Panel, Fireside Chat
Building a Global Community to Drive Social Change
Milken InstituteAlden, Sean, Ben, Jesse, Michelle, Yancey, Patty, Xavier, Dwayne Johnson, Steven Spielberg, George Soros, Clinton, Barack, Obama
- Game Launch and Reach: A Facebook game launched on March 4 targeting women and girls' issues reached 700,000 players shortly after release, aiming to engage millions of unconverted audiences.
- Platform Strategy: Games for Change selected the Facebook platform to bypass traditional media limitations and access the 300 million monthly users on large social platforms for easier audience mobilization.
- Funding and Operations: The game utilized a $50,000 marketing budget, leveraging a strategic partnership with Zynga.org for co-promotion and ad spend management across various countries.
- Geographic Outcomes: Despite initial assumptions of a US/Western focus, the game gained significant traction in Turkey, India, and Kenya, demonstrating the global reach of the platform.
- Localization Challenges: The game content remained uniform globally (with a French version added), though partners provided input on cultural specifics like character appearance (e.g., green eyes in India) and dialogue.
- Fundraising Results: The game successfully raised approximately $200,000 for NGO partners, though the primary strategic pivot focused on player volume and awareness rather than direct fundraising as the initial driver.
- Film Campaigns: A social action campaign for the film Lincoln involved screenings in eight towns named after Lincoln, visits to 15 high schools, and distributing the film to 32,000 US high schools via Disney.
- Food Inc. Impact: Research by the Norman Lear Center at USC indicated that exposure to Food, Inc. led many viewers to purchase organic food, creating a ripple effect in the marketplace.
- Community Growth: The Food, Inc. legacy campaign maintains an active Facebook community of 600,000 people who engage in ongoing petitions and actions, contributing to observed changes like Whole Foods' GMO labeling.
- Measurement Metrics: TakePart is developing a "participant index" to measure impact through three main categories: personal interest (behavior change), shared interest (community sharing), and public interest (policy shifts).
- Mission Evolution: Good magazine transitioned from a media company reaching 4 million people to a community platform emphasizing "learn and do," shifting focus from passive consumption to active civic engagement.
- Community Scale: The Good community expanded from 80% US traffic to a 50-50 global split, with 2,400 applicants for unpaid local chapter leadership roles across all continents except Antarctica.
- Value Curation: The Good platform curates content based on a value statement derived from the Golden Rule ("Do as you would to another if you didn't know who you were"), explicitly rejecting hate groups or extremist rallies.
- Content Strategy: New content on Good is designed to drive action, utilizing metrics like the "Take Action" button to distinguish between learning content and "doing" content (e.g., hosting Neighbor Day events).
- Neighbor Day Events: The first global "Neighbor Day" initiative resulted in 2,100 events worldwide, successfully converting media traffic into community members and new neighbors.
- NGO Partnerships: TakePart selects NGO partners based on expertise and impact, ranging from 2-3 main partners for specific verticals (e.g., Snitch) to 100+ organizations for the A Place at the Table campaign.
- Partner Support: Partners receive media kits, supplemental content, and access to advocacy videos, such as the story of Xavier, a former youth inmate, which garnered 40,000 views.
- Campaign Volume: The organization runs approximately seven concurrent film campaigns while maintaining continuous digital "take action" initiatives.
- Team Structure: The social action team consists of roughly 15 members, split between five on film, five on television (launching August 1), and five to six on digital.
- Organizational Pivot: The panelists noted a shift from one-way "push" communication to two-way "pull" conversations, requiring brands to engage authentically in the mud rather than just broadcasting.
- Bureaucratic Barriers: Nonprofits face significant hurdles in adopting social media tactics due to generational gaps, bureaucracy, funding constraints, and a lack of agility compared to for-profit entities.
- Authentic Voice: Authenticity is defined not just by the creator's voice but by the organization's willingness to engage in honest, unfiltered back-and-forth conversations with the community.
- Global Strategy: For global issues like nuclear proliferation, the strategy targets "grass-tops" (elite decision-makers) rather than mass audiences, as seen with the Countdown to Zero campaign in Russia.
- Corporate Alignment: Successful corporate partnerships require aligning social impact with the company's P&L and core mission, moving beyond superficial "cause marketing" to long-term integration.
- Industry Trends: The panel identified a tipping point in civic engagement driven by events like the Arab Spring and the 2008 election, shifting from sporadic spikes to a foundational base of "pragmatic idealism."
- Decentralized Action: Effective movements like SOPA and the election campaign were characterized by decentralized control, allowing diverse organizations to take varied actions that overwhelmed policymakers.
- Future Outlook: The consensus is that individual efficacy and decentralized community organizing will continue to grow, driven by rising global challenges and a consumer shift toward values-based spending.