Columbia University
New York City
Columbia asked us to create a digital storytelling lab for graduate students studying fundraising and nonprofit management—to familiarize them with the most effective ways to raise funds and mobilize donor support in a digital world.
Lab students on a field trip to a local soup kitchen, setting up a smartphone interview with its founder in the facility’s kitchen
How can a media lab help nonprofits reimagine leadership?
Columbia University
New York City
Columbia asked us to create a digital storytelling lab for graduate students studying fundraising and nonprofit management—to familiarize them with the most effective ways to raise funds and mobilize donor support in a digital world.
THE CHALLENGE
A group of our CEO’s communications students attending a special program she created for them at Droga5
Social sector organizations now find themselves at a critical inflection point, a moment when external and internal forces are challenging many
of its old ways of working. Nonprofits and philanthropic foundations are undergoing a technology upheaval and, simultaneously, an inter-generational transfer of power, as the leadership of legacy nonprofits shifts from Baby Boomers to diverse Generation Xers and Millennials.
Extreme political polarization across society is making it more important than ever for nonprofits to start gathering and telling better stories that stay grounded in the needs of the communities they serve.
OUR WORK
Some workshops exposed students to VR storytelling—an effective fundraising tool for nonprofits.
Using new digital media technologies, BrandStories’ CEO and Columbia media professor Marcia Stepanek set up a Media Lab for Columbia’s graduate Nonprofit Management Program in
Lewisohn Hall, using a basement classroom outfitted with desktop computers loaded with simple video editing software, to teach students how to tell and share stories about social issues, from climate change to social justice—and in ways that would help their causes amass new dollars and build greater relevancy. Students were organized into storytelling teams to go onsite at a variety of real-life nonprofits to conceive, storyboard, shoot and edit stories of change and possibility.
OUR IMPACT
The lab created new buzz for Columbia’s graduate nonprofit management program and gave students new skillsets and media portfolios that helped many of them to get hired into new national and international fundraising and communications jobs requiring basic digital storytelling skills.
“How to tell good stories using visual media is important for nonprofit leaders to learn, so as to become digitally literate to better serve new generations of supporters.”
Megan Candio
Student Alum, Nonprofit Management Program
Students making smartphone stories about the social causes they visited
