comes down to one thing more than almost anything else: the questions you ask. Not the camera. Not the lighting. Not the edit. A single well-crafted question, delivered at the right moment, can produce a thirty-second piece of footage you could build an entire video around. The wrong question, even a well-meaning one, produces nothing you can use. And most organizations are walking into interviews asking the wrong ones.

Why Scripted Questions Produce Scripted Answers

The default approach is to script out questions in advance and share them with the subject beforehand. That sounds responsible, and it's partly right: your subjects should know roughly what to expect so they can show up feeling prepared, not ambushed. But there's a real cost when that preparation turns into rehearsal.

When someone has gone over their answers ahead of time, the camera picks it up. The response is technically correct. It hits all the right points. And it lands flat.

What you're after is genuine reflection, not a polished summary. You want your subject to arrive prepared enough to feel comfortable, but not so rehearsed that they've already packaged the story. The questions you ask in the room are what make the difference.

Questions That Open Up Real Stories

The single most effective shift you can make is moving from closed or generic questions to open-ended prompts that invite a specific memory.

Compare these two:

"What did our program do for you?"
"Tell me about the moment when things started to feel different."

The first invites a summary. The second invites a scene. When someone starts telling you about a specific moment, they re-enter the experience rather than describing it from a distance. That's where usable footage lives.

Here are question structures that consistently produce strong footage:

For testimonial video subjects:

"What was going on in your life when you first connected with [organization]?"
"Tell me about the moment you realized something had changed."
"If you were talking to someone in the situation you were in back then, what would you want them to know?"

For donor interviews:

"What made you decide to give?"
"Is there a moment or a story that sticks with you from your time supporting [organization]?"
"How do you think about your giving now compared to when you first started?"

For volunteer interviews:

"What keeps you coming back?"
"Tell me about a time in this work when you felt like it really mattered."

For staff interviews:

"What moment in your work here sticks with you?"
"What do you want people outside this organization to understand about what actually happens here?"

Notice that none of these start with "How has..." or "Can you tell us about...". They're direct. They point toward a specific time or feeling. And they give your subject somewhere real to go.

The Follow-Up Question Is Where the Story Actually Lives

The first answer your subject gives is almost always the prepared answer. They've thought about what they want to say, and they say it. It's fine. It might even be good. But the real story tends to come when you follow up.

When someone wraps up their first response, the instinct is to move to the next question on your list. Resist that. The questions that produce the most powerful footage are often the ones that weren't on the list at all:

"What do you mean by that?"
"Can you take me back to that moment? What were you feeling right then?"
"You said it changed things for your family. What did that actually look like day to day?"

These work because they signal to your subject that you're genuinely listening, not just collecting answers. And when someone feels heard, they go deeper. That's when the prepared version falls away and the real story comes through.

Questions That Don't Work (and Why)

It's worth being direct about question types that consistently produce footage your editor can't do much with.

Yes/no questions give you one-word answers you can't cut into a narrative. "Did the program help you?" will get you "Yes." Nothing there to work with.

Leading questions that contain the desired answer constrain what your subject can say. "So the program really turned things around for you, right?" is really a statement you're asking someone to confirm. You'll get a nod and a "Yeah, definitely." What you won't get is their version of the story.

Questions that are too broad leave subjects unsure where to start. "Tell me about your experience" sounds open, but it's actually overwhelming. It often produces a slow, meandering response as the subject tries to figure out what you're actually after. Give them a doorway, not a field.

Questions that put your organization at the center instead of the subject. The story belongs to the person in the chair. When questions start with "How has [your organization] helped you...", you've already framed the answer. Let the subject tell it their way first.

How to Start and End Every Interview

Before you ask a single official question, warm up. Ask something easy and conversational that has nothing to do with the interview. How long have they been involved with the organization? How was the drive over? Whatever fits the moment. This settles nerves, gets them talking in a natural register, and gives your crew a few minutes to dial in audio and exposure before anything important is said.

And then at the very end, before you call cut: "Is there anything I didn't ask that you want to say?"

This question works. Not occasionally. Consistently. Your subjects have been thinking about what matters to them throughout the entire interview, and sometimes the most important thing they have to say is something your questions never reached. This gives them the space to say it. Some of the most powerful footage from a shoot comes from those final, unscripted thirty seconds.

The Bottom Line

Good interview questions don't require a bigger budget or a better camera. They require thinking clearly about what you're actually trying to capture: not a summary of your program, but a specific human experience a viewer can feel.

When your questions invite real reflection, your subjects give you footage that holds attention. When your follow-ups dig past the prepared answer, you get to the story underneath. And when you end by giving them the floor, you often get the thing that makes the whole piece work.

That's the foundation every strong nonprofit video is built on. And it's the work we do before the cameras roll.

Planning your next shoot and want help preparing questions that produce real stories? Let's talk. Reach the Glowfire team at glowfirecreative.com to schedule a discovery call.