I've been in San Diego for over 10 years now. About 8 years ago, three guys (who happen to be friends of friends, and a couple from my alma mater...so basically I know them) went to Africa and made a documentary. It was artsy, fresh, hip... just like them. They came back, started showing the documentary around, and then a huge, young, 501(c)3 exploded from their film, complete with tons of merch and great graphics... not to mention a pretty hardcore mission... to apprehend Joseph Kony and stop the longest running African war.
There are many, many organizations that are doing humanitarian work in different African countries. There are lots of campaigns in America to get involved. There are a bunch of documentaries made about wars in Africa (in fact, I helped make one in Cairo... a different story altogether). But I have yet to see an organization that has so captured the hearts, minds, and talents of the youth of America like Invisible Children.
I walked into their headquarters last week for an interview with one of their staff on what they call their "Movements" team. Turns out she was actually a volunteer, but I didn't take it personally. Their headquarters is on the fourth floor of a big office building in downtown San Diego. Walking into their offices, it felt a little like Never-Never land had organized into a big non-profit. Everyone I met was younger than me. They were all doing very important things, like having some big conference meeting, transferring phone calls, and directing a huge room of what looked like tele-marketers. (They were actually all "roadies" setting up their upcoming movie tours.) I just couldn't get over how young everyone was.
I shouldn't have been so surprised though, because Invisible Children targets these youth and captures their heart and puts them to work for an amazing cause. That's their plan.
I had a great interview with a woman named Katie. Here's my first lesson from Invisible Children.
It's all about your volunteers (or interns, roadies, fans, customers).
Here's a quote from Katie: "...most organizations’ interns exist to serve management, but for Invisible Children the management exists to serve the interns...Honestly, as soon as we get in these doors they sit us down and say “You are Invisible Children, you are the face of the organization. We are trusting you with this large task.” And they really do trust you. It’s an immediate trust and responsibility given. Being trusted that you have what it takes to do these great things for this organization. It’s not even for the organization, but for the people on the ground."
Invisible Children has a crazy, audacious, and focused mission. It is clear, and very compelling. But it seems they spend at least equal time, energy, and resources on their volunteers and raising awareness as they do accomplishing their mission. And I don't think that's a bad thing. It might be a brilliant thing.
I have had many an experience trying to volunteer at an organization but not really feeling like I could do anything that important. Push papers, paint a building, etc. I have tried to connect college students with organizations that didn't have the capacity to even use volunteers. Often these organizations are staff and program heavy. Invisible Children is volunteer heavy.
They have figured out how to engage, empower, and mobilize huge amounts of people towards their cause. They focus on their volunteers, make them feel important, give them responsibilities that are definitely above their pay-grade. Volunteers are trusted, relied upon, challenged.
And because of this, the girl I was interviewing, with a bachelors from a prestigious university, had given up six months to live out of a van, direct other unpaid volunteers, and take their newest film around the country. This was her second (unpaid) internship with Invisible Children.
There is a fantastic video from TEDxTeen (did you know there was such a thing?) of a young Invisible Children volunteer's experience rallying thousands and thousands of people and ultimately getting Oprah to give them a spot to share on her show. This young woman talks about all the volunteers mobilizing for Invisible Children as anonymous extraordinaries.
What a great way to look at volunteers... as anonymous extraordinaries, with unlimited potential for your organization and your cause. What a great strategy... to organize, pour into, activate an army of people willing to take your name and your cause into their schools, churches, neighborhoods.
I think this focus, intentionality, and empowerment of their volunteers is one key to success for Invisible Children. It's not their only one, but I think it's an important one.
What do you think? Have you experienced this kind of volunteer experience? What do you think is the potential for highly activated volunteers?
on a much smaller scale, San Diego Asian Film Foundation and their huge annual film festival runs in the same way in that they have four full-time staff (including the vastly underpaid ED, former news anchor Lee Ann Kim) that are there to support their over 200 staff team for the festival. And these students go hard for this festival because they believe in the cause and the access they get to something so culturally empowering to them.
ReplyDeleteThis type of stuff is the "evangelists" marketing strategy that was first became a big deal in business books about five years ago... used by Harley, Jeep, Ben & Jerry's, etc most effectively. It's so much easier to mobilize, resource, track and leverage evangelists now because of social media which is the perfect storm that I think Invisible Children really hit... (uh, then there was the dud of a routine on this season's SYTCD to try and raise support for them).
I remember from my intro to social psych class that someone who gets paid the least/nothing in money actually ends up doing the most passionate work for an organization because deep down inside they are telling themselves that it's okay that they're not getting paid because what they're doing is so important.
oooo that was an inspiring video!! Inspirational leadership is a great thing to be studying, and so important for any future great change movements.
ReplyDeletejust finishing up this book that touches on the leadership ideology and style needed to best leverage open/crowd-sourcing... the way of the future!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Mavericks-Work-Original-Minds-Business/dp/0060779616
Joon, the AA Film Festival is a great example. I keep hearing that it's growing in participation and prestige. People really get excited about putting on film festival-type events.
ReplyDeleteYes, I do think that IC has the "evangelist" marketing strategy, or "sneezers" from Seth Godin. I think what they've done to really create the momentum around these guys is to empower them, and give them incredible responsibility towards accomplishing the vision.
There are more important aspects of IC that go along with this point too, that I haven't fully explored yet... they're communication (art, films, media) and their commitment to building a sense of community among their volunteers.
I remember when IC released their documentary. it started circulating on campuses in San Diego and it spawned a slew of "justice" documentaries. I felt like someone was always telling me to watch another one (to be honest it got kinda depressing watching them all) but off all those documentaries, 10 yrs later it is still IC going strong. It was almost like those other documentaries act of justice as just making a movie.
ReplyDeleteIC's vision drives them its clear, its BIG and audacious. to think that a rag tag college crew with a video camera can and will bring the cruelest warlord on the continent of Africa to justice. That is plain crazy. But inspiring, everyone wants to be inspired, not just young people.
When it comes to volunteering, i havent always felt like i was inspiring change. It felt like, yeah i'm here, but someone else could do this, they don't really need me. IC seems like they communicate the need of their volunteers and their volunteers know that without them, nothing would happen.
Welcome to the fray BJ!
ReplyDeleteHey Sarah, I know a LOT about how SDAFF works if want to chat about them some time (I advise their board and meet w/ their ED). They're definitely a different beast than IC but the way they don't distinguish between paid and volunteer staff is very inspiring and a huge part of the secret sauce.
I think that IC does a great job of putting together quality guidelines/design principles (even though they probably never call them that) and then let their staff (volunteers and p/t paid folks) innovate within those parameters. Not everything idea/initiative is going to be a home run but you get a lot more ideas and traction this way instead of only reserving the important brainstorming activities to the professionals.
I think IV does this quite a bit on a student teams level but perhaps not higher than that.