I worked for a number of years, quite a while back, in PR and marketing for film & TV.

I remember once, an individual calling a PR agency I was with, and asking the President if she would share her media contacts database. She went rather white, was a bit speechless as I recall, and explained that that contact database was a lifetime of work, and was part of what distinguished her from her competitors.

This is the common view in PR, and so I was most intrigued to come across the Media Volunteer Project.

A novel, why-didn’t-anyone-do-this-before concept, it is a knowledge-sharing database of media contacts for nonprofit agencies.

Though other online media contacts databases exist, they are very expensive, and out of reach for most nonprofits, social innovators and the like.

The Media Volunteer Project asks that all users of the database commit to 12 to 15 minutes of their time sharing or researching – in some way contributing to the online database. In fact, as I couldn’t find a way to view any of the database, it seems that you can only access the database once you have done so. That’s probably a wise move.

There are several options for how an individual can contribute time. They can call a reporter, filling in specific database information and following a supplied call script, research, confirm or correct database information, or locate website information.

The database project was initiated by a group called Green Media Toolshed, which focuses on ‘communications campaigns for the environmental movement’.

They get volunteers updating their media contacts, and in exchange, they give their existing media contacts database to all organizations who can use it.

Most nonprofits and social change communicators are very short on the time required to steadily maintain and build a great database. This offers a great opportunity to be a knowledge-sharing database for all.

Green Media Toolshed is Washington D.C.-based, and the database is at the moment, U.S.-centric in its contacts. It also assumes that all users are American, asking, for example, all people registering to enter a zip code.

Social change organizations are strengthened by building connections outside national boundaries. I think the project ought to think wider – re-work the registration page to encourage international participants. Eventually, it would be great if people could submit new media contact entries and select an option to tag by region or sector. For example, a shared media database offers tremendous possibilities not just for pooling large international sector-specific media (eg. global environmental media), but also for small NGOs in developing countries. This could be facilitated by a similar online application being launched by a group like E-Civicus or Communication Initiative or Communication for Social Change, or the Media Volunteer Project could expand, even seek funding, to take their idea forward, expanding it to encourage information-sharing among global social change communicators.

This could also allow people like me, who are willing to contribute, an option to research or contribute international (rather than U.S. regional) media contacts.

It’s a great idea, and I hope it goes further. I’m curious when it was launched, and will try to track down that info and add it here when I do.

 This report  Online Technology for Social Change: From Struggle to Strategy compiles insights from more than 400 social change groups, technology providers, and nonprofit technology capacity builders, examining the needs of organizers working to utilize new technologies, and offering recommendations for how to meet those needs more effectively.

I haven’t heard of dotOrganize before, so I’m happy I checked out Sanjana Hattotuwa’s blog today. Also very very cool:

 dotOrganize is committed to building a robust  Online Resource Hub with a host of useful information and tools for social change organizers.

More ‘wow‘: 

The Organizer’s Tool Crib Check out this participatory list of online tools and resources.

Some more about their project, from Kate Milberry.

The social marketing email list is such an amazing resource: really helpful, peer-supportive information-sharing network for people who work, teach, research or are interested in the field.

Recently, I posted a question, that went out as email to people who’d signed up on the list. I asked whether anyone was aware of any campaigns that aimed to improve ethnic/racial harmony within a community (a secondary question looked for international examples from countries in conflict/crisis).

Some people answered me directly, and quite a number asked me to post a summary of the responses I received. I wrote a summary of those really interesting responses to the list, and was also going to post it here to make the resources more widely available. Then Craig Lefebvre reminded me about the social marketing wiki - another great community resource – and so I have posted it there*.

It’s worth a look* if the issue interests you – there were responses, campaign details and links from North America to Australia to Costa Rica to Spain.

If you find it useful, please do add in any information you may be aware of about any social marketing campaigns to do with intercultural harmony promotion. If you are aware of campaigns or other useful info related to these issues but not really linked to social marketing, please do get in touch. I’d value any related information, from a practitioner or academic perspective.

I have not managed to find a similar list/wiki for the development communication community. I think it would be a tremendous resource: an open discussion email list where anyone can ask a question on any topic at any time, and anyone can answer it. If anyone knows of such a forum, I’d really appreciate it if you’d let me know.

Meantime, if social marketing is of interest to you, I highly recommend the wonderfully helpful email list. This is how to join the community:

Anyone interested in social marketing should subscribe to this list started by Georgetown professor, Dr. Alan Andreasen, of the Social Marketing Institute. The listserv is a forum for talking about social marketing research, practice, and teaching. To join, subscribe to istproc@listproc.georgetown.edu through email and type subscribe soc-mktg in the message body.

(*If you have any difficulty getting to this content via the link, try here.)

 ”We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill – British orator, author and Prime Minister during World War II.

“A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” – Wm. Shedd

“A kite flies highest against the wind, not with it.” – Winston Churchill

“I get up every morning determined both to change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult.” – E.B. White

“Men should be barred from public office for 100 years in every part of the world. … It would be a much kinder, gentler, more intelligently run world. The men have had millions of years where we’ve been running things. We’ve screwed it up hopelessly. Let’s give it to the women.”
- Ted Turner

“Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human…you share what you have. It is to say ‘My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.’ We belong in a bundle of life. We say, ‘a person is a person through other persons….I am human because I belong…because I participate, I share…a person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self assurance….and belongs in a greater whole…”

- Bishop Desmond Tutu

“We can’t defuse conflicts with methodologies that come from pre-1089, Cold-War, nation-state concepts. I feel that so much of the writing [about conflict resolution] is still fiddling with known methods. We need pure, innovative thought, to get ahead of the nature of conflict.”
- Romeo Dallaire, retired Canadian general who commanded the ill-fated UN force in Rwanda, who is beginning a research fellowship at Harvard where he plans to research and write a new book on conflict resolution