Profiles

Advocacy Video: Producing Change
This excellent report provides 15 examples illustrating the use of advocacy videos by broadcasters, individuals and nonprofits to win direct results in campaigns to further social causes. (Benton Foundation, 1997)

Do Environmental Films Help the Environment?
Because films are visually compelling, they can be excellent ways to garner support for your cause. This article from MediaRights.org describes five different environmental activists using films to affect change in their community both locally and nationally.

The Mother Teresa Of All Web Sites
The Internet can be a powerful tool to help move your organization's mission forward. This AlterNet article profiles VolunteerMatch.org, a nonprofit organization that uses the Internet to connect organizations with potential volunteers. According to founder Jay Backstrand, despite the bust of the dot-com industry, this online organization has succeeded.

American Architectural Foundation (AAF)
The American Architectural Foundation (AAF) is one organization that believes individuals should be informed of and involved in the design of their communities. In order to foster public learning and participation, AAF produces television documentaries that tell the stories and share the strategies of citizens who have joined together to rebuild their communities.

Grantmakers on Funding Social Issue Media Projects
Staff from both the Ford and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations talk about the importance of funding communications efforts by highlighting initiatives their organizations funded, which incorporate multiple platforms in order to reach the widest audience possible.

What to Watch

Good Works in the Palm of a Hand
The Chronicle of Philanthropy discusses the use of handheld devices by nonprofit organizations in social service and disaster relief.

Highlights of Mediarights.org
This Benton written piece highlights the resources and tools that can be found on the MediaRights Web site. MediaRights.org seeks to provide activists and social change makers with the tools and information they need to utilize documentary films to aid in their work.

con·ver·gence (kn-vûrjns)
The convergence of media has powerful implications for the nonprofit sector, allowing you to streamline your services and deliver information in a variety of ways. This article is the first in a series that will explore nonprofit communications in the increasingly converging media environment.

Noncommercial Networks on DBS
This piece from Benton's Communications Policy program looks at the potential of Direct Broadcasting Satellite (DBS) as a vehicle for conveying public interest messages and programming.

Connecting Communities: Public Media in the Digital Age
If new communications technologies are so powerful and so innovative, then how can they be harnessed to our local, community needs? This Benton Foundation report surveys some of the experiments being conducted around the country in an attempt to answer this and other questions.

Is Low Power FM Finally finding its Voice?
In the Mountain Empire communities of Potrero, Campo and Morena Village, California, local community news is distributed by word-of-mouth and through information placed on post office bulletin boards. There are no daily newspapers, local radio or TV stations in this rural mountainous part of southeast San Diego County, along the border of the United States and Mexico. But soon, residents of the Mountain Empire region -- and hundreds of communities like it -- will be able to exchange information and keep informed through their very own radio station.

Pew Center for Civic Journalism
Explores the cross-section between traditional news media and social change. Their newsletter, Civic Catalyst, tracks experiments between media outlets and community-based organizations.

Last updated: 30 October 2001 mff