Chatty in Nonprofit

Rita Zhang, Columbia University, Film & Media Studies B.A. Here's the reflecting space for a young communications enthusiast, specifically focusing on the nonprofit sector. Sit back and tune in.

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Person on the Street Video Project

I found interviewing friends for the “Person on the Street” project is a brilliant way to get people’s feedback on my focused nonprofit organization Anthology Film Archives.

Please see the three short video I shot and edited. There is one question dedicated to each video. I also include the transcripts of the videos in this blog post and highlighted the quotes that are most memorable to me. Enjoy! 

1. What do you think of Anthology’s cause? 

1. What do you think of Anthology Film Archives’ cause?

Yoo-Nah Park (YP): I think, first of all, it is very important to document and collect as much as the artifact as you can, particularly in the film department. There are a lot of the things that fall through the crack without proper care. So I think the cause is very important. 

Treva Kennedy (TK): I think it is a great cause because film is a great window into our history and also our human condition. Specifically independent films, I think really capture life maybe a little bit better than the big blockbusters. And there’s nothing wrong about watching a rom-com or something fun like that, it’s definitely a great escape. But I think it’s important to have all of these types of movies alongside those of reality, which I think the independent films really offer. So I think it is great that they’re preserving that. Because it is a picture of our history and an art form that we should look back on when we want to or need to. 

2. What do you want to hear from Anthology Film Archives? 

TK: I want to hear things that are relevant to our situation today, specifically, our nation’s situation. I think finding things that are relevant to us, even if they come from history...I think that a lot of things that will be relevant to where we are now will come from history. I think caring those types of things would be really helpful and also something that would make me want to come in.

YP: I would definitely want to hear more about the different kinds of culture that are being represented in the collection, learning about which types of community that is being represented would be very interesting. Also, they are certain film festivals or other events that happen around the calendar year would also be helpful.

3.  What would it take for you to become passionately interested in Anthology’s cause? 

TK: That’s kind of an interesting question because I think passion is very personal to individuals. So what maybe a passion of mine might not be a passion for someone else’s. So I think definitely people who are passionate about film and about history will automatically be drawn to something like Anthology. But for everyone else, well I can’t speak for everyone else…but for myself since those two things aren’t…I mean I really like history, but since film history isn’t something that I’m already super passionate about, I think what it would take for Anthology is to do something that would be educational to our youth. Because something I do care about is that we’re bringing up the next generation to be confident and to be well-informed. If film can be a method of doing that, then that would be something that I would be passionately involved in.

YP: I think having more events that are connected through themes would be really helpful, especially for a film newbie like myself, who is not really that educated in the film but am interested. It would be cool to have these fun events to go to.

After interviewing with Treva Kennedy and Yoonah Park, I gained many valuable feedbacks into improving our strategies in educating more people from diverse cultural backgrounds to understand film art, its documentation of history, and understanding the human past influencing our present state and the decisions we’re making as a collective group. It is important to make Anthology Film Archive’s public image more accessible to the public. The means to do that is to host more social events that are open to the public (not just the film community) who care about using film as an educational tool to teach us to learn from the past. Both interviewees agreed that Anthology has an admirable cause in preserving independent films and a film heritage that is in danger of being lost. But to connect Anthology’s overarching social cause of making people connecting with films to address the immediate and urgent social issues (to name a few, gun violence, the dividing nation, the still prevalent state of prejudice and harassment in our society) that are on people’s mind is important and this message shouldn’t be lost in the organization's marketing and communications efforts. 

For a full list of the videos, please click here.

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Executive Brief Summary for Anthology Film Archives

I have not heard back from Anthology Film Archives’ Director of Communications and Special Projects yet. 

Based on my interview with Ms. Tews over the summer. I will try to use her relevant quotes to answer the four questions in the Communications Workbook. 

Thank you for your patience and understanding. 

Executive Brief:

AFA has the public facing of the exhibition programs. They also have the rich resource of paper and video collections (in their library and archive) that are open to scholars and students. Anthology’s main goal is the preservation and presentation of the artist-made independent, experimental film. Through programming and making resources accessible to the public, presenting new films made by international filmmakers, and preserving the heritage of a type of independent, artist-made films. 

AFA’s key challenge is its limited time and resources. Ava is the only person in charge of the social media outreach. Another challenge is the organization does no advertising budgeting. It would be helpful to have an advertising fund to reach the audience through social media and focus on the programs on topics such as social justice and international issues.

One of the opportunities for AFA is to make their collections available through social media (like what Criterion Collection did on social media). Ava wishes that she would have more time to do content marketing/ “digging through” their archives and share more stills from the films and share them on the social media channel. The other opportunity is to engage young students and millennials with AFA’s collection and mission. AFA wishes to have more resources to expand its educational role to the public and bring students at the high-school age in AFA. 

AFA’s founder story is that, in the 1960s, one of the founders Jonas Mekas was presenting films made by artists that no other theaters were showing. Mekas created the downtown filmmaker community called the Filmmaker Cinemateque, which marked the first showcase of the kind of experimental and avant-garde film. Anthology grew out of this kind of 1960s root. In the 1970s, including Mekas, five male filmmakers and film scholars founded the organization in the 1970s in the wish to present and preserve independent films, create a space that showcases the Essential Cinema Repertory collection/ a canon of classic films, and the film museum that devoted to film as an art form. 

In Ava Tews’s words, AFA’s mission is bringing to light, and creating the scholarship and audience around the films in danger of being lost, overlooked, and ignored.

Eight-word mission statement: Presenting and preserving endangered independent films with love.

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The Digital Face of Anthology Film Archives

I took a tour of Anthology Film Archives’ different social media channels, which include Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. AFA also has a weekly newsletter and a quarterly newsletter that is managed through MailChimp. 

After a brief examination of their posts and tweets’ content, I found that AFA has a very active digital presence. However, their digital presence is limited to programming and fundraising efforts. In other words, the social media contents are mostly for the purposes of events promotions and increasing donor base. To improve their digital presence, AFA should focus more contents on its social purpose. AFA’s brand should not only be the protector of avant-garde films and independent cinema but also be the catalyst that brings share to our dividing culture through contextualizing its large collection of experimental films in our current social and political climate. 

According to AFA’s website, its mission is “preserve, promote, and exhibit independent, experimental, and artist cinema. Through modern preservation techniques – both photochemical and digital – Anthology works to make titles accessible to the general public through screenings, archival loans, on-site research, and online viewing.” On the website’s “Collection” section, the organization provides the online users an overview of the demanding environment to preserve a physical film reel. However, there is little information to be found on the organization’s social media channels for the interested audience to keep track of the progress of preserving film reels at AFA. 

Although the posts and tweets are open to the general online public, I am afraid that these film screening updates are only in the service of the current members and film lovers. To educate the general public more about the value and urgency of preserving independent films is not enough. AFA should also concentrates on ways to inspire the public to see film medium as a powerful way of enlightening our thoughts, evoking our history, sharing our values. To make people aware of film’s importance as an art form and a cultural legacy,  AFA’s social media should make its digital marketing campaigns and its communicating efforts more engaging and easier for the average online user to participate in. Maybe by doing a few polls in the social media posts, it would invite more people to participate in the online conversation and give the users more voice to share their ideas and preferences in watching movies. 

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Analysis of The Anthology Film Archives’ Brand and A.C.L.U. Transformation of Public Persona

Anthology Film Archives (AFA) was founded in the 1970s by five film scholars and filmmakers. It was built on the bold idea of creating a museum dedicated to the vision of the art of the cinema as guided by the avant-garde sensibility.  One of AFA’s defining feature Is the Essential Cinema collection, which consists a body of cinematic classics that aims to establish as a canon of art cinema and was chosen by the founders to define the film as an art form.

In our current time, the brand of AFA maintains its rebellious spirit to challenge the mainstream movies, which are often perceived as disposable entertainment. According to the AFA’s official website, the organization is “fueled by the conviction that the index of a culture’s health and vibrancy lies largely in its margins” and Anthology bears with the social purpose to protect the heritage of independent and avant-garde cinema that are in particular danger of being lost, overlooked, or ignored.

However, in my opinion, AFA can possibly strengthen its brand of being a protector/ educator of independent cinema. One of the essential values embedded in AFA’s founding is that “a great film must be seen many times.” However, based on the original manifesto, the organization’s services are meant to benefit an esoteric group of people, including “the dedicated spectator” and “students of the medium.” To my analysis, if AFA would not quickly shifting its role from the art connoisseur and expert in the experimental cinema to the protector of vanishing independent films, the organization will continue to suffer from attracting a diverse group of audience, donors, and supporters.

A different type of nonprofit, for example, A.C.L.U., may take on different personas to achieve results. The organization went through a rebranding period of time after the 2016 election. According to a recent news article on the NY Times magazine, before the election, the organization has long been seen as “a collective of well-intentioned defenders of the Constitution” with a membership largely composed by “aging former hippies.” However, according to the article, in the 15 months after the election, the organization’s membership skyrocketed from 400,000 to 1.84 million. Similarly, the average annual donation ranging from $3 to $5 million has since grown exponentially to about $120 million. With launching the new platform PeoplePower.org and starting a voting rights campaign “Let People Vote, ” A.C.L.U. emphasizes its role as the organizer/catalyst. Since 2016, the organization has been going through a transformation of getting directly involved in electoral races. To the leaders of the organization, the down-ballot races are the spaces to keep putting a spotlight on civil rights and civil liberties, getting information to the public, and activating a base that can have a real impact.  

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Organization for Communication Course

Hi all! It is a great pleasure to join the course and get to know all of you.

My name is Rita Zhang. It is my third semester in the Nonprofit Management program.

To help you recognize me in the class, I included a selfie. Sorry I was not 😊 more

For my focused organization for this course, my first choice is Anthology Film Archives. It is located in the LES of Manhattan and it is a gem for people who love cinema, especially independent movies and avant-garde films. My interest in Anthology is largely due to my film and acting backgrounds. To me, its mission of preserving film reels and servings a vanguard for films in the margins of our culture is highly admirable. I would love to spend more time to explore its communications strategies to further its mission and influence more people to care for the cause and make a change.

My second choice for the project is Harlem School of the Arts. I became increasingly interested in learning more about the art scene in Harlem after interning at the Apollo Theater in my sophomore year of college. However, I would prefer Anthology over Harlem School of the Art because my experience in the film industry and studying films in an academic setting.

I’m looking forward to learning more about all of your chosen organizations. Thank you!

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The Power in Digital Organizing

There are plenty of studies, op-eds, and social comments on the limits of online communication. To name one of the few disadvantages, the lack of physical cues in online forums may lead to miscommunication. On the contrary, getting people to work face-to-face marks the starting point of getting things done in action. In a social campaign, the energy and excitement may drain out if the vitality in the virtual communications cannot be brought offline in time. 

For the nonprofit sector, the limits in the online communication may thwart the progress of moving a digital campaign into quick actions. A particular challenge shared by many nonprofit organizations is how to capture the heated discussion in online forums and translate them into real-life actions and/or protests?

One of the answers can be found in Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms’ 2018 book New Power. In the book’s Chapter 4 How to Build a Crowd, the authors quote American civic leader John W. Gardner that “ civilization is a drama lived in the minds of a people“ and claim that the most successful social movements are built off on the galvanizing political and social moments, in which the drama and urgency are hard to predict (73). I entirely agree the timing is very important for a social movement campaign to carry full momentum from online to offline.  For example, the Women’s March after the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal and the escalating #MeToo movement made people feel the urgency to show their support by participating in the protest. 

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AFA’s #SavingStories Digital Campaign

My #SavingStories campaign for the Anthology Film Archives focuses on the urgency of saving film reels. I want to make this social mission approachable to a wide group of people on social media by using the hashtag #SavingStories to encourage people sharing the stories of their favorite movies that changed their lives. 

At the center of this campaign is the prize-winning contest under the same name (”#SavingStories”) sponsored by two national arts foundation. The contest will coincide with the one-year expansion/ renovation project that begins in June 2018 and concludes in November 2018. The contest judges will be 5-6 local celebrities, who can also promote the campaigns through their individual social media accounts and pages. The applicants will submit an essay and a short video that discuss the top five meaningful movies in their lives and explain why these movies matter. The winner will be announced at the end of December and will curate a weekend-long program for AFA’s re-opening. 

The portfolio to support this campaign includes a video, a podcast, and an infographic. 

The video (see link) will focus on the crux of AFA’s social mission. The campaign’s urgency to save film reels in order to preserve the many important stories in our history as a nation. The challenge is to create a strong message within 90 seconds.

The podcast (see link) will be a space for cultural conversation that invites experts in the film industry and academic scholars to chat with ordinary people in different walks of life (perhaps they are teachers, nurses, doctors etc.) This will be a free forum that allows people’s passion for movies to be fully explored and expressed. 

The infographic will provide five key data points that delve deep into the emergency of saving film reels, the amount of loss we already suffered from protecting the treasures of our collective memories through movies, and the significant impacts that movies have on us.

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Key Metrics in Nonprofit Digital Marketing

My current digital campaign #SavingStories for Anthology Film Archives are going to use metrics to emphasize the urgency of preserving film reels to the general public and measure people’s engagement in this campaign.

To convey the urgency and necessity of saving film reels, I think it is important to address the power and impact of art and storytelling in AFA’ s preserved films. A good entry point to address the power of cinema is through AFA’s Essential Cinema Repertory. The Essential Cinema Repertory has been a hallmark of AFA since the organization’s founding. The repertory’s portfolio of classical films represents a canon of art cinema.

I would suggest AFA hold a contest that invites people submitting stories (in both writing and video) about their love in cinema and the films that have placed strong influences in their lives and their outlooks. 

One metric to measure the impact is the number of sharing on Facebook and the retweets on Twitter. Another metric is to keep track of the sign-ups of the contest. 

I would also propose to add a financial incentive to the contest so it can motivate people to get more involved in the conversation and become more active in sharing their stories. Accompanying this contest, AFA would also engage in conversations with users on social media and send out newsletters to expand the base of supporters who are passionate about our cause. 

In the later stage of the campaign, as more people care about our mission. We can try to convey to them that saving film reels/ the physical bodies of film matter as much as the stories/ films themselves. At this point, I would suggest AFA include some hard data in their digital outreach efforts. For example, the demanding environment control (55 degrees temperature, 35% humidity) to guarantee the best-preserving state for film reels and avoid common traits of film decomposition, such as shrinkage, color fading, and base deterioration. To counter these problems, it is imperative to ensure a highly controlled storage environment that is cool, dry, and constant with the help of temperature and humidity data loggers.

Another important metrics I would consider is tracking the progress in AFA’s digital initiatives, namely, producing in-house digital transfers of motion pictures that were made on film to digital formats. The initiatives aim to make films in AFA’s collection more accessible to the general public. I would like to track the timeline of the initiatives, the number of films that are transferred to digital contents, the films that are scheduled to be transferred, and the films that are not yet ready to be transferred.

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Some Thoughts after Reading  Twitter and Tear Gas

There are so many important points in Zeynep Tufecki’s 2017 book Twitter and Tear Gas. It is not hard to see Tufecki as a sharp-minded intellect and a philosophical thinker from her writing. For example, her comparison between the automobile and the information technology emphasizes the latter’s abstract entity. Information technology’s “symbolic arrangement” indicates the digital communication technologies’ complex interactions with members of society and as one of the several causes that catalyze a movement. 

After reading Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, I gained a more comprehensive understanding of the advantages and limits of leading a social or political movement on the social media platforms.  

One of the most memorable quotes in Chapter 5 “Technology and People”  states that “Technology rarely generates absolutely novel human behavior; rather, it changes the terrain on which such behavior takes place” (131). Such is the case with the Arab Spring movement. The social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, provided a space and a tool for activists to garner the maximum amount of support from both people near and far, native and foreign, According to Tufecki, it is a type of formal cause. In addition, there was the component of efficient causes, namely, users who were able to participate in both online and offline settings, from protesting on streets to advocating for democracy through posts and tweets. Last but not least, the public’s drive to unite and fight for democracy and free expression is the root cause of the movement (122). In this case, the social media platforms play the key role in facilitating the successful political movement.

However, in Chapter 6 Platforms and Algorithms, Tufecki discusses some of the drawbacks of Facebook’s real-name policy, community policing, and censorship to an advocacy for social or political movement. I agree with Tufecki about the huge challenges for activists to navigate the politics on the major social media platforms, which are commercial-driven and algorithm-directed (144). Because the social activists’ ideas are largely aligned with minority perspectives, they are likely to be silenced by community policing (143). I would suggest nonprofit organizations be more aware of the censorship mechanism and developing strategies to reach a broad group of audience without encountering content censorship and algorithmic resistance.

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Podcast Treatment: Turning Reels

I am interested in creating a podcast “Turning Reels” that focuses on my project nonprofit organization Anthology Film Archives and discuss the need and urgency to preserve film-related archival objects in our contemporary time. For the intro music track, I’m considering “Road to San Francisco”.

Some of my questions may include: 

-What does preserving film archives mean to our current time? 

-What does it mean to the urban space of New York City? 

-What are the ways to call for people’s attention and actions?

-How does this historical and cultural institute navigate its communication venues on multiple social media platforms? What are some possible ways to best combine AFA’s cultural and historical legacy with the advanced technology nowadays?

My goal for this podcast is to let more people know about Anthology Film Archives and the importance of preserving history and arts in the forms of film archives.

The potential guests from Anthology Film Archives are:

1. Sean Smalley, Associate Archivist -Technical demands of preserving film archives in nowadays

-Challenge and advancement in preserving film reels, manuscripts, library items, and more 2. Jed Rapfogel, Film Programmer

-The art of curating film 

-The future in cultivating the experience of going to a movie, the physical theater setting, the audience’s expectation, etc. 3. Ava Tews, Director of Communications & Special Projects

-The strategy to convey the AFA’s “heart and soul” to the general public and donor prospects 

-The marketing strategy to convey the need and the urgency of the AFA’s work and continue attracting donor’s supports

-Challenges in expanding the diversity of donor group and cultivating donor relationship to sustain continuously support

Besides the staff members in AFA, I also plan to interview a Columbia alumnus Max Nelson, who founded the Columbia Undergraduate Film Journal Double Exposure in 2012. I’m interested in learning more about his intention of creating this creative space for film lovers and writers to express their thoughts. I’m also curious to learn his view of the future of art and avant-garde cinema and the meaningful ways that young and millennial audiences can engage with these cinematic classics. 

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Interview with Amplifunds Co-Founder and CEO Emily Rasmussen

I had a very fruitful conversation with Emily Rasmussen about Amplifunds. Emily’s background is extremely interesting. She was a professional ballet dancer, went to India for a few years working on microfinance, and went to Harvard Business School before founding Amplifunds.  

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Focused Nonprofit: Anthology Film Archives

Anthology Film Archives (AFA) was created on December 1, 1970, by five filmmakers and film scholars: Jonas Mekas, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, and Stan Brakhage. It was founded on the principle that “a great film must be seen many times.” Over the years, it has been aimed to achieve two main goals:

1. To construct a theater in which films can be seen under the best conditions 2. To define the art of film in terms of selected works which indicate its essences and parameters Nowadays, AFA is known as the first museum devoted to film as an art form and “an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema.” It holds one of the world’s most extensive collections of avant-garde films and videos.

I think AFA has a strong online presence, which including an official website and accounts on multiple social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Users and members can sign up for the newsletter, which is sent out every Wednesday about the current “film screenings, news about Anthology's film preservations, and exclusive updates.” AFA also recently launched a new quarterly newsletter last month, which focuses on communicating “news from the archive, recent grant announcements, and other behind-the-scenes updates.” I truly enjoyed browsing through AFA’s website. Its design is simple and its organization of information is very streamlined. I found it is very easy to navigate through different sections of the website and locate the information I needed. The incorporating of the black-and-white historical pictures about the archives on the website highlights the organization as a historical landmark, an important cultural institution, and the leadership position in film preservation and restoration. As the film industry gears toward a more CGI-focused, action-packed, and big-budget recreational product, preserving the film’s physical form and its aesthetic values, which mostly populated in independent and avant-garde films becomes vital. AFA faces the challenge of fighting against the mainstream culture in the film industry and reminds the public about the importance of managing and conserving a film archive. It is urgent for the public to become aware of the importance of protecting bodies of the film because they are important historical artifacts as well as part of our cultural heritage.

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Nonprofit scan: Privacy Please campaign

Do you know that “most parents will post 1,500 photos of their child before they turn 5?" According to a Child Rescue Coalition (CRC)'s video, "89% of parents haven’t checked their privacy settings in over a year."

As part of CRC's Privacy Please campaign, the video launched a month ago and asked parents to think carefully before posting their children’s pictures online, which many of them are manipulated by the online sex predators. The video has received about 97K views on YouTube so far. It is the best digital campaign I’ve seen in the past two years because of its timely topic, the educational purpose, the brief length, and the convincing voice.

First, this campaign appealed to me because it focuses on a vulnerable group of young children,  who don’t have a voice to control their online presence. Without parents' responsible protections of their children's private information, kids easily become the victims to the online pedophiles, who traced children’s naked pictures with hashtags, such as #pottytraining and #bathtime.

Second, the campaign aims to educate young parents, who are mostly millennials and are comfortable in sharing contents on social media on a regular basis. The campaign offers an important insight on the negative consequences of the parents' seemingly benign activities of sharing their kids’ pictures online.

Next, the video’s 1-minute length reflects efficient storytelling. The short length is effective because it responds to the average online viewer’s short attention span. It engages the viewers and sends out the message with a strong impression.

Finally, despite the urgency of protecting children's privacy, the campaign chooses a hopeful tone to advocate for change. In the background of the video, a young boy speaks in a husky and steady tone and convinces the viewers about the potential harms caused by overexposing children's private moments online. With this boy’s innocent voice, the video feels more amiable than didactic. Overall, I think the campaign did a wonderful job of educating parents and persuading them to share contents on social media with responsibility.