This is the first in what is to be a series of posts for Communications Network, and appeared originally on its site.  It is also appearing on the Foundation Center site.

I just read an interesting case study about how to engender more substantial media coverage of foundation activities and it helped me think more deeply about both the challenges and potential for helping reporters see that there is a story that goes beyond ”x foundation gave x dollars to do x.”

The case study was written by Theodora Lurie for the Philanthropy Awareness Initiative, as part of its ongoing work with foundations and philanthropy associations to improve communications and outreach to influential Americans.  In the first of what PAI calls its “Moving Beyond the Money” series, Lurie presents an example of a successful foundation effort to garner news coverage that “conveys a broader vision of how foundations make a difference – and identif[ies] the strategies that brought such coverage about.”

It is a short, engaging read that highlights the communications efforts of the Ford Foundation around the announcement of its $50 million program related investment (PRI) in the National Community Stabilization Trust. The large low-interest loan to the Trust will be used to acquire and renovate houses, which will then be sold to moderate and low-income buyers.

The large dollar amount of the Ford investment was probably enough to get the attention of many journalists.  But Ford took advantage of the opportunity to use the attention-grabbing announcement – in May 2009 when the U.S. real estate market was still spiraling downward and the problem of empty houses adding to blight in neighborhoods had many Americans worried – to go beyond the dollars and speak more broadly about Ford’s long-term work in this program area, the potential societal impact of the investment and the nimble, experimental role foundations can play in solving complex problems.

Halfway through reading the case study it occurred to me that only two stories in outlets that have a particularly sophisticated audience (The Wall Street Journaland National Public Radio) might seem like not a particularly stellar achievement if the idea is to communicate the role of foundations to a broader swath of influential Americans. But the amount of coverage (which may be more extensive than the two pieces discussed in the case study) and the composition of the two outlets’ target audience aren’t really the point of the case study.  The point is about how foundations should take more responsibility for – and can find success in – getting more substance into media reports on philanthropy. The case study provides details on how Ford Foundation staff pursued its communications strategy for the PRI announcement and how its well-crafted messages resulted in stories that, though brief, effectively illustrated the foundation’s role as a creative, knowledgeable and influential shaper of societal change – not just a “grant maker.”

The case study makes clear that “there are opportunities to help shape coverage if you prepare well, crystallize your key message points, and train staff who will be speaking with reporters to stay on message. It also helps to get a credible outside endorsement of the value of a grant or project.”

This wise counsel reminded me of a July 2006 opinion piece by Grant Oliphant and Bruce Trachtenberg in The Chronicle of Philanthropy titled “Let’s Not Focus Simply on Size of Buffett’s Gift.” In that piece, the authors, president of the Pittsburgh Foundation and Network executive director, respectively, advised, “when foundations announce that they are supporting new efforts, their news releases should routinely be more explicit about the goals, expected achievements, what success will look like, and when they will be able to demonstrate whether that effort is working (or not). By doing that, reporters might be encouraged to focus more on the potential results of a grant, rather than the fact (or size) of the award itself to the exclusion of all else.”

I am quite interested to read the next in the “Moving Beyond the Money” series. This first one got me thinking about the actual process of harvesting more substantial coverage of foundation impact.  Of course, for foundations to really do this, they need to seed the field with clear statements on medium- and long-term objectives of the projects they support, and take some risks in saying specifically how success will be judged.

“Community Access to Information,” and why it matters.

Stehle began by saying that the communications landscape – how people get information and how people who create content and spread ideas – is changing dramatically and are deeply affected by policies that are taking shape in Washington.  Further, as communications professionals, we need to know what’s going on to inform our practice and to be active participants in ensuring that communities do indeed have maximal open access to information. He noted that this PPC-NYC session is a great follow-on to the previous day’s “Free Press Summit: Ideas to Action” at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy brought together a broad range of leaders from a wide spectrum of political perspectives.  Its report, he said, provides a particularly good overview of the larger issues involved and had extensive policy recommendations in the following areas:

-       Maximizing the availability of relevant and credible information
-       Enhancing the information capacity of individuals
-       Promoting public engagement

The report strongly supports the development of policies in the digital and media spheres that promote inclusion. It also makes the link between increased public access to broadband internet service and improved democratic functioning. Stehle said that the Knight Commission report lays out the issues extraordinarily well, but that we need to move forward and establish policies that make its concepts real. “Media companies have not and will not provide open access naturally, we have to hold their feet to the fire. Regulation is necessary,” he said.

He cited examples he also wrote about in a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy piece in which Sprint threatened to block the Catholic Relief Service from contacting its supporters about relief efforts in Haiti and Verizon blocked content from NARAL to its supporters in an attempt to placate a larger block of anti-abortion customer base. “Sprint tried to get in the middle of the message,” he said.  Part of the problem is that telecom companies’ policies on how they decide what information they may block or slow are mostly opaque – they are also in many cases outdated, unevenly applied, nonexistent or simply hidden from public view.  “In trying to protect our free speech rights as nonprofit organizations with a clear interest in open public dialogue, we need open systems. To have meaningful rights, citizens need access to broadband.”

“The funny thing,” Stehle said, “is that it seems that the script is not being written by George Orwell, but more like by Larry David. The abuses are so outrageous, telecoms and media companies are bumbling, clumsy and ham-handed in a way that would be humorous if the implications weren’t so frightening. Stronger FCC intervention is needed.”

Tim Karr then talked about Free Press’s “Inside/Outside” strategy. They aim to translate the many “expert” voices that have been active on these issues into voices from average people who are deeply affected by communications policies. This is all to counter the special interests on the others side, which are exerting very strong voices and taking hold of the debate.  Those special interests on the other side are very similar in profit motive and tactics to those who have hijacked the global warming/”cap & trade” discussion.

He said that the previous day’s summit at the Newseum had deeply explored “the future of journalism and the great challenges being faced by investigative/public media” as well as “open access” issues. One good indication of how nonprofits are waking up to the implications of media policy is the fact that 450 nonprofit organizations signed a letter to the FCC as a result of an outreach initiative of the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) in conjunction with Free Press, Open Internet Coalition “Save the Internet” letter supporting strong FCC action to “stop internet blocking and censorship once and for all.”

Individuals can sign on to the “Save the Internet” letter here.

“The fight for open access is at a critical juncture,” Karr said.  The FCC is thinking critically about these issues and there is a lot of activity taking place in Washington, DC.  At the same time, vociferous folks like anti-government, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity and Pete Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union have come together with their own sign-on campaign that is deeply deceptive and largely funded by the major telecoms. They are trying to frame the very necessary and reasonable FCC attempts to bring clarity, openness and transparency to internet policies and basic rules of the road as a “government takeover of the internet” and have started a petition at www.nointernettakeover.com.

“Follow the money behind the people who are against net neutrality – all roads lead to the telecom and cable companies,” Karr said.  “Telecoms control 96% of internet access.  And they are doing all they can to hold onto as much power over internet access as possible, which was made painfully clear in a recently leaked strategy document.” (discussed in a media story here.)

The corporate-funded activists working against FCC regulation are gearing up and massing their forces, so bringing real voices of nonprofits and small business who are greatly effected by telecoms limiting open access is extremely important.

Stehle then asked Jennifer Toomey, the Ford Foundation Program Officer charged with advancing media rights and access to talk a bit about the foundation’s efforts and what she sees as the critical issues.

She said the one thing she disagreed with in the opening statements on this subject was that the issues involved are complex.  That’s not so, she asserted.  It just needs to be explained simply in terms that average people can understand.  For one thing, “net neutrality” does not resonate with people, we need a new term. And we need more organizations doing work like Free Press that explain things plainly and the implications for normal people.

Toomey talked briefly about the early years of the telephone industry, when government set out basic rules for companies in the industry that encouraged competition but ensured user privacy and forced competing companies to share lines to maximize resource utilization. Those early telephone rules did not squelch profits, in fact they ensured competition and helped the industry to profit while making clear what rights users had to free access and freedom of speech on the lines.  Similar rules need to be laid out for the telecom industry today on access to the internet.  The current regulations do not provide any kind of the protections for the internet that those regulations back in the day did for telephone line usage.

She talked about the Comcast/BitTorrent case (in which Free Press was part of the complaint) where Comcast basically said that BitTorrent users were taking up too much broadband space (“in competition with Grandma’s e-birthday card”!) and that they should be able to limit BitTorrent users’ access.  It was presented as Comcast’s right to use its resources for the greater good of more of its customers, but the fact is that the BitTorrent service is a potential long-term competitor to Comcast’s other profit center: entertainment distribution.  Comcast’s limitation of BitTorrent users was patently self-serving.  Still, Comcast won in court, which was a major setback for open access. Now the FCC is essentially trying to re-regulate the internet to bring back full open access.  She said that if you left it up to a company like AT&T back when Google was being developed, you wouldn’t have that innovation. A giant company like that would have stifled it and tried to control it.  That’s what’s happening now with Comcast on the BitTorrent case.

One of the conversation participants who works on these issues noted that the Comcast ruling and other related developments are setting up the content of the internet to be controlled by giant telecom companies just the way they control cable TV, and if we don’t want our internet to become the same vast intellectual wasteland that cable TV is, we all (every nonprofit and small business has an interest in this) need to stand up and work for full open access.

Vince Stehle said that he wanted to praise Ford Foundation for investing $50 million to ensure open access.  Ford Foundation’s president Luis Urbinas has a opinion piece, originally published in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, detailing the foundation’s commitment and imploring Foundations of all kinds to promote internet access here. Toomey said that she hopes the Ford Foundation will be “one of the biggest cheerleaders for openness and net neutrality because it undergirds all the work we do.”

The discussion leaders then opened it up to the full group and an exceptionally open and fruitful discussion bloomed.

One participant noted that he had attended the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) annual conference and found that there was an extraordinarily strong presence there of groups working to get conservatives to rally around the anti-net-neutrality position.  They are trying to get the “government takeover of the internet” message to become a central anti-government tenant of the Right’s platform.

Another participant said she was sort of confused/curious about the political lines being drawn on this issue.  It seems, she said, that the people who care about issues on the Right have just as much to lose when corporations are in control of information dissemination as those on the Left.  This is true, it was noted, but because of the libertarian, anti-government regulation bent of the right, there is a strong chance that the “keep your government hands off my internet” message might prevail on the Right (even though the government essentially created the internet!)

We then discussed the use of China and Iran as metaphors.  These countries are broadly understood to be the most active and pervasive internet censors, and some open access proponents have likened the actions and opaqueness of the telecoms to those countries.  But disconcertingly, the “not government takeover of the internet” forces are likening potential FCC action to bring more policy clarity and greater openness to the actions taking by those nefarious nations.

One participant said that it is interesting that Apple, once considered the great rebel against corporate mind-control and groupthink has now become a major arbiter of media consumption. It not only makes moralistic decisions about what content it will allow on its App Store, but also self-serving choices aimed at freezing out competitors to its own products.

Another participant asked if, given the available “white space” on the internet and the fact that other countries are creating their own internets, is it possible to create “a new internet” outside of the telecoms that has full and unfettered open access? Karr said that is highly unlikely considering the current construction and reach of the current internet.

Stehle said that video on the internet is the area that telecoms are first going after to limit access and that nonprofit organizations should be especially concerned about. Telecoms will (and do) say that video takes up a great deal of bandwidth and that they must make choices about limiting access. But nonprofits should be in the forefront of those saying that open access to distribute video should not be compromised and corporate interests should not be allowed to dominate the transmission of video through the Internet.

Another participant said that he came away from this year’s Open Video Conference feeling much more encouraged about technology developments that will improve open access.  He noted that there will be a follow-up to that conference in October.

A PPC member asked what are artists and other content developer doing to ensure open access.  It was noted that some large content companies are working for open access, but many are deeply enmeshed or part of the telecoms and other media conglomerates that are seeking to control access. The content providers are terrified of losing revenue from piracy and see the telecoms as tightening the portal through which information flows, which helps them keep control of their revenue streams.  But many artists and small business are concerned and making their voices heard.

There is an important documentary on this topic, “Copyright Criminals” that is going to be screened as part of the Philanthropy New York film series at the Paley Center on May 21.  All Communications Network members are invited to attend. More information is available here.

As the discussion flowed, a major focus was on how best to frame the “open access / net neutrality” issues in ways that would resonate most strongly with the general public and potentially activate the nonprofits and small business that have so much to loose if telecoms exert even more control.  One person noted that a good argument goes something like, “Do we really want the same kind of corportate interests that brought you the Wall Street meltdown and the oil spill fiasco in the Gulf to be controlling the content you get to see on the internet?”

Another participant added that many of the nonprofits she works with are trying to improve conditions in the developing world and a message that might resonate there is that on things like women’s issues open access to information – like free access to reproductive health information and voting rights information – can literally save lives.  “It isn’t about the freedom to buy whatever pants you want over the internet, it’s about open access to information dissemination that deeply effects people’s freedom and quality of life.”

It was noted that Free Press has lots of materials to help people talk about these issues in ways that resonate with different audiences. Other organization doing great work in this area are the Alliance for Community Media and NTEN, the nonprofit technology network.  Also, Personal Democracy Forum is holding a conference on this topic on June 3-4, 2010 in New York City on this topic and  Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media is convening a group on a related topic titled “Funder Conversation: Media Grantmaking ─ The State and Future of the Field” taking place in New York on June 9 and 10, 2010.

Finally, one participant noted that there is a book coming out titled “FTW! Net Neutrality For The Win: How Entertainment and the Science of Influence Can Save Your Internet.” More information on the book here.

As always, we ended the session by distributing a short survey on possible topics for future meetings.  We’ll have more information on that soon.

We again live-tweeted the session from our official Twitter account: @PPCNYC.  It worked out really well.  Several people were following along from remote locations and re-tweeting key points from the presentation as well as points made by participants.

Thanks again to Vince Stehle for being a great discussion leader, to Tim Karr and Jennifer Toomey for their important ideas and to all the great thinkers who came and made the discussion so thought-provoking and informative.

The topic of the day was “How to Use Low-Cost Multi-Media to Maximal Effect,” which was chosen by members at the last PPC meeting before we went on hiatus. While many of our meetings rely simply on the experiences of our own members, this time we had an expert (even though she insisted that I not call her that) to help us think through the topic: Susan Herr, President of PhilanthroMedia.

Susan started with the core point that thinking about what is “low cost” should take a step back from the costs of relatively inexpensive items like video cameras and video editing software, and look more broadly at the many other cost elements associated with producing good multi-media.

Using the example of her work organizing the “Gorilla Engagement Squad” at The Communications Network annual conference, she talked about how inexperienced and experienced camerapersons using Flip Cams and Tweeters could use inexpensive technologies in combination to extend the reach of a conference outside those present, as well as develop relationships among those on-site. But she made clear that the real cost was not the video cameras, etc., but the human resources to plan the video capture strategy, corralling interviewers and interviewees, and putting the pieces together into a compelling story.  It takes a lot of time (and someone fairly experienced in pulling it all together). This link features some of the participants in that effort talking about how it worked: Gorilla Engagement Squad 2009 http://vimeo.com/8174186

Then she talked about Video Skype and using it to produce “Diavlogs,” which, for the uninitiated, are essentially synched video of two people doing an interview showing both on-screen (usually from separate remote locations). The point here was that doing interviews and putting them up online is exceptionally easy and a potentially great way to share ideas/information in a conversational format. But just like any other interview – it has to be interesting to the audience!  Two people talking is easy to produce, but to get people to watch, there has to be great content, on both the interview and interviewee sides.  Here is a link to some examples of diavlogs: Beyond Branding http://vimeo.com/8265230

Next, she explored an example where she herself was a one-person camera crew, working for the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, gathering footage for an effort to get Presidential candidates focused on urban issues.  As an admittedly only “moderately” experienced camera person and interviewer, but having access to a really well-connected producer and experienced logistical coordinator, she was able to interview 10 mayors of major American cities about the challenges facing urban centers and use that footage to produce a compelling, cohesive message, which was picked up by The Nation, netroots bloggers and many well-trafficked .org sites.  The point here was how key a well-connected producer and logistical-coordinator were, not the expense of the technology and other aspects of “video production.”

Finally, she showed a new website that she has created as an example of how easy it is to do man/woman-on-the-street interviews on a Flip Cam, along with Flickr to host picture slide shows.  She also talked about the social networking aspect (in this case Facebook) of quickly building an audience when you have simple but compelling content.  This is the site (which is based on a $69 template) that she used as an example: http://www.dapperq.com/

As we opened the conversation up to the group, I added a few thoughts of my own.  First, I made the point that, while everyone wants to produce a “message” video that is witty and gets people’s attention so much so that it goes VIRAL and everyone is convinced of your point, there are lots of other possible uses of video.

This is a classic example of a “message” video (we didn’t show it at the meeting because the video didn’t show well on the projection screen): Lost Generation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA&feature=player_embedded

But you can do lots of other stuff with videos and other forms of multi-media, like…

–Highlighting organizational programs showing the programs in action.  Here’s a great teaser from the Anaheim Ballet that meeting participants loved: Anaheim Ballet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2XmRzaCFFY&feature=player_embedded  This is obviously great for arts organizations, but you can do it with panel discussions and other events relevant to policy-related organizations.

–Using multi-media to extend the reach of conferences/panel discussions, etc. (i.e. Philanthromedia’s work on Comnet09, Public Agenda’s policy breakfast series online videos, TED Talks)  Here is one example of a Public Agenda video highlighting programming: America\’s Financial Future http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mapR6TK8_Fo&feature=player_embedded

– To tell an organization’s history (for fundraising purposes)

– To take on powerful interests, critique leaders in a witty way

This is one that participant Michael Falco of Pro-Media Communications offered: ABA Showdown http://www.youtube.com/user/ABAShowdown  It is a great example of “taking it to the streets” and then taking the street online to spread virally.  It got a lot of hits.

– “instructional” : telling people what you want them to do and how to do it, for example: The World Sucks: Help it Suck Less http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAUQslfFP4&feature=player_embedded

– To recruit volunteers For example: Into Darfur: A Young American\’s Journey http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BQcSyG7bOQ&feature=player_embedded

– To sell a policy direction For example: A New Sound: Green For All http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNszFwmSg2Y&feature=player_embedded

The conversation ranged over a lot of territory after that and people talked about their own experiences producing multi-media, including best ways to produce slideshows.  Fenton Communications’ Lisa Witter offered that the organization Duarte is amazing at producing such multi-media slide shows and maintains a blog called “Slide:ology” at http://blog.duarte.com/

She also shared this very inexpensive, provocative video called Milking Cancer http://vimeo.com/6675967 It was produced for $5,000 – which included the actors and editor.

It was noted by several participants that every organization should have a YouTube channel by now, but that Vimeo is also quite valuable because of the cleanliness of the presentation.

Lots of folks offered other examples.  I apologize that I didn’t catch who offered what.  This one is a good example of using lots of forms of media capture and putting it all together on one cohesive piece: MQ2 http://mq2.org/

The conversation ranged across many of the challenges of utilizing multi-media, but several themes kept reoccurring:

1. The importance of investing wisely in human resources, and knowing what you can do in-house and what you need to pay an expert for.

2. The ultimate fact that you need to start with interesting content or a compelling story.  You can throw lots of stuff up on a website, but if it isn’t witty or emotionally compelling, no one is going to watch it.

3. Dissemination is not to be overlooked.  We only touched on this topic, which should perhaps be revisited in a future session.  But we did talk about how the first step of getting something to “go viral” (after producing something interesting) is to start with your core audience and creating incentives for them to re-post and share through social networking sites.

I hope these notes are helpful.  They capture only a small part of what I learned from my colleagues at the session.  Another thing I learned is that I need to have someone dedicated to taking notes at the session.  Next time.

Over the course of late 2008 and the first half of 2009, PPC-NYC bloomed and its networking and discussions of key communications topics went deeper than even I expected.  We were meeting every other month and seemed to be building a strong community of shared learning.  But our planned summer hiatus extended through the fall when we lost our donated space in The New York Times building.

I am very excited to announce that the Ford Foundation, with its beautiful, centrally located facilities, has stepped up and offered to host the PPC-NYC brown bag lunch series starting this January.

Here is the information on the next PPC-NYC meeting:

What:               Brown-bag lunch (that means bring your own lunch!)

When:              Thursday, January 21, 2010 12:00 – 2:00 p.m.
(informal networking from 12:00-12:30, program begins at 12:30)

Where:            Ford Foundation – 320 East 43^rd Street (between 1^st & 2^nd Ave), New York, NY

Topic:              Utilizing low-cost multi-media in creative ways to maximize communications impact. Susan Herr of Philanthromedia will lead off the discussion.

RSVP:             Space is limited.  Please let me know that you are coming by emailing me at mremaley at ppcnyc dot org

I would like to thank the Ford Foundation – and especially PPC-NYC regular attendees Fiona Guthrie and Alfred Ironside — for helping make this learning series happen.  They’ve been exceptionally supportive and we are extremely grateful. Also, the Communications Network’s Bruce Trachtenberg has been essential to this organization’s success from the very beginning.

I hope to see you on January 21.