Recently, Allison Fine, author of Momentum and frequent writer and speaker on the subject of social media for social change, began an email conversation that asked thoughtful, important questions about our approach.  I was honored, to say the least, and thought I’d post our Q & A here to share and continue what I think is an interesting discussion about Epic Change and the convergence of storytelling, social media & social change…

Q1: Beth Kanter and I are hard at work on our book on using social networks for social change. We’d love to include the Epic Change story in the book. And I get what you’re doing, and loved Tweetsgiving, but wanted to ask if you could clarify this sentence for me:

“We then facilitate loan repayment by collaborating with our partners to share their stories through projects that generate income.” [quoted from this Epic Change web page on our approach]

What exactly does that mean in practice with your partners? How does that happen?

We’re constantly reworking our approach as we learn, and the question you raise is an aspect of our model that we consistently consider, so it’s likely to evolve as we move forward.  That said, from our founding to date, that sentence has simply meant that we help our partner generate non-charitable income, or income from alternate charitable sources, and those funds are used as loan repayments.  Here’s what that’s looked like so far:

• Auctions & Performances:  Local performances and auctions where the school is located in Tanzania have raised thousands.
• Product Sales:  We’ve sold products, like cards and candles, with the photos, stories and artwork of students, each one conveying a story from our partner community.
• Art Gallery:  We’ve got a gallery show in September where photography from Tanzania will be sold to generate income for the school rather than the photographer.
• Grants:  We help Mama Lucy share her own story to apply for grants from other funders.  This Changemakers application is one example.
• Book Sales:  Photos from the project have been included in a book, and a fraction of the sales have created income too.

We’ve loaned over $65k total in Arusha so far, and over $5k has already been repaid through income-generating activities like those above.  Normally, and on the surface, these might seem like traditional “fundraising” activities – and we struggle constantly with as we learn more and more that the line between storytelling and fundraising is fine; perhaps it doesn’t really even exist.

Essentially, we believe that stories like Mama Lucy’s have value; they inspire, spread hope, help people to learn about the world in which we live, and can even raise revenues for brands if used as socially-responsible marketing tools for consumer products.  As such, stories are assets that changemakers like Mama Lucy can use to generate non-charitable income for their own endeavors.  How we do that is likely to evolve, but as a preview, here’s a couple of things we’re investigating:

• Fair Content:  For so long, storytellers, photographers, nonprofits, corporations and others from the Global North have benefited financially by sharing stories and images from the Global South (take SlumDog Millionaire as just one example – but there are countless).  We’re working on a concept called “fair content” that would license content in ways that ensures that those people who live shared stories benefit directly financially when their stories are shared in ways that generate revenues.  [Update since Allison's inquiry: We recently created www.faircontent.org as an initial placeholder for this work, and began to experiment the concept with a chat on theMotherhood.com featuring content from Rwanda gathered by writer, artist and photographer Jen Lemen, who's currently traveling the globe funded by a $50,000 award for her Picture Hope project from Microsoft & Lenovo.]

• Socially Responsible Co-Branding:  Since socially responsible marketing can demonstrably improve sales, we may partner with consumer brands to “license” Mama Lucy’s story for their use in promoting their products.  Imagine something like this video we created for a 3M YouTube post-it note competition.

• Social Media Storytelling:  It may also be that we eventually find funding that’s irrespective of a particular project’s story to support our underlying model.  We’d then consider using that to make loans, then using social media to share specific project stories to generate income for loan payback.

In short, when we help people like Mama Lucy share their stories, we don’t want to inspire charity, but create compensation for a valuable product/service.  We want to create a world in which changemakers like Mama Lucy are no longer perceived as objects of charity, but rather as purveyors of hope, in which their stories are recognized for the value they hold, and in which people are compensated directly for the stories they live, create and share.

Q2: What brought you to “storytelling” as an avenue for social change. It has certainly always been a part of fundraising — but I am struck by your putting storytelling out there front and center and then following with fundraising. What is about story telling, and your experiences, with it that make you such a passionate advocate for it?

I shared with Allison the summary below, but also the longer answer, which I posted here yesterday.

In the months before I launched Epic Change, I had two important encounters with storytellers who would change me forever. The first was a man without shoes on a cold night in San Francisco who sat with me for an hour and shared the story of how he’d lost his job, his home and his shoes, and the second was a Tanzanian woman named Mama Lucy Kamptoni, who over weeks of volunteering shared with me the story of how she’d turned her income from selling chickens into a high-quality school that now serves hundreds.

In both cases, I was compelled to act. In the first situation, and at his request, I went with the man to a local drugstore after midnight and bought the warmest clothes and slippers I could find. I stayed up the rest of the night with my best friend, too, imagining a system that could scale storytelling interactions like those. In the second instance, still inspired by the first, I founded Epic Change, and we’ve partnered with Mama Lucy to realize her vision by securing land, building 5 classrooms and purchasing a school bus for a school that’s now serves over 300 children and is ranked at the top of its district on national exams.

I wonder often about why these interactions compelled me to act in ways that I hadn’t previously.

It struck me in both instances that I was getting a valuable education from these individuals, the kind of education that generally warrants compensation. Too often, I think we view these types of storytellers simply as objects of charity. What if their most important asset, the most precious thing they have to offer, is the story of the life they’ve lived? The generosity with which both shared their lives with me was truly overwhelming. Shouldn’t they be compensated in some way for sharing it? Is that type of compensation really charity – or just payment for a valuable product/service?

In both cases, too, the storyteller gave me a direct way to make a difference. The homeless gentleman asked me for shoes and warm clothes, and Mama Lucy asked me to be her partner in expanding Shepherds Junior School. I’m not certain I can end homelessness, nor that I can reform education in Africa. But I can help one man in San Francisco, one woman in Tanzania. That much I can do.

That’s another reason why I believe individual stories are so important. They don’t dwarf us in the the way that causes, statistics and stereotypes so often do. Too frequently causes cite overwhelming statistics and systemic issues in the face of which one person’s contribution seems so small as not to matter at all. Individual stories make action accessible. Or perhaps people simply connect to people more readily than we do to causes and corporations.

I’m sure there’s something about my broader life experience that makes me a passionate advocate for storytelling; I’m an ardent supporter of the arts, for example, my graduate degree is actually in performing arts management, and I used to work in theater management. I’ve always been struck by how powerful, well-told stories can transform us.

Q3: Is there a particular role that social media plays in helping to tell Mama Lucy’s story?

Social media has helped us:

• Bridge geographical distance. Our vision is to create a common community in which Mama Lucy and local parents, teachers and students, share stories directly with an audience across the globe.  While I’ve been playing an intermediary/translator role as we build technological infrastructure and capacity, Mama Lucy has already begun blogging, has built an initial Twitter and Facebook account and we’ve recently won a grant to implement a technology lab at the school.  We all know that we’re more likely to help those in our own backyards than those who live half the world away; what if we live in the same community – even if that community is online?
• Avoid donor/recipient silos. Since social media forums like Twitter, Facebook and WordPress are so open and transparent, our donors and supporters may interact directly and immediately with those they support.  Already, for instance, parents and community members have commented on the blog, and people from both our community in Arusha and across the globe collaborated by voting to ensure our recent Ideablob win.  We’re excited to see how this unfolds when the school has a technology lab onsite.  There’s an implicit sense of equality that’s engendered, I believe, when everyone can transparently participate in the same conversation.
• Build social capital, visibility, legitimacy and influence for a social innovator who may not otherwise have been able to raise the awareness and resources needed to expand her effective idea for social change.
• Foster a sense of interconnectedness/ubuntu. By sharing stories among thousands with themes to which we can all relate, like the one of gratitude during TweetsGiving, we’re trying to tap into our common humanity.  Maybe we’re not so different.  And if we’re not, then maybe our tacit consent to a radically unequal world is no longer good enough.  Since we seek to build community among people from different geographies and cultures, we believe it’s important to focus on what we have in common, and social media presents an interesting opportunity to make such connections explicit.
• Reach a broad audience.
• Limit spending on marketing & fundraising.
• Engage audiences through multiple channels.

What questions do you have for Epic Change? What are your thoughts on the convergence of storytelling, social media & social change?

Posted: August 5th, 2009 under The Foundry.
Comments: none

Months before my first trip to Tanzania, while I was consulting in San Francisco and before Epic Change had ever been imagined, I went to see a live performance of Doubt at a local theatre.  It’s one of those plays that requires something of its audience, gives no answers, leaves only questions.  So, craving conversation, my friend (and now co-founder) Sanjay and I went to Citizen Cake, because there’s no better place, IMHO, to have thoughtful discussions than over dessert ;)

After a couple of hours of talking it through, we left and as we walked to our car we ran into a homeless African-American man who looked to be in his 60s. It was bitterly cold that night in San Francisco – and he had no shoes.  We’d find out later that they had been stolen as he slept at a shelter the night before.  He asked for our help.  We offered to meet him at a WalGreen’s a block away, and both headed separately in that direction – but the store was closed.  We then offered him bus fare to meet us at another drugstore in Union Square.  He said he was freezing, and raised his shirt to bare his body so we could scan for weapons, I suppose, as he said something along the lines of “I’m just an old man.  I’m not gonna hurt you.  Just take me with you.”  I was shocked when Sanjay, who’s normally both practical and careful, replied “get in the car.”  He did.

As we started to drive, he began to make small talk.  It seemed clear that no one had listened to him, or engaged him in casual conversation in some time.  At one point he said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Do you think Michael Jackson was guilty?”  Another random topic to spur on our “normal” conversation.

“I don’t know.  I just don’t know.” I responded then asked,  “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

It was no longer small talk.  There was a man in the back of my car, I’d invited him to tell me his story, and it would change me forever.

He’d been a bicycle courier for decades and had been replaced by someone younger, faster.  He looked for another job, but his age and experience left him unemployed for months.  He lost his apartment. Rather than embarrass himself and burden his family, he chose to live on the streets.  “It’s not easy,” he said, “to apply for jobs when you have no clean clothes, no address for the application, no place to bathe.  I don’t smell good.” He didn’t.

We got to Union Square, left him warm in the car, and went into the drugstore.  We got blankets, a fleece jacket, thick socks, slippers, anything we could find that looked warm, and went back to the car.

As we unpacked the bag and passed it to him in the backseat, he started to put everything on.  Then he started to cry.

I did too.

We asked where he needed to go.  He directed us a few blocks away, where he said he’d sleep at a shelter if he could get in.  We pulled over and, as he got out of the car, Sanjay gave him $20 and I offered him my business card.  I told him to call me, that I could help him with clothes, a place to bathe, his resume.  He refused to take it, saying, “you’ve done too much already,” and he disappeared around the corner.

It will not surprise those who know me well that I do not easily take no for an answer.  A block later, I got out of the car, walked back around the corner, where I found him, on the ground, crying.  He stood up, and this time he took my card.  I hugged him and said, believing with all my heart that it would be so, “you’re going to be okay.”

That night, Sanjay and I stayed up all night thinking about how different the world would be if all giving were that intimate.  We wondered whether that man hadn’t just given us the most precious asset he had to offer in telling us the story of his life, and whether our small gifts were an act of charity, as it might seem on the surface, or an attempt at fair compensation for for the generosity he’d shown in sharing himself with us.  We talked about organizations and tools we could build to help people share their stories so that potential funders could connect to them – directly.

He’s never called, though my number hasn’t changed since I passed him my card.  I’m not sure how the story unfolded for him after that night, and I’m still sad that I don’t remember his name.

But here’s what I do know:  the hopeful seed that would become Epic Change was planted that night.

And I wish he knew.

This week the fabulous Allison Fine reached out with a few questions to help with research she’s doing for a forthcoming book she’s writing with social media/social change pioneer Beth Kanter.  Her question, “What brought you to “storytelling” as an avenue for social change?” led me to finally write down for the first time this story of the birth of Epic Change.  Many people think my meeting with Mama Lucy inspired the genesis of Epic Change.  She was, indeed, the proximate cause – but the desire to share individual stories to create change was born one cold night in San Francisco months before we’d ever met.

Allison asked a few other great questions in her email interview, so I’ll share more of my answers later this week…

Posted: August 3rd, 2009 under The Foundry.
Comments: 5