Best Nonprofit Animated Videos of 2025 (December)
December was bonuses, tinsel, and mandatory festive cheer. Someone wore a Santa suit. Everyone ate their weight in chocolate. By the time you're reading this in early January, that's ancient history. Now you're nursing a holiday hangover and trying to rejoin reality.
These four charity videos ignored the chaos. That little green frog on your coffee? Finally explained. The UN reframed climate migration as survival strategy, not failure. TED-Ed debunked sleep position myths. And WaterAid made water the unsung hero of Christmas using mixed-media chaos and uncomfortable statistics.
As a final note to 2025, this is Leon! Animation studio’s wandering through the best nonprofit messaging of 2025, noting what sticks and what cuts through.
Best Educational Animation
Rainforest Alliance's "Why choose Rainforest Alliance Certification?"
You've seen the little green frog on coffee bags and chocolate bars. But what does it actually mean?
Atypicalist's animation for Rainforest Alliance, directed by Rémi Cans, walks through the entire system: farm practices, independent audits, brands using the seal, consumers spotting it in shops.
The animation style is painterly editorial illustration, soft and textured like watercolour. Muted greens, earth tones, warm browns. Characters have realistic proportions with simplified features. Diversity appears naturally.
The narration stays conversational: "That little frog? Look closely, you'll see that it makes a big impact."
Certification as a working system. Farmers practice sustainability, auditors verify, brands display the seal, consumers recognise it
Best NGO Animation
FAO's "Migration in a changing climate"
When crops fail, soils degrade, and survival becomes uncertain, staying becomes harder than leaving.
The Food and Agriculture Organization's animation frames climate migration not as chaos or policy failure, but as a rational response to impossible conditions.
The style is hand-drawn watercolour documentary: loose, sketchy lines, muted earth tones, and visible texture that feels deliberately imperfect.
The narration stays sober and direct: “Migration isn’t just a response. It’s the only option left.”
Leon Animation's work in this space: Our animation studio created "Climate Change: The Migration Story" for the UN Network on Migration—another UN agency tackling the same subject as FAO.
Rights-based approach: people have the right to stay or move. Migration as adaptation, not last resort. Different framing, both necessary. See our UN animation work.
Best Healthcare Animation
TED-Ed's "What's the best position to sleep in?"
Personality tests based on sleep positions are nonsense. But how you sleep does affect your spine, breathing, and acid reflux.
Sofia Pashaei's animation for TED-Ed debunks Samuel Dunkell's outdated theories while explaining what actually matters.
The visual style is flat, vector-based geometric abstraction: no texture, no outlines, just clean colour blocks forming characters from circles, rounded rectangles, and tubular limbs.
At 1.2 million views, the comments became a celebration of sleep chaos:
"You forgot the secret fifth position the rotisserie chicken position of doing all 4 positions at once."
"My sleep position lies in the fate of the bigger view of my room to prevent monsters from snatching my toes in my slumber."
Your sleep position isn’t a personality. It’s just your body improvising for eight hours and hoping for the best.
Bonus: Best Fundraising Video
WaterAid's "Ode to Water"
Water doesn't get nearly enough credit.
WaterAid's Christmas fundraising appeal uses mixed-media live action collage: stop-motion clay, hand-drawn animation, vintage illustration, archival footage. Technique switches constantly.
Technique switches constantly. Clay fish jitter with visible fingerprints. Anatomical diagrams reveal in sepia tones. Retro skating animation flickers with film grain.
The narration starts conversational, then removes all comfort: "Without drinking water, you wouldn't survive more than 3 days. Some mates take longer to text you back."
Then the statistics appear over footage of unsafe water: Every 30 seconds, someone dies due to lack of clean water. 1.4 million people die each year from unsafe water. The call to action is crystal clear: "Just £2 a month can give life-changing clean water. Donate to water today."
By design, this is the kind of fundraising animation that would sit comfortably alongside the examples in our blog on effective fundraising videos.
What These Nonprofit Animations Teach Us
Certification animation doesn’t have to bore people. Rainforest Alliance explained supply chain auditing in two minutes using warmth, clarity, and a well-timed joke. Trust the audience. Systems stories work.
Migration animation needs reframing, not more data. FAO and Leon’s UN work show that climate displacement makes sense when treated as rational response, not constant crisis. Policy follows narrative.
Healthcare animation thrives on validation. TED-Ed’s 1.2 million views came from acknowledging sleep chaos, not prescribing fixes. Sometimes “you’re fine” is enough.
Fundraising animation should disarm before it asks. WaterAid earns your £2 by making you laugh first, then hitting with one statistic. Comfort, then contrast.
Missed our 2025 roundups? Catch up on January, February, March, April, May, June, August, September, October, and November
What's Leon! Animation Studio Up To?
Our charity animation studio recently wrapped "AI for Everyone" for Anglo American Foundation—collage cut-out style, deliberately not corporate. We’re currently animating another explainer animation for them.
You just read about certification frogs, climate displacement, rotisserie chicken sleep positions, and Christmas guilt without scrolling away. Your message deserves that same respect.
Our 2D animation studio builds charity videos that earn every second they take.
