The Uncultured Project

Today, I’m thankful for operating & equipment fund donors like Ryan & Caleb. They helped me acquire a much needed piece of software I need as part of this project.

However, after corresponding with the CEO of the company behind this software, spending money to support this company was the last thing I wanted to do.

After reaching out to his company inquiring if they discounted or donated software to worthy causes, I got a thanks but no thanks response.

On the advice of one of my friends on Twitter, I wrote a personal appeal to the CEO. Turns out, the person who responded originally was in fact the CEO.

Here was his follow-up:

Hi Shawn,

I have already responded to you, but apparently my message wasn’t clear so let me spell it out. I have given a lot of money to various causes over the years and have concluded it was a complete waste. The reason why is that it was passive and reactive, with no real attention being paid to the impact it might have. My response to this is not to pull back, but rather to redouble my efforts, take the time to devise a donation strategy, pick my battles and be very conscious of whether I am being effective. This takes a lot of time, but I like how it is working out.

Part of the strategy is to allocate my time carefully. There are only so many hours in the day that I can spend on philanthropic efforts. Every minute that I take to write letters like this one is a minute I can’t spend finding the most effective way to stop the trafficking of women in Vietnam or free a political prisoner in Burma. We get a lot of requests for donations to all kinds of things. We can either say yes to all of them or no to all of them, but there is no way we are going to take the time to investigate them to see which ones we feel we should support. Instead, we will use our time to identify the efforts that make the most sense to us and we will put a lot of support behind those, without having to be approached about it. In other words, don’t call us, we’ll call you.

So, no, I don’t know your organization and I am not going find out about it. [...]

I’m definitely hurt and insulted by this CEO’s response. But I didn’t post this to give his company a bad reputation. Instead, I wanted to talk about the idea of “don’t call us, we’ll call you” as a standard for corporate social responsibility.

Simply put: that approach doesn’t work. This is especially true if your company creates a niche product (as is the case for this particular piece of software).

There is no way that, of all the causes and charities out there, that the one the CEO decides to “call” will happen to be the one that could be best served by a complementary copy of his software.

It’s times like this that I’m ever grateful for all the companies that have taken time to learn about me – even though they may have never heard of me before. Companies that have taken the time to see the value in my work, take a risk, and support it.

And, I’m especially thankful for operating and equipment fund donors who help me solve problems when I can’t find a sponsor or a CEO kind enough to even offer a coupon for their products.

And, without mentioning the company or product name, no – there is unfortunately no competitor or alternative to this particular program. It’s very niche and solves a very specific problem for those using dual system sound recording.

Perhaps that’s why this CEO could afford to be so gruff: he knew I’d have to be a customer of his either way.

[UPDATE: Wow - this post inspired some changes. Since writing this post, a copy of this software was donated to me by the CEO. We also had several good email exchanges afterwards where he shared some tips on what he feels would catch the attention of other CEOs that I approach in the future. Basically, his suggestion was that I should emphasize the work I do on the ground and not focus on how much support there is for this on YouTube.]

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Hank & John Start VidCon Early in the Morning (thus the rare shot of empty seats)

VidCon. In a word? WOW. As one friend put it, “it’s like the internet exploded into real life”. It was surreal, amazing, & awesome to meet people that I’ve only been able to see through my computer screen.

Even though there wasn’t nearly enough time, I’m in awe at how seamlessly online friends turned into “real life” friends. In most cases it’s like you’ve known someone for ages and are just hanging out.

This photo makes me look more epic than I ever have the right to be.

Hank & Me on Stage

It was also a real honor to be able to speak in front of 1,700+ people at VidCon. I can’t thank Hank & John Green enough for this opportunity.

In all honesty, if they were picking speakers solely based on number of YouTube subscribers & views, than I would never have been picked. But, that’s part of the reason I’m so grateful I had this chance.

I believe that YouTube is an unprecedented force for good in this world. Forget the haters – we as a community can do amazing things. But, I believe the power of this community remains largely untapped.

With the exception of YouTube featuring stuff, the conversation about global poverty is but a small teeny tiny fraction of the conversation going on YouTube. That’s something I’d like to change.

I’m trying my best – but I can’t do it alone. It’s hard because I can’t do what normal YouTubers do to climb the charts and become a success.

For example, I can be informal & casual but – given the subject matter – I can’t be too silly. Although I want to, I also can’t make videos on a regular & frequent schedule. I’m forced to balance doing a good job on-the-ground with spending time making videos.

In some cases, the projects I do take years to complete. They require planning, networking, budgets, on-the-ground trust building, and also need to account for natural disasters & political unrest which push back schedules.

The video I showed at VidCon is a perfect example. It took 1,000 days to bring this story to an audience. It’s hard to do something like that on a weekly basis. It’s for that reason I need the YouTube community to help me share & spread videos like this one:

So speaking at VidCon was very important because, not only is what I do funded by the YouTube community, the future success of this project is entirely dependent on how much support this work gets on YouTube.

This trip to VidCon wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Hank Green (VidCon event organizer and vlogbrother) who sponsored my flight to VidCon and Patrick Clinger at ProBoards who sponsored my room, board, and stay in Los Angeles.

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Tomorrow I’m flying to Los Angeles to be a part of VidCon 2010. Not sure what VidCon is? The Globe & Mail did a great story on it (honoured to be featured in it!) that you can read here.

If you’re going, here’s a sneak peak of a short 6 minute video I hope to show there. The YouTube version will go up afterwards.

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There’s a difference between doing charity to make a difference and doing charity to feel good about yourself. One requires far less effort – and may actually do harm in the long run.

The reason I’ve been inspired to write about this is because I’m a huge fan of this blog post critical of “hug-an-orphan” trips and charities.

If you’ve ever traveled to the developing world, you know what I’m talking about: you hear of some school for poor children (and/or an orphanage) that lets you volunteer for however much time you can spare. You can also photograph and film until your heart’s content – without restrictions.

And, especially nowadays, you can even book a trip just to go abroad to help people. It’s called voluntourism. And, unfortunately, it’s nothing like the long-term work required in the Peace Corps or VSO.

While I’ve had a hard time teaming up with big charities, I’ve had plenty of unrestricted offers by smaller charities, schools, and orphanages in Bangladesh to come over, film, photograph, and help the kids there.

And, you know what? That raises a huge red flag for me.

An open-door, unrestricted, policy on filming, photography, and volunteering to anyone who shows up is often not in the best interest of children and is more about making the volunteer feel good about themselves.

As the blog post critical of such establishments points out:

Generally volunteers will only stay at the orphanage [or school] for a few days, weeks, or at best months. While at the orphanage most volunteers seek to build emotional bonds with the children so they can feel they made a difference. Unfortunately, although well intended, this leads to a never ending round of abandonment for the orphans.

As much as it delays things, it’s actually a good sign when there’ s at least a bit of a struggle to film & photograph. I love it when I get treated with skepticism, prodding questions, and subjected to background checks.

Students studying by candlelight at the Dharmarajika Orphanage. This orphanage gave me a tough time to get access. Which is exactly why I wanted to help them.

You know why? It shows they actually give a damn about those they help. These hoops also filter out those who want to help just to feel good about themselves – and those who want to actually make a difference.

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