One Funder’s Perspective: Supporting Films that Matter
By Diana Barrett, Founder, The Fledgling Fund
I’m frequently at a loss when asked to introduce myself. Often, I describe myself as a “Recovering Academic,” and that’s only partially meant as a joke. In fact, I was an academic for many years and only recently became a media funder. Yet, I worked in the university world for so long that I tend to ask questions from that side of the street. How do I know a project is good? Will it have impact? How can we leverage small investments into an initiative that will make a difference? And how will we begin to measure or evaluate that impact?
I’ve been asking these and many other questions for the past three years, since I founded The Fledgling Fund, a family foundation that primarily funds media projects that we believe can lead to social action and change. Fledgling’s mission is to improve the lives of vulnerable individuals, families, and communities by supporting innovative media projects and community-based organizations. Over time, it became clear that the old adage about a picture being worth 1000 words was in fact true; we came to see that our efforts would best be spent in the world of media, that media changes minds, that it can inform, educate and amuse, that it can ignite social action, build community, and can, when coupled with an effective community engagement initiative, change the world, or at least some small part of it.
Our Initiatives
Fledgling is involved in several topic areas, where we have a personal interest and where we think we can make a difference, including girls’ empowerment and education, human rights, war and its aftermath, and health care among others. In addition to documentary film, we fund other media including photography and web-based initiatives.
A Focus on Outreach
Over time, our film strategy has evolved with a primary focus on outreach and community engagement. Typically, we first consider films once they have reached post-production phase - when we feel we can sufficiently judge the quality of the story, the filmmaking, and its outreach potential. Early money is key and we understand that, but we have limited resources and have to manage our risks so we seldom fund early in the production process. In a typical month, we might complete an initial review of ten to fifteen films and choose two to three to support, based on their ability to tell a compelling story and overall outreach potential.
With each project, we focus on the community engagement process, usually working closely with Working Films, with whom we have a formal partnership. Each project is different, but in general, we want to make sure the film is made available to the key grassroots, in-the-trenches organizations that are in the best position to use the film strategically to further their social justice missions. Our goal is to enable a film to take on a life of its own, after the broadcast date, and after the festivals. We want the film to become a key component of a social movement.
This past year, for example, I was the executive producer for Rory Kennedy’s film, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, which won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Special. We are pleased to have contributed to the production of an award-winning film, but another winning aspect of the film is how it has become part of an extensive outreach effort in partnership with Working Films and other funders. Our collective efforts have produced impressive results, including collaboration among some of the top advocacy organizations working to stop torture, including Human Rights First, the National Religious Campaign against Torture, Amnesty International and the American Freedom Campaign. Ghosts of Abu Ghraib has become a key tool for these organizations who will use it to further their own goals through facilitated screenings, study guides, work in law schools, colleges and the Internet. More about the campaign can be found at www.ghostsofabughraib.org.
At Fledgling we have learned that a long-term, deep commitment to a documentary film’s distribution and outreach yields tangible results. We are just beginning the outreach work for Very Young Girls, a powerful documentary by David Schisgall that premiered at Toronto and chronicles the journey of young girls through the underground world of sexual exploitation in New York City. It also profiles Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (G.E.M.S.), the only survivor-led organization in New York City, headed by Rachel Lloyd, that offers services to sexually exploited girls. Our goal is to bring attention to a problem that few people associate with New York City, or the United States for that matter. The film will serve as a resource to prevent child sexual exploitation and to inform and educate professionals in the criminal justice system as well professionals in the social service sectors who address the needs of these young victims. We hope that the film will change the way these girls are treated by the juvenile justice system - which often slaps the “john” on the wrist and treats the under-aged girls as criminals rather than victims.
Similarly, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, which just premiered at Sundance and won a Special Jury Award, is a film for which we provided completion funding; we have also made a commitment to support some of its outreach efforts. The filmmaker, Lisa Jackson, takes on the subject of rape as a weapon of war. Outreach efforts for this film will be both U.S.-based as well as international, with the goals of increasing exposure to the issue and providing concrete action steps for viewers. In the outreach effort, we will partner with key organizations working on human rights and sexual violence in order to use the film as a tool to galvanize action at different political levels and in international forums.
Not all film projects will require this same level of support. In some cases, we support a single key component of an outreach plan. For example, with King Corn, a feature documentary about an acre of corn and its journey through the American food system, we supported a portion of an extensive outreach campaign that the filmmakers developed with Active Voice.
Our Partners
Working Films, who we have collaborated with on several projects, is our formal partner in the outreach arena. They provide ongoing support to both Fledgling’s grantees and to the field at large through its filmmaker consultations, residency programs and campaign management. We also work closely with Impact Partners, a film advisory service that supports documentaries that have a dual bottom line - they have an important social message and they also stand to recoup a financial investment. To date, Impact Partners has twelve partners, each of whom commits to a yearly investment and is presented with a slate of films that have been carefully vetted. This is an important vehicle for us to identify high-quality social issue films and to develop relationships with other funders to leverage our resources. Another of our key partners is Chicken and Egg Pictures, which supports emergent and veteran women filmmakers through grants and executive producing support. Fledgling has co-funded a range of projects with Chicken and Egg; this year, one of our first efforts, Freeheld, won the Academy Award for best short documentary.
Our Next Steps
Our learning curve at Fledgling has been short and very steep and we continue to learn and question ourselves. Films, even good ones, can disappear. They can raise enormously important issues and never be used by the constituencies that would most benefit from greater attention to these issues. This understanding has led us to an internal research project on impact. We are developing a dashboard of sorts that we can use to quantify what kind of impact each of our projects has had or is striving to have. We are trying to go beyond the usually cited numbers of showings, or even facilitated screenings, asking whether we can draw any conclusions between the film and actions taken by the viewer. It is doubtful that we will ever show that a film alone can lead to social change, but we do believe that a film, perhaps with a festival buzz, coupled with online and print media, and strategic work with key grassroots organizations may in fact change the face of the problem by making it personal, and perhaps making potential solutions more evident.
We are asking—and will continue to ask—tough questions of filmmakers: What are they trying to accomplish? How do they believe that this film will make a difference? Are they willing to reformat and repurpose their film for varied audiences? Will they travel with the film and spend the necessary time exploring avenues of distribution?
As the tools of film production and post-production become more accessible, and as new channels of film distribution are tested and explored, more films are being made and finding an audience. The documentary field is ripe for more funders. At Fledgling we welcome this opening. Our goal is to leverage our funds as much as we can. We want to bring an in-depth understanding of documentary film, its underlying finances, and its potential as a tool of change to a range of funders, who can work with us on both production and outreach. With an increasing number of proposals, our bar has been raised, so the possibility of co-funding and further leveraging our resources is more attractive than ever.
It is our belief that independent media has an enormously bright future, but that we have to work with filmmakers to make sure that their films can play the role of an important change agent and not be relegated to a high shelf or forgotten.
I’m frequently at a loss when asked to introduce myself. Often, I describe myself as a “Recovering Academic,” and that’s only partially meant as a joke. In fact, I was an academic for many years and only recently became a media funder. Yet, I worked in the university world for so long that I tend to ask questions from that side of the street. How do I know a project is good? Will it have impact? How can we leverage small investments into an initiative that will make a difference? And how will we begin to measure or evaluate that impact?
I’ve been asking these and many other questions for the past three years, since I founded The Fledgling Fund, a family foundation that primarily funds media projects that we believe can lead to social action and change. Fledgling’s mission is to improve the lives of vulnerable individuals, families, and communities by supporting innovative media projects and community-based organizations. Over time, it became clear that the old adage about a picture being worth 1000 words was in fact true; we came to see that our efforts would best be spent in the world of media, that media changes minds, that it can inform, educate and amuse, that it can ignite social action, build community, and can, when coupled with an effective community engagement initiative, change the world, or at least some small part of it.
Our Initiatives
Fledgling is involved in several topic areas, where we have a personal interest and where we think we can make a difference, including girls’ empowerment and education, human rights, war and its aftermath, and health care among others. In addition to documentary film, we fund other media including photography and web-based initiatives.
A Focus on Outreach
Over time, our film strategy has evolved with a primary focus on outreach and community engagement. Typically, we first consider films once they have reached post-production phase - when we feel we can sufficiently judge the quality of the story, the filmmaking, and its outreach potential. Early money is key and we understand that, but we have limited resources and have to manage our risks so we seldom fund early in the production process. In a typical month, we might complete an initial review of ten to fifteen films and choose two to three to support, based on their ability to tell a compelling story and overall outreach potential.
With each project, we focus on the community engagement process, usually working closely with Working Films, with whom we have a formal partnership. Each project is different, but in general, we want to make sure the film is made available to the key grassroots, in-the-trenches organizations that are in the best position to use the film strategically to further their social justice missions. Our goal is to enable a film to take on a life of its own, after the broadcast date, and after the festivals. We want the film to become a key component of a social movement.
This past year, for example, I was the executive producer for Rory Kennedy’s film, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, which won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Special. We are pleased to have contributed to the production of an award-winning film, but another winning aspect of the film is how it has become part of an extensive outreach effort in partnership with Working Films and other funders. Our collective efforts have produced impressive results, including collaboration among some of the top advocacy organizations working to stop torture, including Human Rights First, the National Religious Campaign against Torture, Amnesty International and the American Freedom Campaign. Ghosts of Abu Ghraib has become a key tool for these organizations who will use it to further their own goals through facilitated screenings, study guides, work in law schools, colleges and the Internet. More about the campaign can be found at www.ghostsofabughraib.org.
At Fledgling we have learned that a long-term, deep commitment to a documentary film’s distribution and outreach yields tangible results. We are just beginning the outreach work for Very Young Girls, a powerful documentary by David Schisgall that premiered at Toronto and chronicles the journey of young girls through the underground world of sexual exploitation in New York City. It also profiles Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (G.E.M.S.), the only survivor-led organization in New York City, headed by Rachel Lloyd, that offers services to sexually exploited girls. Our goal is to bring attention to a problem that few people associate with New York City, or the United States for that matter. The film will serve as a resource to prevent child sexual exploitation and to inform and educate professionals in the criminal justice system as well professionals in the social service sectors who address the needs of these young victims. We hope that the film will change the way these girls are treated by the juvenile justice system - which often slaps the “john” on the wrist and treats the under-aged girls as criminals rather than victims.
Similarly, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, which just premiered at Sundance and won a Special Jury Award, is a film for which we provided completion funding; we have also made a commitment to support some of its outreach efforts. The filmmaker, Lisa Jackson, takes on the subject of rape as a weapon of war. Outreach efforts for this film will be both U.S.-based as well as international, with the goals of increasing exposure to the issue and providing concrete action steps for viewers. In the outreach effort, we will partner with key organizations working on human rights and sexual violence in order to use the film as a tool to galvanize action at different political levels and in international forums.
Not all film projects will require this same level of support. In some cases, we support a single key component of an outreach plan. For example, with King Corn, a feature documentary about an acre of corn and its journey through the American food system, we supported a portion of an extensive outreach campaign that the filmmakers developed with Active Voice.
Our Partners
Working Films, who we have collaborated with on several projects, is our formal partner in the outreach arena. They provide ongoing support to both Fledgling’s grantees and to the field at large through its filmmaker consultations, residency programs and campaign management. We also work closely with Impact Partners, a film advisory service that supports documentaries that have a dual bottom line - they have an important social message and they also stand to recoup a financial investment. To date, Impact Partners has twelve partners, each of whom commits to a yearly investment and is presented with a slate of films that have been carefully vetted. This is an important vehicle for us to identify high-quality social issue films and to develop relationships with other funders to leverage our resources. Another of our key partners is Chicken and Egg Pictures, which supports emergent and veteran women filmmakers through grants and executive producing support. Fledgling has co-funded a range of projects with Chicken and Egg; this year, one of our first efforts, Freeheld, won the Academy Award for best short documentary.
Our Next Steps
Our learning curve at Fledgling has been short and very steep and we continue to learn and question ourselves. Films, even good ones, can disappear. They can raise enormously important issues and never be used by the constituencies that would most benefit from greater attention to these issues. This understanding has led us to an internal research project on impact. We are developing a dashboard of sorts that we can use to quantify what kind of impact each of our projects has had or is striving to have. We are trying to go beyond the usually cited numbers of showings, or even facilitated screenings, asking whether we can draw any conclusions between the film and actions taken by the viewer. It is doubtful that we will ever show that a film alone can lead to social change, but we do believe that a film, perhaps with a festival buzz, coupled with online and print media, and strategic work with key grassroots organizations may in fact change the face of the problem by making it personal, and perhaps making potential solutions more evident.
We are asking—and will continue to ask—tough questions of filmmakers: What are they trying to accomplish? How do they believe that this film will make a difference? Are they willing to reformat and repurpose their film for varied audiences? Will they travel with the film and spend the necessary time exploring avenues of distribution?
As the tools of film production and post-production become more accessible, and as new channels of film distribution are tested and explored, more films are being made and finding an audience. The documentary field is ripe for more funders. At Fledgling we welcome this opening. Our goal is to leverage our funds as much as we can. We want to bring an in-depth understanding of documentary film, its underlying finances, and its potential as a tool of change to a range of funders, who can work with us on both production and outreach. With an increasing number of proposals, our bar has been raised, so the possibility of co-funding and further leveraging our resources is more attractive than ever.
It is our belief that independent media has an enormously bright future, but that we have to work with filmmakers to make sure that their films can play the role of an important change agent and not be relegated to a high shelf or forgotten.
