Media Philanthropy

I've been working on what I think is a new style of giving I'm calling "media philanthropy." I'm sure many folks have had this idea before, and I gotta think that someone has already done this. However, I can't seem to find any major examples of it.

The one example I know of right now is Fred Wilson who donates the proceeds from his personal blog, and I understand he is making ~~$10k~~ $2k (thanks for update Fred.. I thought I remember a top month where you had Sonos ads or something) a month.

The concept of MP is to create sustainable, high-quality media properties that generate not only awareness--but also revenue--to make the world a little better.

On Friday I'm going to announce my first two partners for my personal podcast which I'm calling CalacanisCast. I don't need to make money from my personal podcast, but I realized that the podcast will create an amazing advertising opportunity for certain sponsors. I really don't have the time to sell the ads, so that value was going to just go away.

After announcing my plan for CalacanisCast two weeks ago I received a dozen emails offering support. Two people took out their checkbooks to host and support the podcast and their two donations will be over $100,000 for the year.

Think about that... I'm going to read live commercials for these two parties on the show, and in return they are going to give $100k to my personal charity Bay Ridge Prep. I'm on the board of Bay Ridge Prep, which is a small private school in Brooklyn that is less than 10 years old but already has 200 students. Going to school like BRP costs over $10,000 a year.

That's something my parents could have never afforded, and certainly there are many poor families which could never (never, ever) consider a private school at all. So, with these first two donations we're going to put two seriously disadvantage kids, from families that are having a hard time even making their monthly bills, into a private school for 4-6 years.

Imagine that... one day you're in a public school class with 45 students in it and the next day you're in a private school with an average class size of 15. Huge!

Ted Turner sold CNN and gave his fortune to charity. That was an amazing gesture by an amazing man (highly recommend Ken Auletta's bio of Ted btw). Imagine if he didn't sell CNN, but rather turned it into a non-profit and gave all the profits to the UN every year. Instead a of huge one-time donation there would be a sustainable resource. Not sure if that's better or not, but it is interesting to think about for sure.

We've been wondering what to do with HackADay.com, one of the old Weblogs, Inc. blog which we didn't sell. I'm thinking we could make it a non-profit and donate the proceeds to the EFF to defend hackers and freedom on the Web.

I'm going to really put my effort into the podcast and try and get AMAZING value for my first two sponsors. I'm just blown away that folks respond so quickly and generously--you guys are amazing (and you know who you are).

Oct 11th 2006 6:33AM
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1. fred wilson is making 10K a month of his blog?!?!?!

this is absurd. mind you, i'm a big fan of his blog, but generating that much from a blog that maybe gets a few thousand visitors a day?

from some google adwords?!?!

if thats the case, or he getting it from someplace else, thats absurd and the whole internet ad generating concept is going to completely fall apart, like it did the first time. i cant imagine any advertiser or combination is getting anything close to 10K/month in value from ads on his site. we are definately in a bubble. cash out while you can.

i know i probably seem crazy or something, but 10K/month for avc.blogs.com just seems like a lot of money for not that much in content or value.

Posted at 7:17PM on Oct 11th 2006 by bryan

2. Ahhh, ever heard of telethons, or celebrity spokespersons for PETA (http://www.petatv.com/psa.asp)?

Nothing new. Please, no more buzzwords!

Posted at 7:48PM on Oct 11th 2006 by Anson

3. Jason, how about education on demand? Who could build the Education 2.0 platform? Academic education doesn't work well. It's boring, it's antiquated, it should be fixed. There is a huge market all over the world.

Wikipedia + blogs + Facebook (social networks) + podcasting + videocasting + Flickr + mobile (cell) phones + gaming + IM + VoIP = Education 2.0

"Rather than spending 4 years of your life taking a bunch of courses that may or may not really matter in your life once you graduate, you can choose your education on an 'as needed basis,' based on your unique interests and talents."
http://ben.casnocha.com/2006/09/college_admissi_1.html

Posted at 8:18PM on Oct 11th 2006 by Dimitar Vesselinov

4. Damn Jason that sounds like one hell of an idea. You know at first I was one of those blind Diggers that thought you were a total ass. Then I really got into the Gilmore Gang and your witt and wisdom that went down there. Wow how wrong I was. You truely are what this country needs. If everyone did their best to help their fellow man once a day or even once a week...what this country/world would be. I say you do your plan with HackADay.com. I know Ill make sure to visit it frequently, click some ads, make some comments, link to it...everything. You are now up there in my top 10 list of best people of the new media revolution. I so cant wait for the CalacanisCast....get K. Rose on there like you want...I want to hear that conversation. Get A. Curry....

Posted at 9:08PM on Oct 11th 2006 by Bowlcut

5. jason,

first i applaud what you are doing. it's simply awesome.

second, i am not making close to $10k/month. i wish that were true but as the first commenter said, it's not. i make about $2k/month on my blog and all of that does go to charity.

thanks

fred

Posted at 9:13PM on Oct 11th 2006 by fred

6. sorry about that fred... i thought i remembered a month with the Sonos ads that you did like 10k or something.

Posted at 10:27PM on Oct 11th 2006 by Jason

7. Awesome, simply awesome. We can all do some good with the money and influence we have throughout the tech world. I think the future for innovation lies in education, and setting up programs that gets students involved in business, technology,etc. Hats off on a very respectable move.

-JLB

Posted at 1:22AM on Oct 12th 2006 by Jason L. Baptiste

8. jason,

that is correct. i did make $6k on the sonos and did about $8k that month.

but Sonos didn't renew the deal so i am back to $2k per month.

fred

Posted at 4:59AM on Oct 12th 2006 by fred

9. Oh, perfect post to plug my very own PM over at the http://www.theonemillionmasterpiece.com, although not exactly what you're talking about. Still a web2.0 style social application that is 100% for profit, and an absolute labour of love that will, eventually, kill me!!

Posted at 10:33AM on Oct 12th 2006 by Paul Fisher

10. "Imagine if he [Ted Turner] didn't sell CNN, but rather turned it into a non-profit and gave all the profits to the UN every year. Instead a of huge one-time donation there would be a sustainable resource. Not sure if that's better or not, but it is interesting to think about for sure."
Warren Buffett: "And someone who was compounding money at a high rate, I thought, was the better party to be taking care of the philanthropy that was to be done 20 years out, while the people compounding at a lower rate should logically take care of the current philanthropy."
http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/25/magazines/fortune/charity2.fortune/index.htm

Posted at 11:56AM on Oct 12th 2006 by Speed

11. Jason, I'd love to chat with you about this, the next We Media conference, and other matters. Check your inbox and get back to me.

Your idea certainly resonates with the spirit of the We Media Global Initiative we floated earlier this year in London:

HERE

Doing good through media is one of the cornerstones of my new organization, iFOCOS.org. You can see several formulas emerging. First, simply turning media experiences, and the influence and reveue they generate, into charitable projects, like what you and Fred are doing. That's cool, and we should see more and more of that as the power of media creation and choice shifts to individuals. What's most intriguing to me is the potential influence of ordinary people taking this kind of extraordinary step - "doing" media to do good.

But there's more to consider, like how larger commercial media institutions - say, TW - define their roles and wield their influence and cash. Imagine a world in which big media's success, however you want to measure it, depends on its contribution to making the world a better place.

This gets back to something I've talked about before - the point of journalism isn't to do good journalism or win praise from peers. It's to make a difference. This is an old, quaint and somewhat mythical notion that big media institutions need to rediscover. Congratulations for leading by example.

Posted at 1:17PM on Oct 13th 2006 by Andrew Nachison

12. Sorry, here are the links:

http://www.mediacenterblog.org/2006/05/a_call_to_actio/

http://ifocos.org

Posted at 1:19PM on Oct 13th 2006 by Andrew Nachison

13. Now, I haven't seen the financials for hackaday, but I really like that idea. What a great contribution to society that would be. Good man!

Posted at 2:55PM on Oct 13th 2006 by Scott Johnson

14. Jason,

Great post and we're on the same page. We're doing two things in regards to charity...

Besides donating all advertising revenue from our blog to charity, we've created a unique "Wisdom Drive" with between $1 and $5 being donated by Sponsors for each WisdomCard (single web page with valuable health wisdom on it) created on OrganizedWisdom. Every company has a "cause" and it takes less than 5 minutes for anyone to create a WisdomCard on any health topic so a ton of money can be raised for specific charities. We're just getting started and putting this together now so any input or ideas are welcome.

Posted at 1:59PM on Oct 16th 2006 by Steven Krein

15. Who are your two sponsors? I guess we'll have to listen to the podcast!

Posted at 3:57PM on Oct 20th 2006 by Rob in NoVA

16. Concerning philantropy, I would like to mention here a new non-profit NGO called Donationpixel. They collect money for different projects in poor country. Nothing new. But they have a new approach, with a full visibility of the donor, the choice of the project, and visibility of the work in the field with regular information.

It seems to be an interesting way to encourage donation for vulnerables. The URL is
http://www.donationpixel.org/index.php

Maybe a new way to attract more donation.

Thanks for your attention.

Robert

Posted at 4:48AM on Nov 18th 2006 by Robert

17. Check out this startup Media Non-profit called Channel G www.ChannelG.tv... They could use help from a guy like you to make the explosion in web video work for them. They started out focused on TV, I produced the site and have attempted to steer them towards online, but they need someone with time to dedicate to reaching out.

Give it a whirl. Could be awesome with the right "push"...

- mark

Posted at 1:28AM on Nov 30th 2006 by Mark Roth

18. Hey Jason. This was a great thing you did. I too have recently been interested in Internet philanthropy. Especially the power of communities to form around good social causes to act collectively in a way that might not have been possible (in scale or speed) before.

Your post, and your audio comment on David Hornick's Web 2.0 podcast where you promised to joked about stopping blogging if someone paid 100k for your charities was one of the main inspirations for a new social giving experiment we threw together in a couple of days. You can see more about your role in this affair here (http://www.gifter.org/index.php/about/) in the background of the project.

For every wish you make on the Million Dollar Blog Post post (Answer: If you had one wish for the world what would it be?) we will have someone donate $1 to charity. We are working to make this the Million Dollar Blog post.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the ability for everyone to play media philanthropists in small ways like signing up a comment on page.

Kudos again for your support of two kids who are in need.

We want to see if we can help millions by getting more people involved.

Posted at 12:44AM on Jan 3rd 2007 by Austin Hill

19. Hi, I been looking for some on to help me forfill a wish, My ill husban, keeps wishing for,
this may not be a wish that most will donate ,give ,or even concider giving, but I can only ask like I know I did My part for him,
My husbans name is Rich, He was struck with GBS { guillian Brirri, 12/08/05, It has turnth our live up side down, at this point we are losing our home, they took our cars, the gas and electric will be off soon, and we been advise to go bankroulp, etc. we are not knowing where we will even live , we have no money and no where to get it, you would think after 37 years of marage we would have some thing, Rich was so healt and confordent ,he would have no problems, we were not to concern, WOW we nerver even though that illness can come so fast and with somuch pain and hardship, well god will help some day and we will keep praying, just to let you know a bit about Rich, I know for a fact, he never asked god ..why this happen to him, instead i here him pray ,thanking god ,it didn't happen to any other person in the family, wow I love this man and want to for full his dream, If you will look up this hard pain illness you will relize what this man has encountered, He is a Yankee fan and as i said we can't afford tickets to the up coming games in bostin, we were wondering is there any one that don't need the tickets they have or no anyone who would like to do a nice thing, if so please contact me, Diana Cocchiaro

Posted at 4:46PM on Sep 2nd 2007 by Richard Cocchiaro

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