In case you are wondering what this has to do with non-profits: I know many NGOs who produce feature-length advocacy films to state their case against e.g. climate change, human trafficking, dragnet-fishing etc. And I am certain that many of them could be greatly enhanced by an approach like “Us Now”.

1. Make a film project, not a movie

The biggest difference is in what you see as the outcome. Many people consider their work to be done once the final cut has been made and the film has been screened, burned on DVD, uploaded … whatever. Most of the time, the audience is simply seen as a mass of people towards whom you then project a certain message – a classic one-to-many approach.

But if you see your product as a film-project, then this implies that the work is not done after your final cut; it implies that this is something that can be built on.

2. Think “resource” not  ”movie”

If you are looking at the film as a project and not as a 60 minute audio-visual presentation, then the next logical step is that everything that you have collected to produce the film is a resource. In the case of “Us Now” they made the original, uncut interviews available on the site and through YouTube. The BBC is currently working on a similar project called “Digital Revolution” where the rushes are already being made available while the film is still in production.

Both the BBC and “Us Now” offer interview transcripts which helps them with search engines (remember, search engines cannot read videos but love text).

Ideally you would assign meta data to both the text files and the videos so that users can find related interviews from different projects. If you have the resources to go one extra mile, you could even create an interactive transcript for each interview, like they do for the “TED talks“.

The point is, that you are suddenly offering people a resource that they can use in their own work. Think about how many videos were produced about climate change. Now imagine, you could use what other NGOs have already produced on the same topic. If enough non-profits would act like that, then everybody would win. But it obviously requires a change in attitude. Not only do we have to become comfortable with having others use material that we have paid for, we also have to become comfortable with using other peoples materials. I don’t know how comfortable the WWF would be to reuse bits of an interview performed by Greenpeace.

Interestingly, some of the big players are already working together on non-branded joint advocacy videos for big events like the climate change conference COP15.

3. Open a dialogue

This should be a no-brainer to everyone working with social media. You should give people a chance to discuss your topic with you. Obviously, by uploading the video to YouTube as a whole, as well as in parts, you can invite people to post video responses. However, you should find a way to display these on your site as well and not only have them sit on YouTube. Keep in mind though that such a dialogue requires resources. “Us Now” for example obviously doesn’t have those resources which is why this part of their site falls short of expectation. It’ll be interesting to see what the BBC has in store once they have completed their project.

4. Go Creative Commons

In order to achieve maximum distribution, give your film a creative commons license! “Us Now” can be downloaded in any format you can think of – including as a torrent! I don’t know whether that was the intention from the beginning, or whether it just happened, but it shows that once you set you content free, there is no limit to how and where your message might be distributed to.

From advocacy to authority

If you create your next advocacy film according to what is outlined above, you will see that you are suddenly no longer in the business of producing advocacy films, but you are in the business of establishing your organization as an online authority for the topics that your non-profit or NGO is fighting for. And isn’t that one of the reasons you were asked to produce that original advocacy video to begin with?

What do you think? Please share your thoughts below.

No related posts.

It also got me thinking about whether we are asking the wrong people for advice, if we are  inviting the McKinsey’s and KMPG’s of this world to assist us with our problems.

I highly recommend you watch the video before you read on:

What I find most interesting about this presentation is that Dan Pink shows that intrinsic motivators are not only stronger than external motivators (like money) but make people more efficient:

“It’s an approach built much more around intrinsic motivation. Around the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, because they are interesting, because they are part of something important. [That] new operating system (…) resolves around three elements (…):

• Autonomy, the urge to direct our lives,
• Mastery, the desire to get better and better at something that matters,
• Purpose, the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

If you are working for a non-profit organization and recognize yourself or your co-workers, please raise your hand.

Let’s look at the three elements and how they are part in the day-to-day life of most non-profits:

Purpose: This is where most non-profits excel since almost all non-profits are driven by a mission to improve the world in some way. It is this purpose that keeps people working long days and night and even work for free. The hundreds of millions of volunteers who contribute their time without getting paid are testament to how motivating this sense of purpose can be.

Autonomy: Non-profits give their employees considerable more autonomy and responsibility than you’d normally have in the corporate world. In part, this comes from a lack of resources. But that is not an entirely bad thing because it allows people with drive and initiative to quickly punch over their weight. I mean, we have sent interns to represent the organization at meetings with the UN (and told them not to mention that they are interns) – how great is that if you are fresh out of university?

Mastery: This is probably the element where most NGOs fail and one of the reasons that so many people leave disillusioned after a few years. (For an excellent book that describes how and why someone got completely disillusioned with humanitarian aid, read “The Road to Hell” by Michael Maren.) The nature of most organization’s mission is such that it can never be fulfilled. And while your particular skills might improve, the mountain of work will stay the same.  The paradox is that many people choose to work for non-profit organizations because the mission is such a big challenge.

Now … if the above is true and if non-profits manage to instill a sense of purpose, autonomy and mastery into their employees, than this suggests, based on the experiments that Dan Pink describes, that non-profits are actually more efficient and productive than they are given credit for. Maybe the tasks are just so big that it doesn’t look like it.

Why business consultants might be bad advisors

Looking at Dan Pinks discussion about left-brain activities versus right-brain activities I would argue that the work of most non-profit professionals requires far more right-brain (creative/conceptual) thinking than in most other industries. After all, what could be more complex than to “fight poverty”, “stop global warming” or “alleviate human suffering”?

But whom are non-profits asking for advice when they are in real or perceived trouble? Most frequently they get some business consultant who more likely than not has mainly optimized companies that have fairly repetitive routine tasks: Build a car, build more cars, build more cars cheaper.

One notable exception seems to be Accenture who has its own non-profit branch.

But aside from this positive example, I think we have to ask ourselves the question: can these consultants really understand an industry like ours? Are they really the right advisors? Because in my experience their advice frequently limits creativity and autonomy, i.e. the very thing that motivates people to get out of bed in the morning.

Do you agree or disagree? Do I have a point or have I gone off the deep end? Please share your thoughts with me and leave a comment.

Related posts:

1. Non-profits and social media: how to leave the competition behind

For those of you, who have never heard of them: TED is a non-profit organization that invites interesting people to talk about interesting things. Or as the put it, they are “devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading”.

I absolutely love some of the talks on their site (one of my favourites is embedded below). And the great things is:  it’s all free and licensed under creative commons license.

But even aside from all that goodness, what really caught my eye the first time I explored the site is how good TED is at using video and how well they understand video presentation online.

Screenshot of a TED video

What makes TED videos stand out:

1. They offer subtitles in multiple languages. Subtitles are created by over 200 volunteers as part of the TED Open Translation Project which has created subtitles in over 40 languages.
2. They divide each video into chapters
3. The make an interactive transcript available with the talk. If you click into a sentence in the transcript the video will jump to that exact spot.

(Note: Unfortunately only the subtitles are available in the embeddable version of the videos)

Do you know of a site that is as good or better? Then please leave a comment and tell me about it.

Related posts:

1. Sharing photos online – a decision matrix for non-profit organizations
2. Online training: Tech Tools for Emergency Management