UP | uncultured project

Inspired by this video by Tom (one of the World Vision Vloggers), I made this video response making my pitch why World Vision could benefit (and has the technical capacity) to be more like Charity: Water:

I conclude the video by pointing out that it’s not my intention at all to be a hater. I think that needs emphasizing because it’s far too easy for a charity to mistake well-meaning advice from a supporter to be cynicism & criticism from a skeptic.

It also must be said that when giving advice to a charity like World Vision, you gotta do it with a bit of humility. World Vision has been saving lives and helping people since before I even existed. But that’s part of the point.

My parents were born and brought up in a country where World Vision doesn’t come to raise donations – but rather to comes spend them. World Vision has had a presence in my mother’s rural Bangladesh village – a village where some people are too poor to even be buried – since the 1970s.

I mention this because, as someone whose extended family (but not my most immediate aunts & uncles) still live in that village and many of whom are beneficiaries of World Vision to this very day, extreme poverty is far more complex than can be expressed in any YouTube video.

If our goal is just to sponsor more children – than World Vision Vloggers is a perfect success. But, if our goal is to end extreme poverty within our lifetime, than I hope that initiatives like World Vision Vloggers are just the first step.

The tl;dr version: World Vision is the first charity to genuinely engage with the YouTube community. We need to support this – but we also need to make it clear we have more to offer than just vlogs.

I’ve also said the same thing in more detail (and with examples) in this video:

During my time away from Bangladesh, I’ve been talking to a lot of charities. I’ve consulted with UNICEF, presented at Save the Children HQ, entered talks with the Red Cross, and have been giving input to World Vision.

World Vision is the first charity that’s heard me out and created a plan of action to engage the YouTube community. I was glad to have some input on this. And World Vision has done it in a way that experts like Beth Kanter would be proud: they are letting outsiders come in and aren’t worrying about perfection on the first try.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know I’ve been advising charities to stop relying solely on Hollywood celebrities. Sending regular folks like Alex, Shawna, and Tom to Zambia have already generated over 300,000 views for World Vision on YouTube. See charities? I told you so.

The big challenge is the next step. My hope is that World Vision will use this success to do more ambitious things with the YouTube community. My fear is that, impressed by the amount of views they are getting, they won’t be challenged to try and engage this community in a deeper way.

If the support I’ve been getting is any indication, the YouTube community wants input on the charity work being on the ground. We want to see where the money goes, we want to see a project executed from start to finish, and we want to get to know the specific people our money has helped.

The technology to do this is here and it’s something I’ve been doing for a while now. But, after spending over 2 years to repair a school, what incentive does a charity have to do something like this again when I can only generate less than 40,000 views? Alex packing for his trip already got World Vision over 200,000 views.

This is an important moment for the YouTube community. We need to praise World Vision for engaging the YouTube community – but we also need to let them know we want more than just them replicating their celebrity-style visits with high profile YouTubers.

One way you can do this is let World Vision know. They are listening. On the World Vision Vloggers website, they have a place where you can leave a note (see the photo below for where the link is). Feel free to drop them a line. You can also tweet something using the #wvv hashtag and they will see it.

World Vision wants your feedback either through leaving a note (see link that I highlighted in the photo) or by tweeting #wvv as a hashtag.

I just logged into my Google AdSense account to see I’ll be earning a whopping 3 cents today. This is usually the norm for the income I generate.

In fact, features and traffic surges included, since starting this project I’ve earned well under $2 a day. To put it simply: Technically, I am just as poor (if not poorer) than the people I help.

OMG I'm rich!.... okay maybe not.

With that in mind, I thought now would be a good time to talk about what role I feel ads through my YouTube partnership play in this project and how I hope it will fit into the big picture.

More after the jump…

Continue reading ‘Working For Free Only Works for a While’

Jason Sadler

Inspired by some recent comments on this blog and tweets, I’d like to talk about the direction I feel this project needs to be going. And it starts with the story of Jason Sadler.

Jason Sadler is an entrepreneur who has successfully used social media to generate fame, attention, and wealth for himself through his business called I Wear Your Shirt. Hoping to use his momentum on social media, Jason decided to form his own non-profit organization.

Jason’s non-profit was about providing free clothes to people in Africa. He called his organization “1 Million Shirts” with the goal of getting people to donate 1 million used shirts which he would then ship to needy families in Africa.

A lot of us donate our gently-used clothing to local good-will. And, when I’m overseas, I often find myself parting with some of my favorite shirts because I find people who could benefit from them more than I could. But, on the scale Jason was aiming to do, this could do more harm than good.

Click the jump to read more…

Continue reading ‘This Takes Time’

What would you say if I gave your donations to someone whom (until recently) I never met, who used it on a country I’ve never been, and helped people I’ve never seen?

What you would get is this video:

First, it must be said that this is far less sketchy than it seems. Rohan was a friend of mine long before I sent him a dime. I trusted him enough as a friend before I entrusted him with part of this project. That, of course, does limit how often I can do things like this.

Second, there is a specific reason I wanted to try something like this. Quite frankly, there is a vacuum out there when it comes to supporting people like me right now.

There are so many foundations touting themselves as supporting “social innovators”, “social entrepreneurs”, and “social change”. But, you know what? It’s nonsense.

From experience, almost all of these foundations tend to overlook people like me. Maybe because we get mistaken as a mere “film project”, or because we can’t speak their jargon, or because we operate outside of the structure they’ve built for themselves.

Which leaves people like me – whether it’s someone like Rohan doing a short trip or someone like Mark whose devoted his life to this kind of work – to go it alone. If we don’t help each other, who will?

And, by teaming up with a friend, I now have a fellow YouTuber who understands the frustrations of trying to do work like this. And how, it’s impossible to produce videos on a regular basis like most major YouTubers:

At the risk of sounding grandiose, the fact is I have a vision of how donors, supporters, and people on-the-ground should be engaging and interacting with each other. It’s a vision I’ve been putting into practice for over three years – and I have so much more I want to do.

Yet, despite you guys liking it and people on-the-ground loving it, foundations will overlook it and charities (that are fortresses) will resist it. C’est la vie. My only regret is I wish Rohan & I had the chance to do more than just help 40 families with blankets.

The future of this project really does rest with the support it gets from the YouTube community. And whether it’s people like Rohan on the ground or you guys supporting this every step of the way online – I couldn’t ask for a better support network.

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.]

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.