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2015-12-01

The Role of Documentary Film in the Emerging

Social Entrepreneurial Culture
KaRyn Elizabeth Daley
Brigham Young University - Provo

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 The Role of Documentary Film in the Emerging

Social Entrepreneurial Culture

KaRyn Daley Lay

A thesis submitted to the faculty of

Brigham Young University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Robert I. Wakefield, Chair

Dean Duncan
Steven R. Thomsen

School of Communications

Brigham Young University

December 2015

Copyright © 2015 KaRyn Daley Lay

All Rights Reserved

 ABSTRACT

The Role of Documentary Film in the Emerging

Social Entrepreneurial Culture

KaRyn Daley Lay

Department of Communications, BYU
Master of Arts

Considering the current skepticism surrounding the impact and efficacy of nonprofit and
nongovernmental organizations, some believe that a unique category of innovator known as the
social entrepreneur may be society’s best hope for bringing innovative, scalable, and systemic
solutions to bear on the world’s most intractable problems. Social entrepreneurs, as defined by
Ashoka, have a unique set of characteristics that determine not only how they move within the
world of social change-making but also how they communicate their ideas and mission to the
public.

This exploratory study reviewed how social entrepreneurs currently use documentary
film and visual media in their communications strategy and public relations practice, what that
tells us about the emerging culture of social entrepreneurs, and whether documentary, as defined
by John Grierson, is an appropriate tool for these organizations. The author interviewed three
founders, three communications professionals, and three filmmakers associated with social
entrepreneurial organizations and observed a course for student filmmakers learning to make
documentaries for social entrepreneurs. The findings of this study suggested that social
entrepreneurs used documentary film as a communications tool when it aligned with their stated
missions and goals but that cost, time, and control were significant barriers to implementation.
Additionally, social entrepreneurs in all phases of development exhibited a unique set of cultural
characteristics that interacted with the intent, content, and effect of their films in both positive
and negative ways. The author also noted three distinct levels of filmmaker involvement with
social entrepreneurial organizations that impacted the intent, content, and effect of their
respective films. These levels of involvement are described as collaborative, independent, and
interdependent.

While the author offers some provocative observations about the role of documentary in
social entrepreneurial organizations, this study remains exploratory in nature. She suggests
several additional avenues of research that may further the scholarly conversation and continue
to shed light on documentary film as communication for and by social entrepreneurs.

Keywords: social entrepreneur, social innovation, NGO, Ashoka, documentary film,

documentary content, documentary effect, documentary intent, visual media, public relations,
communications, communications strategy, communications tactics, Ashoka, Grierson
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people have offered their kind assistance to make this thesis a possibility. First, I’d

like to thank my long-suffering committee who offered support in unusual academic

circumstances, again and again. Dr. Wakefield, Dr. Duncan, and Dr. Thomsen: thank you for

your flexibility, kindness, and excellent long-term memory. I have taken your words of

encouragement and counsel to heart and will put them to use in future academic and professional

pursuits. I also offer my sincere appreciation to Debby Jackson, Claire DeWitt, and Rebecca Ott

for their help in navigating the forms and logistics that are inevitably part of such a process.

Thank you to my employer, Deseret Book Company, and the many people there who

made sure I had the time, space, and resources to finish this research: Chrislyn Woolston, Laurel

Day, Sheri Dew, Jeff Simpson, Macy Robison, Laura Korth and everyone on the TOFW team. I

truly couldn’t have done it without you and your generous spirit.

Of course, I couldn’t have completed this research without the social innovators and

talented filmmakers who are working so hard to make a dent in some of the biggest problems of

our day. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me about your work and your dreams; it was

an honor and I hope this research helps you in some small way to do your work the way you

want to. Your work is the inspiration for my work and I am so grateful.

And finally, thank you to my friends and family for the years of support and optimism.

Mom, Dad, Krisanne Knudsen, Brooke Pohlman, Jetmira Karanxha, Vauna Davis, Natalie

Pickett, and Aliah Hall, you invite me to think deeply about the world around me and I’m

grateful for your examples. Of course, I owe the deepest debt of gratitude to my husband Justin

and our children, Kai and Keala, for their patience and constant cheerleading. We think big.
 iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE ................................................................................................................................................. i

ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................................. ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................................... iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................. iv
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................ 1
REVIEW OF LITERATURE ....................................................................................................................... 4
Communications models: Prosocial marketing vs. public relations ......................................................... 4
The roots of documentary film and social activism ................................................................................ 10
In practice: NGOs’ current use of documentaries .................................................................................. 18
A new old wave of change: Social entrepreneurs ................................................................................... 19
RESEARCH QUESTIONS ........................................................................................................................ 23
METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................................................................... 24
Observation ............................................................................................................................................. 25
In-depth Interviews ................................................................................................................................. 28
Sample Selection..................................................................................................................................... 30
Data Collection ....................................................................................................................................... 40
Data Analysis .......................................................................................................................................... 42
Establishing Trustworthiness .................................................................................................................. 44
FINDINGS AND RESULTS ...................................................................................................................... 47
RQ1: How do SE orgs in different stages of development currently use visual media in their
communications? .................................................................................................................................... 47
Intended Audience Use ....................................................................................................................... 47
Distribution ......................................................................................................................................... 53
Barriers to Use .................................................................................................................................... 54
RQ2: How do SE organizations differ in their communication needs from traditional models of
business and NGOs? ............................................................................................................................... 57
RQ3: How does the practical communications culture of SE organizations interact with the intent,
content and effects of documentary? ...................................................................................................... 63
SE Character & Documentary............................................................................................................. 64
The Role of the Filmmaker in the SE Organization............................................................................ 78
OBSERVATIONS AND DISCUSSION .................................................................................................... 90
 v

Documentary’s usefulness to social entrepreneurs is conditional........................................................... 90

Documentary filmmakers bring much more than footage to the table.................................................... 95
Paradox is present ................................................................................................................................... 96
LIMITATIONS ......................................................................................................................................... 101
CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................................... 103
REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................................... 106
APPENDIX A: Interview Questions......................................................................................................... 111
For social entrepreneurial organization................................................................................................. 111
For filmmaker ....................................................................................................................................... 111
 1

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the number of active nonprofits seeking media publicity and donor

support has increased exponentially (Clarke & Mount, 2001). Old ideas of marketing and public

relations built to service the communication and publicity needs of corporate entities are now

lending themselves to new theories of public relations for nongovernmental organizations

(NGOs) and advocacy groups intent on increasing exposure to and public support for important

societal issues. The concurrent rise of alternative frameworks for nongovernmental aid

organizations defined by the ability to combine large-scale social change with traditional

capitalist business models has also made a redefinition of prosocial communication practices

necessary (Bornstein & Davis, 2010; Zahra, Gedajlovic, Neubaum, & Shulman, 2009). The field

is ripe for reinvention and redefinition.

There is plenty of evidence that film, and specifically documentary film, has been

perceived by advocacy groups and NGOs as a powerful tool in this new cause-related marketing

and public relations practice. Both the Ogoni tribe of Nigeria, a group seeking redress for human

rights violations, and the Lost Boys of Sudan, an advocacy group attempting to bring publicity to

the plight of child soldiers, used documentaries in the publicity of their causes (Bob, 2005;

Mullman, 2008). Many mainstream documentaries, such as Food, Inc. use their popularity to

introduce a persuasive platform for social causes (Lindenfeld, 2010). This symbiotic relationship

makes sense. Within media effects literature, there is evidence that documentary films are

perceived by audiences to be more realistic than their fiction film counterparts. This “perceived

realism” leads to higher levels of personal involvement in the issue portrayed by the film

(Pouliot & Cowen, 2007). Additionally, in a society increasingly primed by television toward

emotional decision-making (Deluca & Peeples, 2002), some evidence suggests that
 2

documentaries increase emotional engagement in audiences more than other kinds of film

(LaMarre & Landreville, 2009). Engagement and issue involvement are variables that have been

shown to act as important mediators in the persuasive power of a message (Bae, 2008; LaMarre

& Landreville, 2009). If an issue needs persuasive power to move publics to action, documentary

may be the right tool for the job.

Many NGOs and advocacy groups understand these connections intuitively and make use

of documentary visual media in their public relations and communications strategies, but there is

still relatively little scholarly research on the impacts and implications of that usage (Nisbet &

Aufderheide, 2009). Additionally, most of the literature on documentaries and their use in

advocacy focuses on the mobilization of community activists and the attainment of political

objectives using traditional means of distribution (Whiteman, 2004, 2009; Christensen, 2007;

Schiller, 2009; Aguayo, 2013). There is great need to academically study and discuss the use of

documentary film by nonpolitical entities in public relations efforts toward other publics such as

donors, volunteers, clients and mass media. This discussion becomes even broader when we

consider the breadth of the nonpolitical aid organization field.

Within the past few years the international community has become increasingly skeptical

of the effectiveness of large non-governmental organizations (NGO) in achieving their missions

(Fowler, 2000; Jayasinghe, 2011). This well-documented skepticism has been instrumental in the

seemingly meteoric rise of alternative systems and frameworks for international social change

embodied in recent years by the term social entrepreneur. Though its interdisciplinary structure

makes an unambiguous definition of social entrepreneurship difficult, the contrast to traditional

NGO structure is may be identified as “linking the morality and objective of public benefit to

characteristics commonly attributed to entrepreneurs in the private sector: vision of a new ‘value-
 3

added’, contextual insight, awareness of opportunities, risk-taking, self-confidence, self-

motivation, determination and viability, with keen attention to an economic bottom-line”

(Fowler, 2000, p 645). Though this framework is far from new, the increasing popularity of the

term and positioning as the next best thing in social innovation could mean the introduction of

new cultural attitudes that influence the academy’s answers to the question, “What does

prosocial communication look like?”

The scope of this exploratory study seeks to understand how the additional category of

social entrepreneur interacts with documentary film in prosocial public relations and

communications strategies. How are social entrepreneurs currently using documentary film in

practice and does that use align with their communications goals and organizational mission?

Considering what we already know of NGO use of documentary film, is there something new or

different about the way social entrepreneurs are implementing it in their work? Are the

filmmakers currently involved in making films for social entrepreneurs doing anything

differently because of the unique positioning of this group of change-makers? Perhaps most

importantly, the purpose of this study is to survey the communications and media landscape of a

possibly emerging phenomenon and give the academy a place to begin more scholarly inquiry.
 4

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Communications models: Prosocial marketing vs. public relations

For many years, the creation of theory to delineate and shape communications practices

for social causes and the organizations that advocate for them has been decidedly cross

disciplinary and amorphous. As early as 1971, Kotler and other business marketing scholars

were attempting to define what they called the “selling of brotherhood” as “social marketing” or

...the design, implementation, and control of programs calculated to influence the

acceptability of social ideas and involving considerations of product planning, pricing,

communications and marketing research. (Kotler & Zaltman,1971, p. 4)

These early theories treated causes and social issues as products and focused

communication efforts from the perspective of social advertising (Kotler & Zaltman, 1971; Fox

& Kotler, 1980; Rothschild, 1979). We can still see the NGO-communication-as- marketing idea

prevalently within the new and emerging literature on cause-related communications.

Increasingly, humanitarian NGOs discuss the importance of creating and protecting a “brand” to

compete and distinguish themselves in a globally saturated cause-related marketplace.

Cottle and Nolan (2007) argue that this desire to protect brand image and engage in

corporate-style marketing negatively affects the NGO’s strategic use of communications by

encouraging the employment of a passive “media logic” approach.

This media logic, we argue, proves at once indispensable and inimical to NGO

aims and ideas of global humanitarianism. NGOs need the media to bring public

attention to humanitarian emergencies to mobilize support for vital assistance, but

 5

in order to attract the media spotlight, they deploy communication strategies

which practically detract from their principal remit of humanitarian provisions

and symbolically fragment the historically founded ethic of universal

humanitarianism. (pp. 863-864)

Cottle and Nolan note that while the media is an imperative ally to the communication of

causes to the public, the dysfunctional aspects of accepting media logic, in which NGOs frame

their messages to garner media attention by making use of celebrity endorsement and

regionalizing news stories, sometimes misses the meat of their cause’s message. They argue that

this media logic is detrimental to the fundamental design and missions of humanitarian NGOs

and detracts from the trust and sincerity of the cause itself.

Media logic…has the capacity to empty out the impulse and message of global

humanitarianism and to deny the life and death relationship between media and

humanitarian disasters, replacing it with something far too trivial. (Cottle & Nolan, 2007,

p. 876)

Cottle and Nolan are not alone in recognizing the inherent problems of treating social

causes from a marketing-driven perspective. In an increasingly competitive funding

environment, marketing strategies are often employed as a means to give an NGO a financial

edge. However, scholars have long noted that the success of an NGO is dependent upon the

maintenance of long-term relationships with key stakeholders, namely donors, volunteers,

clients, and the media (Pope, Sterrett Isley, & Asamoa-Tutu, 2009). In fact, some studies have

shown that the level of trust, satisfaction, commitment, and shared power with an NGO, all

empirical measures of the strength of relationships, are predictors of a public’s willingness to

 6

donate at different levels (O’Neil, 2006, 2008). If the media logic approach does indeed call into

question the sincerity of an organization and by association the validity of its truth claims about a

specific issue, potential and current stakeholders may be less likely to donate. Authenticity, then,

is of particular concern to maintaining those long term relationships to potential and current

stakeholders.

Though most scholars use the terms “marketing” and “public relations” somewhat

interchangeably with regard to NGO communications, Cottle and Nolan’s (2007) argument about

the ethical inconsistencies inherent in applying marketing constructs to NGOs can be seen in the

current scholarly effort to clearly distinguish between the two disciplines. In recent years, more

attention has been paid to the way mass communications and public relations fit into ideas of

social cause communication and how it is different from social marketing, leading to a new strain

of prosocial public relations (Wakefield, Burnett & Van Dusen, 2010). Though the finer points

of what constitutes public relations have been widely debated since the phrase was coined by Ed

Bernays in the 1920’s, the idea of public relations as a tool to facilitate communication between

organizations and publics has remained central. In its normative form, the public relations model

assumes a two-way flow of information which is imperative in the maintenance of a relationship

between publics and organizations (Grunig & Hunt,1984). It is this focus on relationships that

distinguishes public relations from marketing and requires a new model for how to aid

communication and advocacy among NGO’s.

Scholars are now defining and redefining questions of nonprofit communications with regard

to audience, NGO type, and media interaction through the lens of public relations (Cottle &

Nolan, 2007; Dimitrov, 2007; Wakefield, Burnett & Van Dusen, 2010). Though steeped in

concepts of relationship building, literature focusing on prosocial public relations is still in the
 7

nascent stages of theory building. In some cases, the language of social marketing is still present

as scholars examine what already exists and what should be in their theory building. For

example, Dimitrov’s (2007) public relations model for NGO communication highlights the

successful communication strategy of the small Australian human rights advocacy group

ChilOut. In it Dimitrov recognizes four public relations tactics that increase connection to the

issue among publics and increase communication efficacy. Within these four strategies, he

discusses branding and framing which are traditional marketing strategies, but he looks at them

from the lens of relationship building.

First, Dimitrov (2007) refutes the validity of current NGO marketing practices which brand

the organization and suggests that successful campaigns brand the issue or cause instead.

Publics do not like activists; they like causes. Important here is the distinction

between ‘interest groups’ and ‘issue groups’. While interest groups, for example

unions and business associations, represent the self-interest of their members,

issue groups such as environmental and human rights agencies are formed around

problems and values- at times even against the self-interest of their

members…Businesses brand their own names. Issue groups brand the issue, not

the group. (p.137)

Dimitrov appropriates branding as a means of building a relationship with the public by

advocating for this traditional marketing tactic to be used to connect publics to the cause. This

corroborates Cottle and Nolan’s (2007) observation that most NGOs use organizational branding

to justify a passive following of media logic and gives further proof that it can be detrimental to

NGO public relations success.

 8

Secondly, Dimitrov (2007) notes that successful NGO communication campaigns

capitalize on the wealth of what he calls human capital, or skilled volunteers, to carry the

message to the media independently of the organization leadership. In the case of ChilOut,

volunteers with a background in journalism were able to increase positive media attention to the

issue of human rights (Dimitrov, 2007).

The third element of a successful campaign is characterized as ‘”the public relations

bonus of non-instrumental integrity’” (Dimitrov, 2007, p. 138) or the authentic care advocates

show for those for whom they advocate that can naturally lead to publicity. This authenticity and

sincerity in action is imperative to the building of trust between an NGO and publics and directly

challenges notions of the superior effectiveness of staged media events and succumbing to the

precepts of media logic (Cottle & Nolan, 2007; DeLuca & Peeples, 2002).

Despite these seeming departures from a marketing influence, Dimitrov’s (2007) fourth

tactic of reframing the issue for relevant publics is decidedly in keeping with social marketing

culture of “packaging” the issue in order to appeal to a specific market (Kotler & Zaltman,

1971).

Strategists have to be familiar with the current state of issue preferences. Top

national values and issues underpin choices about what is newsworthy…if the

issue of concern for the organization has not high priority for the larger public,

reframing should take place…ChilOut is a good example of reframing the issue of

mandatory detention of “boat people” from the low importance context of human

rights to the high priority area of “statutory” child abuse. (Dimitrov, 2007, p.139)
 9

Bob (2005) cites issue reframing as a major element in the success of the embattled Ogoni’s

campaign for worldwide issue recognition. Specifically, he notes the ability of the Ogoni to

reframe a human rights struggle with the ballast of environmental protection as the key to

garnering attention and support from overseas NGOs. For Cottle and Nolan (2007) the act of

reframing an issue in order to gain media attention is problematic for humanitarian NGO’s

especially when that reframing is geopolitical and “underplays and marginalizes the active

agency of indigenous aid workers (and victims) and thereby symbolically reinforces a highly

Westernized and Western-centric view” (p. 871). It is, therefore, not surprising that Bob (2005)

also makes mention of the “price” of framing:

Notwithstanding the many benefits it bestowed, NGO intervention came at the

price of MOSOPs downplaying its core minority agenda. The association

between repression and international activism also suggest the need for caution

both by local movements and NGOs. (p. 115)

It is important to note that within the scope of Dimitrov’s (2007) work, reframing is the

last resort to be employed only if simplifying issues (reinforcing) is not sufficient and the

reframing aligns with the ethos of the organizational goals. It is acknowledged as an effective

marketing tool, but remains problematic in the transparent, trustworthy world of public relations

best practices.

The role of framing in public relations is a complex one that requires more thought.

Though not explicitly discussed in the aforementioned literature, framing as a tactic does not

belong explicitly to the discipline of marketing. In their content analysis study of framing and

public relations research on several research data bases, Lim and Jones (2010) found that of
 10

thirty-nine relevant studies since 1990, 95% looked at ways in which public relations

practitioners construct reality in their communications through framing. However, the same

study also revealed that the main focuses of these analyses did not include NGO communications

(Lim & Jones, 2010). We can conclude that while public relations literature does include framing

as a relevant tactic for practitioners, there is little or no discussion of it as a tool in NGO

communications.

The roots of documentary film and social activism

To successfully explore the power of documentary in relation to social entrepreneurs, it is

first important to understand the ways in which documentary may be naturally suited to the task.

However, the notable dearth of communication scholarship on the forms, functions, and impacts

of documentaries (Nisbet & Aufderheide, 2009) as well as the lack of information about

documentaries in practice with social entrepreneurial (SE) organizations requires a review of the

small amount of scholarship on the applications of documentaries in NGOs. NGO practitioners

are already using documentary film in myriad ways to mobilize group members, influence

government leaders, and attract the media (Bob, 2005; Lindenfeld, 2010; Whiteman, 2003, 2004,

2009). The literature indicates that documentary film may be a natural fit for the communications

and public relations efforts of NGOs and advocacy groups for three reasons: intent, content and

effect.

Intent. Though the definition of a documentary has been highly contested by theorists

throughout the decades since its inception, scholars in film generally concede that Grierson’s

idea of documentary as “the creative treatment of actuality” is one of the most serviceable

(Eitzen, 1995; Plantinga, 2005). For Grierson, the intent of documentaries has always been far
 11

from art for art’s sake. He argues that documentary filmmakers have a civic duty to attend to in

their pursuit of beauty:

The documentary film was conceived and developed as an instrument of public

use. It was conceived, moreover, as an instrument to be used systematically in all

fields of public instruction and enlightenment. It is true that we hoped that

individual artists would have every opportunity within the framework of the

public service; but the other half of our socialized or public concept of art was

that we could only secure this larger hope by tying our effort to the organized

forces of social growth under whatever form they came. (Grierson, 1971, pp.340-

341)

Grierson and his contemporaries recognized that art in general and documentaries in particular

could only truly be successful in encouraging social change through a connection to “the

organized forces of social growth” which he broadly defines as governments, corporations,

unions, or “even the Boy Scouts or the Y.M.C.A.” (Grierson, 1971, p. 341). Though NGOs come

almost as an afterthought to his target collaborators, Grierson could not have foreseen the rise of

the NGO in the latter part of the twentieth century as a major force in the global economy and

subsequently in social reform. Regardless, it appears that the mission of documentaries and the

mission of NGOs in the broadest sense are aligned.

Documentary and communications scholars have since built upon Grierson’s definition

and theory of civil duty to form exciting new models of interactive filmmaking with an eye

toward advocacy. The coalition model as proposed by Whiteman (2004) encourages filmmakers

to work with NGOs, advocacy groups, issue groups, and other stakeholders from the beginning
 12

of the filmmaking process to create films with decided political impact. Whiteman (2004) notes

that “once produced, organizers and other supportive groups can use a film to create a space

within which citizens can encounter, discuss, and decide to act on the issues raised in the film”

(p.55). In this way, documentary films become a potent tool in public relations to reach key

stakeholders and decision makers associated with NGOs and advocacy groups.

Content. Scholars interested in documentary have understood that the structure and

content of the documentary form give it undoubted persuasive possibility. Grierson spoke of

documentary as

…capable of direct description, simple analysis and commanding conclusion, and

may by its tempo’d and imagistic powers, be made easily persuasive. It lends itself to

rhetoric, for no form of description can add nobility to a simple observation as readily as

a camera set low, or a sequence cut to a time-beat. But principally, there is this thought

that a single say-so can be repeated a thousand times a night to a million eyes, and, over

the years, if it is good enough to live, to millions of eyes. That seven-leagued fact opens a

new perspective, a new hope, to public persuasion. (J. Grierson as quoted in Hardy, 1979,

p.)

Persuasion is therefore inherent in the structure of the art form. To Grierson, the factual

narratives and documentation of reality combined with artistic execution found in the technique

of film was the key. Recently, scholars have been working to quantify the persuasive elements of

documentary and use it as positive evidence that content is well suited to the aims and goals of

the NGO communication campaign. As mentioned previously, sincerity and authenticity are

highly valued constructs among NGOs who are ever careful to protect the organizational
 13

transparency in efforts to engage key stakeholders (Dimitrov, 2007; Pope, et al., 2009). Rabiger

(1998) notes that a well-crafted documentary creates a contract of trust with its audience and

subjects which are some of the film’s stakeholders. He discusses the documentary Best Boy

(Wohl, 1979) in this way:

At the higher level is a discourse…that aims not at conditioning or diverting but at

sharing something in all its complexity…A film such as this (Best Boy) does not set out

to sell or convert, but rather to expand one’s mind and emotions by drawing us through a

series of events fraught with meaning and ambiguity. It invites us to make difficult

judgments about motive and responsibility, and it makes us accomplices during an

honest, painful quest for goodness and truth. A good film, like a good friend, engages us

actively, and never patronizes or manipulates either its subjects or its audience.

(Rabinger, 1998, p. 9)

Rabiger’s (1998) understanding of the trust relationship between filmmakers and audience

combined with Grierson’s hope for public persuasion through the specific visual elements of

documentary are not without scientific support. Studies have shown that the visual structure of

documentaries which differentiates it from fiction films leads audiences to perceive them as

more factual. That perceived factuality may increase the audience’s interest in the topic or issue

when compared to fictional films (Pouliot & Cowen, 2007). Additional studies conclude that

higher perceptions of reality and factuality positively affect issue concern, learning and

engagement among publics (LaMarre & Landreville, 2009). Issue concern, learning, and

engagement are the building blocks of attitude change. As organizations use documentaries in

their advocacy campaigns, the higher levels of perceived realism in representing causes may be a

boon to relationship building strategies related to authenticity.

 14

Additionally, as discussed in previous sections of this paper, issue framing has been

shown to be a valuable and necessary tool for public relations and marketing of NGOs and

advocacy groups. The role of documentaries as a tool in the framing of issues has been ably

discussed in two recent studies (Dow, 2004; Schiller; 2009). Schiller (2009) discusses the way

activists, filmmakers, and distributors helped to reinforce the message of a documentary that

elicits questions about the way the media originally framed the coup d’etat in Venezuela and its

supposed fully supported resolution to oust Chavez. Schiller (2009) argues that the film, The

Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Bartley & O’Briain, 2002), already controversial and specific

in its counter-framing of the political leanings of the Venezuelan people, was made even more

potent in its ability to recast the conflict and create a public awareness of the other side of the

story by the active involvement of stakeholders who helped to create context and believability.

Dow’s (2004) study of the television documentary, Women’s Liberation (Sanders, 1970), and its

impacts as a reframing tool for the women’s liberation movement of the 1970’s recognizes the

rhetorical elements of documentary film structure that made it an effective tool for showing the

more moderate side of the movement. Dow (2004) explains the well matched relationship

between documentary form and framing:

More than any other aspect of the program, Sanders’ overt interpretations and

explanations of what the viewer is seeing and hearing signal her embrace of the

greater rhetorical license offered by the documentary form, and she uses that

license to construct a powerful, yet problematic, analogy between feminism and

Black civil rights. (p. 59)

The filmmaker used the function and form of documentary to reframe women’s liberation

“as a natural outgrowth of the questioning of social and political inequality that had
 15

become visible in the 1960’s, particularly in connection to the civil rights of African

Americans” (Dow, 2004, p.62). It was successful in its great persuasive impact on the

more mainstream acceptance of the movement.

A discussion of the persuasive power of documentary film and its perceived

authenticity would not be complete without a frank conversation about the role of

interpretation inherent to the act of film making. Bill Nichols (2010) reminds us that

documentary is more than merely raw evidence with a highly indexical relationship

between the image and the thing that image represents. It is a construction or piecing

together of evidences or what are sometimes called the “pro-filmic events”. According to

Nichols, “documentaries marshal evidence and then use it to construct their own

perspective or proposal about the world. We expect this process to take place. We are

disappointed if it does not” (p. 36). This marshalling and construction occurs within the

technical choices of documentary content: How the piece is edited; What lighting is used;

Whether there is a narrator and, if so, who that narrator represents. The very act of

“crafting” evidence forces us to acknowledge the lack of objectivity in documentary

filmmaking that precludes it from ever being a neutral reality.

Nichols (2010) argues that the audience is expecting this subjectivity and, in fact,

requires it:

As an audience we expect to be able both to trust the indexical linkage between

what we see and what occurred before the camera and to assess the poetic or

rhetorical transformation of this linkage into a commentary of perspective on the

world we occupy. We anticipate an oscillation between the recognition of

 16

historical reality and the recognition of a representation about it. This expectation

distinguishes our involvement with documentary from our involvement with other

film genres. (p.36)

Rather than implying insincerity or lack of trustworthiness, this unique dual audience

involvement with documentary actually renders the genre more powerful as a tool for

leading audiences to act and do. The very nature of the crafted documentary content

forces the viewer to disregard notions of fantasy and requires them to constantly question

the validity of the perspective that is being presented. Nichols (2010) calls this interaction

“a discourse of sobriety” which, he argues, is the space in which maieutic learning and

subsequent action occurs.

Effect. Beyond quantitative media effects studies examining content, the documentation

of successful and effective use of documentary in NGO public relations campaigns is beginning

to take shape. The case study of Yes, In My Backyard (Huling, 1998), a documentary about the

political and social implications of prisons located in rural towns, showed that documentaries can

be effectively used to jump start scholarly inquiry and create a community around an unknown

issue (Whiteman, 2009). By showing documentaries to targeted groups of people, NGOs have

also been able to secure government reallocations of funding toward their respective issues and

influence important structural directives among government officials (Whiteman, 2003). In his

case study of the Ogoni, Bob (2005) notes that the television documentary, Heat of the Moment,

about the exploitation of the Ogoni by Shell Oil, was instrumental in activating additional media

attention. These very tangible results are some evidence that documentary film can effectively be

used to meet the communications and public relations goals of NGOs.

 17

From a media effects perspective, the effectiveness of visual media to elicit emotional

response is well documented. A recent experimental study of fictional television violence and

real disaster footage showed that subjects in the real disaster condition felt more compassion than

those viewing fictional violence. While the study was not conclusive about the effect of the

increased compassion on greater giving behavior, it does suggest that exposure to realistic

graphic visual representations can have a strong affective result (Popova, 2009). Visual realism

like that espoused in documentary, has the potential to make disaster situations more engaging,

more intense, and more involving. In media appeals trying to persuade donors to give,

involvement is key to successful effect (Bae, 2008; Tsiotsou, 2004).

Some scholars note that lack of context present in visual images of disaster as reported in

the media may actually lead to negative affective responses. In her theoretical essay on viewing

images of catastrophe, Kaplan (2008) discusses the possibility of empathic responses leading to

vicarious trauma and what she calls “empty empathy” or empathy that does not lead to prosocial

behavior. She suggests that empty empathy can be triggered when images of suffering are

fragmented without any context or background knowledge. In these cases, the viewer focuses on

the pain of individuals seen at a distance and who are strange to us eliciting only a short lived

feeling of pity. Fragmentation is, in essence, a mechanical problem of photographs that do not

help the viewer to identify enough to evoke lasting altruistic empathy that motivates to action.

The concept of empty empathy illuminates how a certain kind of media reporting

encourages sentimentality by presenting TV viewers or newspaper readers with a daily

barrage of images of individual pain. In this kind of media reporting, spectators are

asked to peek in on an individual’s life in war rather than to think about the ethics of the
 18

war, human rights and other related issues. We are encouraged to identify with specific

people – to enter their personal lives – and not to go beyond this. (Kaplan, 2008, p.11)

Documentary film, in its normative form, offers relief from this sort of sentimentality and lack of

context. Given enough time with the subject, context is established and viewers are given the

opportunity to experience empathy that may lead to sustainable behavioral change.

In practice: NGOs’ current use of documentaries

In attempting to understand how social entrepreneurial organizations are using

documentaries within the framework of public relations theory, it becomes necessary to identify

ways in which they are already in use by traditional prosocial organizations. Recent articles

indicate that many nonprofits are becoming involved in promoting commercially released

documentaries. From funding related publicity campaigns and contributing to a sponsored blog

advertised at the end of the film to sharing views on camera and participating in after-screening

panels, NGOs used the momentum of a critically acclaimed film, Waiting for Superman

(Guggenheim, 2010) to increase visibility and issue awareness (Gose, 2009). Other traditional

uses of documentaries by NGOs include holding private screenings hosted by an organization or

in conjunction with the filmmaker or a third party (Brown, 2010; Whiteman, 2004, 2009) and

becoming independent distributors of documentaries that bring attention to related issues

(Christensen, 2007; Khorana, 2015).

Within the world of new media, there has been a recent boom in the study of NGOs and

their use of social media platforms in concert with their communications strategies and public

relations goals, with several authors noting varying degrees of success (McPherson, 2015; Thrall,
 19

Stecula, & Sweet, 2014). However, there is relatively little data about how NGOs are using

documentaries to increase public relations on these same social media platforms. Within the

academy, it would seem that social media such as Twitter and Facebook seem to have limited

application for the distribution of persuasive video content. An older study of how NGOs use

Facebook revealed that only 24% of the sampled organizations uploaded video files to their

Facebook profiles (Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009). However, this statistic is not

particularly indicative of the perceived importance of visual media among NGOs. A survey of

transnational NGOs found that websites are seen as the most important new media tool for

NGOs, with video as the third most important tool (Seo, Kim, & Yang, 2009). In a

comprehensive study of website use by NGOs, Yeon, Choi, and Kiousis (2005) surveyed current

websites of the Nonprofit Times top 100 NGOs to discover how NGO websites meet the needs of

three specific stakeholders: donors, volunteers, and the media. This analysis did not take into

consideration the presence of short documentaries or other visual media on these websites.

The limited scope of scholarly research about NGOs and their use of visual media,

specifically documentaries in online campaigns, is not commensurate with the rate of practical

employment. As previously discussed, documentaries are a powerful and appropriate persuasive

tool for NGOs wishing to increase issue awareness and engagement among key publics. What

we don’t know is how and if this match extends beyond traditional NGOs to meet the

communication needs of social entrepreneur groups.

A new old wave of change: Social entrepreneurs

In 2006, economist Muhammed Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering

work with microcredit (AP, 2006). Yunus’ Grameen Bank set the gold standard for social
 20

innovation by combining capitalistic economic principles with social responsibility in an effort to

alleviate poverty in rural Bangladesh. His tried and tested formula worked and set the stage for a

worldwide interest in what appeared to be a fresh way of looking at social transformation called

social entrepreneurism (Auwal & Singhal, 1992).

A single definition of the term “social entrepreneur” is difficult to find partially because it

has been appropriated and studied by a wide variety of disciplines each laying claim as the

rightful heir to the definition. The term is itself a hybrid of two value laden terms each with

different meanings to different groups of people (Zahra, et.al., 2009). However, some common

thematic elements make their way into most definitions of social entrepreneurship which give us

the basis for a working definition. Scholars agree that social entrepreneurs create systemic

change to shift societal perceptions and behaviors, destroying old patterns and establishing

society wide transformation (Bornstein, 2007). To some, the title of social entrepreneur can only

be used honestly in conjunction with systemic change that also addresses economic

sustainability, but other scholars note that “on the whole, most existing definitions imply that

social entrepreneurship relates to exploiting opportunities for social change and improvement,

rather than traditional profit maximization” (Zahra, et. al., 2009, p. 521).

Considering the breadth of possibilities for defining what a social entrepreneur is, it may

be useful to examine what he or she is not. The term cannot be applied to traditional business

models that simply use their profits for good. Nor can it be extended to traditional NGO’s

because they incorporate a for- profit model in their business plan. Additionally, it is accepted

that “individuals and organizations not actively engaged in innovative means of delivering

products and services fall outside the field of social entrepreneurship (Zahra, et al., 2009, p. 522).
 21

Social entrepreneurs are different from activists though they may certainly use activism as a tool

to influence the creation of systemic change when necessary (Bornstein & Davis, 2010).

Much of this thinking about social entrepreneurship stems from the ideas of economists

Jean-Baptiste Say and Joseph A. Schumpeter who characterized entrepreneurship as the creative

destruction that motivates economic change to increase the productive capacity of society.

Scholars today argue that social entrepreneurs can subsequently be said to do the same for social

change by “creating new combinations of people and resources that significantly improve

society’s capacity to address problems” (Bornstein & Davis, 2010, p. 1).

Though the language of social entrepreneurship is relatively young and still stirring

debate (especially between disciplines), some would argue that the concept has been around

since the world began to see imbalance in the scale of wealth and poverty (Bornstein & Davis,

2010). In fact, Bornstein (2007), a leading scholar of social entrepreneurs, cites the work of

Florence Nightingale (who revolutionized nursing during the Crimean War in the nineteenth

century) as a shining example of social entrepreneurial character. This character, which was first

recognized by Bill Drayton in the 1970’s as the defining features of social change-makers, is

defined by a high sense of self-efficacy, an inner locus of control, tolerance for uncertainty, high

need for autonomy, and drive to action (Bornstein & Davis, 2010).

These social innovators bring their unique skill set to bear on social problems, but they

rarely do it completely alone:

Important social change frequently begins with a single entrepreneurial author: one

obsessive individual who sees a problem and envisions a new solution, who takes the

initiative to act on that vision, who gathers resources and builds organizations to protect
 22

and market the vision, who provides the energy and sustained focus to overcome the

inevitable resistance, and who – decade after decade – keeps improving, strengthening,

and broadening that vision until what was once a marginal idea has become a new norm.

(Bornstein, 2007, p. 3)

Social entrepreneurial groups or organizations become an auxiliary limb to the founder’s

vision and as suggested by Bornstein (2007) are charged with the task of protecting and

marketing the vision. The culture of the organization is shaped by the entrepreneurial spirit of the

founder and provides the consistent guiding force for that marketing and communication. If

indeed there is a common thread to social entrepreneurial culture, it becomes imperative then to

have a clear sense of what that looks like within the social entrepreneurial organization in order

to determine the best communications techniques to protect and disseminate that vision.

Though many scholars in various disciplines hint at the importance of communications to

the social entrepreneur’s task (Bornstein, 2007; Bornstein & Davis, 2010; Auwal & Singhal,

1992), there is currently nothing in the communications literature that addresses this potentially

unique subset of social change makers. This naturally led the author to a few basic questions that

could begin to shed light on this topic and give the academy a starting point for additional

research if warranted. These questions about the intersection of documentary film, public

relations and communications strategy, and the culture and work of the social entrepreneur are

discussed below.
 23

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The literature review has shown that there is increasing attention being paid to the social

entrepreneur as a transformative change agent in current society. The presumed role of the social

entrepreneur as the innovative answer to bridging the gaps left by government and NGOs means

that there are questions that have yet to be asked and hopefully answered through scholarly

inquiry. As is the case with so many new and emerging phenomena, academia runs the risk of

coming into the field far too late to inform and shape at critical junctions, instead being content

to describe the effects after the fact. There is great potential and need to begin exploring the

connection between communications and SE organizations offering the opportunity to discover

new information that may inform communications practice in a timely way. For the purposes of

this thesis, the following questions will begin the scholarly conversation:

RQ1: How do social entrepreneur organizations in different stages of development

currently use visual media in their communications?

RQ2: How do social entrepreneur organizations differ in their communication needs from

traditional models of business and NGOs?

RQ3: How does the practical communications culture of social entrepreneur

organizations interact with the intent, content and effects of documentary?

 24

METHODOLOGY

Considering the current research environment wherein new technologies lend themselves

to quick and easy large quantities of numerical data, it might seem that the slower and more

subjective textual data developed from qualitative methodologies is a less obvious choice for

researchers who seek credence and rigor in their craft (Berg 2009). In fact, many scholarly

studies have created models combining qualitative and quantitative techniques to decent effect in

order to remedy this imbalanced perception and aid in the validity of their findings (McLaughlin,

McLaughlin & Muffo, 2001; McLafferty, Slate, & Onwuegbuzie, 2010). However, the singular

ability of qualitative methodology to give depth to questions of the what, why, when, and how of

a particular subject makes it a clear choice for research that seeks to satisfy a beginning curiosity

in a nascent subject (Berg, 2009).

There are several key reasons that qualitative methodology is the best choice for this

particular study. First, the acknowledged lack of information and prior scholarly research

connecting the specific cultural elements of social entrepreneurship to communications

techniques and tools such as documentaries made the nature of this study exploratory. The

inability to rely on extant theory to shape the findings required that these questions be addressed

qualitatively rather than quantitatively in order to more fully capture the depth of the social

entrepreneurial organizational reality (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Second, this study attempts to

understand how two distinct groups of people (social entrepreneurs and documentary

filmmakers) with distinct cultures, goals, behaviors and practices interact with one another in the

pursuit of a common creative endeavor. How these groups create meaning and interpret their

individual and collective experience is necessarily colored by the world represented in their

current views. Merriam (2014) contends that a defining feature of basic qualitative research is its
 25

interest in discovering the subjective and experiential meaning created and assigned to a

particular phenomenon by those who interact with it (pp. 23-24). If meaning is constructed, the

qualitative researcher must therefore become alive to the architecture, building blocks,

environmental, and external factors that initiate and sustain a subjective reality. This requires

time, cultural immersion, and sustained interaction. Qualitative methodology is uniquely poised

to give the researcher just that (Berg 2009).

Within the overarching category of qualitative research there are several sub-categorical

methodologies that lend themselves to different types of studies including ethnography,

grounded theory creation and narrative analysis (Merriam, 2014). Though this study employed

elements of many of these sub-categories, the practical and exploratory nature of the research

questions warranted a simple interpretive approach to the data. With this in mind, the author used

combination of qualitative techniques to gather data and develop a text for analysis including

observation and in-depth interviews.

Observation

Observation, according to Berg (2009), allows the researcher to “examine various

phenomena as perceived by participants and represent these observations as accounts” (p. 191).

It is especially useful when trying to interpret social interactions and expressions between

different social groups such as social entrepreneurs and filmmakers. The researcher can describe

her experience with a specific culture in order to determine perceived meaning and provide

context for understanding the culture from the outside in.

 26

In order to fully explore the research questions of this study, observation was an

important tool for deeper understanding. Both social entrepreneurs and documentary filmmakers

can be said to exist within separate and unique cultural frameworks that require the presence of

specific characteristics and performative social practices for acceptance and entry (Bandinelli &

Arvidsson, 2012). Observation provided the author with a better understanding of both cultures

and how they interact with one another in the course of research.

Observations were conducted during the winter of 2011 when the author audited a

weekly filmmaking class and attended a conference at Brigham Young University focused on the

role of social entrepreneurs in current society. The filmmaking class was associated with the

Peery Film Fellowship, in which student filmmakers were paired with a social entrepreneurial

(SE) organization and given detailed instruction and mentoring on how to make a documentary

film for that organization. As an observer, the author attended the class, took extensive field

notes, and asked questions directly to teachers, students, and mentors about the process of their

filmmaking and the things they were learning. These field notes became text for analysis along

with the in-depth interview responses.

Researchers who engage in observation must make a conscious decision about whether to

engage covertly or overtly with their subjects. Berg (2009) notes that there are advantages and

disadvantages to either approach that will require mitigation. He quotes Denzin (1970) in

suggesting that the very presence of a “foreign object” introduced into a situation alters the

natural interactions that may or may not have occurred. Triangulation of data in such cases is an

absolute requirement for validity, with additional textual sources either corroborating or refuting

the “corrupted” data of the observation. Before observation began, the author made the decision

to conduct her research overtly in the course for several reasons. First, the nature of the course
 27

curriculum was highly collaborative and participatory with the entire class divided into

filmmaking teams based on their expertise and experience as filmmakers. The author had neither

the prerequisite expertise nor the time to be a full participant in the filmmaking aspects of the

class and it would have created more disruption to the milieu to participate differently. Second, it

was unnecessary to the validity or rigor of the research to remain covertly embedded with the

class. And finally, it was not detrimental to subject access. As Berg (2009) notes, openness and

overt observation can create additional access to subjects when the research context allows for it.

Thus, it was clear to the teachers and students in the class that the author was there as an

observer. The author was able to speak openly with students about the work they were doing and

their thoughts about the class. It also allowed for clarification of processes and course materials

with the professors and presented an opportunity to work directly with the director of the Peery

Foundation for additional information.

The author also attended a TEDxBYU conference featuring talks by several locally well-

known social entrepreneurs. This one day conference also included a film showcase by one of

the first Peery Film Fellows who was now creating his own independent films about SE

organizations. Merriam (2014) notes that, “observation is a research tool when it is systematic,

when it addresses a specific research question, and when it is subject to the checks and balances

in producing trustworthy results” (p. 118).

Due to the nature of the conference structure (too dark to write cohesive notes) and the

subsequent lack of rigor in the author’s note taking, notes from that conference were not used as

textual data. However, one of the benefits of observation is that it gives the researcher a deeper

understanding of cultural context and behaviors that can help to influence other elements of the

study such as interview questions and text analysis. This is especially valuable in research
 28

involving emerging phenomena (Merriam, 2014). Though it did not yield valid text for analysis,

participation and observation of the TEDxBYU conference did provide anecdotal value to the

study in terms of access. It became clear during the course of the conference that there is a

unique language that belongs to those who associate themselves with the culture of social

enterprise and being able to speak within the framework of that culture helps to engender trust

from others in the field. This understanding became foundational during the initial process of

finding and securing interview subjects, determining the interview questions, and conducting

interviews. Additionally, the basic principles of the conference lent themselves to normative

understanding of coding constructs during analysis and provided anecdotal triangulation for

emerging patterns and concepts.

In-depth Interviews

Interviewing is a common and effective data collection technique for qualitative research

as long as it is done well and with purpose. If indeed the heart of basic qualitative research is to

explore and discover meaning, interviews (and specifically in-depth interviews) can provide a

sizeable text replete with first-person narration of the symbols and constructs that form a

particular reality. Interviews allow researchers to gain insight into things that cannot be observed

such as feelings, intentions, thoughts and past experiences (Merriam, 2014). Because the

research questions of this study inquire about the intersection of culture and practice and because

culture is ultimately a creation of perception, it was necessary to conduct interviews with those

who are actively engaging with the phenomena: social entrepreneurs and the filmmakers who are

making films about them and for them. The sample selection criteria and a more detailed

description of the study subjects will be discussed in a later section of this paper.
 29

Lincoln and Guba (1985) suggest that structured interviews, or interviews that start with

specific, planned questions from researcher to subject, are best used when the researcher already

knows what she doesn’t know and can formulate concise questions with assumed answers that

will meet the scope and interest of the study. A structured interview may also allow for a

standardized stimulus to all subjects (assuming they all understand the meaning of each question

in the same way) which ideally results in comparable responses from all study participants (Berg,

2009). However, in the spirit of true naturalistic inquiry, the author of this study utilized a semi-

standardized interview structure to allow for a focused interview with the flexibility to pursue

avenues of discovery rather than plain theory confirmation (Berg, 2009). This freedom to explore

beyond the script was imperative in studying the new and emergent field of social entrepreneurs

and documentary film where so little is currently documented.

The many pitfalls and limitations to the effective use of interviews in producing valid (or

even useable) data required that the author seek proven interview techniques as part of her

methodology. Berg (2009) suggests that the act and process of interviewing is performative for

both the interviewer and the interviewee. He advocates creative interviewing techniques

grounded in a dramaturgical, or symbolic exchange to help “move past the mere words and

sentences exchanged during the interview process” (p. 103). This approach required that the

researcher create an environment of mutual disclosure during the interview in order to elicit a

more authentic response from the subject. In order to make the questions relevant to the subjects,

it was necessary to create two distinct interview schedules with questions that pertained

specifically to the different audiences (See Appendix A for full interview question schedule).
 30

Sample Selection

One salient criticism of quantitative methodology is its heavy reliance on operationalism,

or the belief that it is necessary to discretely define a construct in order to appropriately create

measurements. Lincoln & Guba (1985) argue that this reliance on operationalization lacks

meaning and is not a satisfying way to look at the world. In fact, “the strict practice of

operationalism results in a meaningless splintering of the world” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 27)

by allowing the reliance on measuring instruments to take precedence over the possible multi-

faceted and nuanced interpretation of data. Berg (2009) takes a more moderate stance, noting

that some level of operationalizing may be necessary in qualitative research to offer clarity and

focus. Considering the breadth of varying definitions provided by the many disciplines studying

social entrepreneurship (and the contention that pervades the field), it seemed not only

impossible but also unwise to utilize a standard quantitative operationalized approach to this

exploratory study. There were simply too many variations on the theme to choose from.

However, Berg’s moderate approach of creating simple parameters in order to focus the scope of

the study was helpful in narrowing in on a possible interviewing sample.

For this reason, the author looked to the selection criteria of the Ashoka organization to

set parameters for the sample selection. Ashoka, a global organization that supports the work of

social entrepreneurs through funding, research, and networking, was founded in 1980 by Bill

Drayton, a former management consultant and administrator who is, for all intents and purposes,

the father of the social enterprise movement. As mentioned in the review of the literature, it was

Drayton who first recognized and codified the characteristics that to some degree define this

category of entrepreneurs (Bornstein, 2010). Each year since its founding, Ashoka has elected a
 31

cadre of fellows to its ranks who are chosen through a rigorous and tested application process

that evaluates candidates on several important criteria described on the Ashoka website (2015)

thusly:

A new idea. He or she is possessed by a new idea—a new solution or approach to a

social problem—that will change the pattern in a field…(Ashoka)evaluate(s) the idea

historically and against its contemporaries in the field, looking for innovation and real

change potential.

Creativity. Does this individual have a vision of how he or she can meet some human

need better than it has been met before? Does the candidate have a history of creating

other new visions?

Entrepreneurial quality. It defines leaders who see opportunities for change and

innovation and devote themselves entirely to making that change happen. These leaders

often have little interest in anything beyond their mission, and they are willing to spend

the next ten to fifteen years making a historical development take place.

Social impact of the idea. This criterion focuses on the candidate's idea, not the candidate.

Ashoka is only interested in ideas that it believes will change the field significantly and

that will trigger nationwide impact or, for smaller countries, broader regional change.

Ethical fiber. Social entrepreneurs introducing major structural changes to society have to

ask a lot of people to change how they do things. If the entrepreneur is not trusted, the

likelihood of success is significantly reduced. The essential question is: "Do you trust this

person absolutely?" If there is any doubt, a candidate will not pass. (Ashoka, 2015)
 32

These five basic criteria are as stringent as they are encompassing; They create a focused

and accepted framework for social entrepreneurship without delimiting the category arbitrarily

by model, field of influence, or personality. While it wasn’t possible to include only full-fledged

Ashoka fellows in the study because of time limitations associated with issues of access, these

criteria were employed informally to determine if an interview subject was an appropriate match

for the study.

With this in mind, the original prospectus of this study called for a total of eight interview

subjects consisting of four social entrepreneurs or representatives of SE organizations and four

filmmakers who had made films for or about those organizations. Within the category of social

entrepreneurs, the intention was to find two who were in the beginning stages of their endeavors

and two who were more established in the field. Within the filmmaker category, the original

intention was to interview two independent documentary filmmakers and two who had been

hired by the organization. Though it is not necessary, nor possible according to Lincoln & Guba

(1985), to create a representative sample for purposes of generalization in qualitative research

(Wimmer & Dominick, 2011), this diverse group of interview respondents would allow for the

study to have scope.

During the course of respondent recruitment, the author relied on personal networking

and some cold introductory emails to gain access to social entrepreneurs and filmmakers who

were currently working in the field. Though these methods worked well, time constraints related

to the academic calendar and the author’s full-time position as a marketing and communications

professional ultimately led to a modification of the original sample. The author conducted a total

of eight interviews with three different filmmakers and five different SE organizations. Two of

the organizations were over ten years into their tenure and the other three SE organizations were
 33

between two and three years old. Each of the SE organizations had a truly unique model and

scope, some working globally and others focused on domestic issues. Several interview

respondents held different roles in their respective organizations and the interviews represented

the views of three founders, two communications professionals, and one fundraising

professional. Of the filmmakers, one was relatively independent of the SE organization

financially and creatively, one was hired by the SE organization as part of a creative agency, and

one was uniquely positioned in that he was both the chief filmmaker and the founder of the SE

organization.

For the purposes of this study, it is not necessary to give the names of the respondents or

their specific organization, but it is helpful in the interpretation of data to differentiate between

their respective roles and positions. The following is a brief description of each of the subjects

and their affiliations:

Social Entrepreneurial Organization 1. SE1 was officially incorporated in 2013 and its

work focuses on innovating the way the private sector and governments work together to end

human trafficking across the globe. Through a robust public relations strategy that includes

leveraging an independent film made about their work, SE1 is committed to raising awareness of

the problem of child sex slavery and trafficking as well as modeling effective practical strategies

for coalitions of private citizens, government agencies, and trained para-military forces to rescue

and rehabilitate children involved in the trade. The organization started with just the founder and

one full-time employee, but has since received a decent amount of national media attention and

subsequent funding to allow them to grow to a staff of twelve full-time employees, including

operatives, fundraisers and rehabilitation program director among others.

 34

SE1 Founder. The founder of SE1 is a historian, author, and former government agent

with more than twelve years of experience in working on the ground in cases dealing with the

illicit sex trade of children. He is gregarious, well-spoken, and passionate about the work that he

does while also acknowledging that there is a lot to learn and many lessons ahead for his

organization. He began SE1 after becoming frustrated by the scope of the problem and the

“bureaucratic restraints” and “stumbling blocks” created by inefficient government attention to

what he believes is the human rights plague of our global society today. He sees the potential in

his unique blend of innovative action and awareness to call other governments to “rise up” to the

challenge of eradicating child slavery. He spoke confidently about his vision but deferred to his

Chief Operating Officer to fill in the gaps of specific strategy.

SE 1 Communications Professional. The Chief Operating Officer of SE1 had been

working with the organization for only eight months when the interview was conducted. His

background as a marketing professional at a Fortune 500 internet security company has helped

him to navigate the high profile media and public relations landscape of SE1 which was in full

swing before he arrived. He works closely with the director of development on many of the

communications strategies for SE1 including social media awareness campaigns, media

relations, and the publicity and distribution of the documentary about their work. He and the

founder of SE1 knew each other in college and remained in contact peripherally for the

intervening years before he was invited to join the team. He feels fulfilled by the meaning

inherent in the work they are doing as an organization.

SE 1 Filmmaker. The filmmaking team behind the documentary about SE1 owns their

own production company that specializes in narrative fiction films. They’ve know each other and

worked around one another for twenty years in varying capacities and have owned their own
 35

production company together for the last five. Though they each have their own specialties in

film production (one is primarily a career screenwriter and the other a producer), they share

billing as both director and producer on all their work together including this documentary. This

is their first long-form feature documentary and they jokingly admit, probably their last. After

working with the founder of SE1 on a historical film project, they approached him about creating

a feature film about his work which became the current documentary film project. The film is

funded by independent investors and although the founder of SE1 has created and ensured a clear

role for himself in guiding the messages of the film, it is not owned by the organization. The

filmmakers plan to release the film through a studio and are also shopping around a reality

television show based on additional footage of operations to major television networks.

Social Entrepreneurial Organization 2. This organization may best be described as

global social enterprise, although SE2’s founder might take issue with that categorization. The

big idea or innovation of SE2 is grounded initially in microconsignment research which initially

suggested that micro-enterprise as conceived by the proponents of microcredit wrongfully

assumes that an entrepreneurial endeavor will be successful simply because it addresses a market

need for both the entrepreneur and the consumer. Microfranchising was proposed as a solution

that might allow for social enterprise to create replicable, scalable business models that can be

managed rather than created, allowing for better returns regardless of the presence or lack of

presence of entrepreneurial spirit (Christensen, Lehr, & Faibourne, 2010). SE2’s current model is

a testing ground for the next level of that micro-trajectory by asking if there is more potential for

real social impact in the creation of a sustainable, purely for-profit business funded by venture

capital and driven by the market demands of the developing economy than one that is a more

mission-driven hybrid model. SE2 is a for-profit organization with one hundred and twenty
 36

employees and a mission to grow quickly, make money for its investors, and take care of its

employees while creating measurable social impact. Because of the newness and uncertainty of

the model, the organization’s communications are focused less on documentary storytelling and

more on brand development.

SE 2 Founder. The founder of SE2 is an economist and researcher by trade who has

worked in the field of micro-finance and social innovation at universities and as a global

consultant since the late 1990’s. He does not generally like to use the phrase “social

entrepreneur” to describe himself, but says instead that he “became interested in doing good

around the world” during a trip to Katmandu where he interacted with some homeless children

and determined to do something more than just ski. That moment of obligation has helped drive

his tireless work as a consultant to over thirty different social enterprise endeavors in more than

fifteen countries over just five years. He believes that this newest iteration of his career, in which

he is the owner/operator of a holding company, is the natural evolution of his life’s work. He is

optimistic about the potential results of his new company to produce social impact through a for-

profit only model, but remains open to the possibility of failure and the lessons that will come

from it. He has generally been agreeable to using documentary film to help promote his work

when it has been handed to him, but did not previously see the need to seek it out on his own.

Within the scope of his new endeavor, he finds himself actively positioning visual media as a

key branding and public relations tool for his product marketing and social impact goals.

SE 2 Filmmaker. The filmmaker associated with SE2 is actually a cause-related creative

firm with deep roots in making documentary films for and about social entrepreneurs. The author

conducted the interview in person with three people associated with the films related to SE2 - the

two founders of the firm who act as marketing expert and lead filmmaker respectively, and a film
 37

producer. Their interactions and work with SE2 have spanned over five years and have produced

at least four short documentaries about the founder at different stages of his work. The first short

documentary with SE2 was voluntary work that qualified as a passion project for the filmmaker

at the beginning of their business operations. In the years following that first film, they have

collaborated with SE2 on at least two other work-for-hire projects and are in the process of

collaborating on a more commercial video for the new business. The filmmakers have a great

working knowledge of social entrepreneurship and traditional NGO structure because of their

diverse clientele. They speak passionately about the importance of social impact.

Social Entrepreneurial Organization 3. SE3 has been incorporated since 2012 and

represents a collective of projects that use first-person storytelling to encourage an empathic

approach to large-scale divisive social issues. The founder and key actors in the organization

believe that helping people ask and answer the question, “What is it like to be you?” using the

medium that is most appropriate to the key stakeholders in the specific discussion will bring

civility and compassion to some of the world’s most polemical conversations. Projects under the

umbrella of this organization’s goals and mission run the gamut of communications tools and

strategies, ranging from social media campaigns and live storytelling events to high school

filmmaking festivals and feature-length documentary films. Media are seen as an integral part of

the public relations efforts of the organization and meeting the goals and mission of its inception.

SE 3 Founder/Filmmaker. The founder of SE3 is unique in that he plays the role of both

social entrepreneur and filmmaker. As a successful television producer and professor of

documentary film, his professional career was founded on showing and teaching others about the

power and value of film as a medium for storytelling. When his own call to large-scale societal

innovation came four years ago during a deeply divisive politically charged conversation about
 38

religion and homosexuality, it was natural that he would apply his passion for documentary to his

passion for empathic exchange between warring factions. The organization started with the

creation of a full-length documentary film that incorporates the founder’s own story with the

stories of other people caught in the middle of the debate. As a social innovator, he is always on

the move from project to project and has amassed a coalition of supporters and partners who are

motivated to move his vision along. As a filmmaker, he is as committed to the artfulness of the

story as he is the message. He splits his time between the two pursuits and admits that it has

slowed down his progress in some ways, but notes that he could not have impact for his

organization without both.

Social Entrepreneurial Organization 4. This organization has been recognized as

meeting all of the Ashoka criteria for social entrepreneurship and its founder became an Ashoka

Fellow in 2011. SE4 began its work over ten years ago with an innovative microfranchise model

that aimed to provide access to eyewear and improved vision for those at the bottom of the

development pyramid while also empowering women as entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Though it is a fairly compact organization with most employees residing outside of the United

States, its partnership with other global social enterprises helps bring breadth and depth to its

impact. Recent efforts to focus more on mission and reach have brought a wave of change to SE4

that includes shifting its impact model and the descriptive videos that tell who they are and what

they do. Along with the continuous waves of recognition as an innovator in the field comes

generous funding that has allowed SE4 to remain relatively self-sustaining. It has not needed to

focus much of its domestic communications externally and at the time of the interview, had some

short documentary films on the organization website but no plans to incorporate documentary or

visual media more widely.

 39

SE4 Development Professional. The author interviewed SE4’s Senior Development

Officer who is chiefly responsible for the fundraising and donor relations of the organization but

occasionally steps in to work with filmmakers and communications strategies as they apply to

philanthropy. At the time of the interview, she had been with SE4 for a little under two years and

felt that her historical institutional knowledge was a little bit limited but she was able to speak

clearly to the current use of documentary film in SE4’s communications. She works closely with

SE4’s founder (he was unavailable for interview), who no longer manages the day-to-day

operations of SE4 but remains actively engaged with the fundraising and overall direction of the

organization. In her role at SE4, the senior development officer has helped other decision makers

in the organization see the need for updated media, but also recognizes the need to prioritize

based on mission.

SE4 Filmmaker. The filmmaker associated with SE4 was unavailable for interview at the

same time as other interviews due to his travel schedule. Subsequent requests for his information

were unsuccessful and an interview did not occur.

Social Entrepreneurial Organization 5. SE5 is another organization with a founder

recognized as an Ashoka Fellow. SE5’s social focus is on innovating sexual health education in

grade schools across the United States using a model that incorporates peer teaching and

mentoring by college-aged volunteers in traditionally underserved communities. SE5 has been in

operation since 2003 when it was started by a group of university undergraduate students and is

now replicated in over six metropolitan areas of the United States. SE5 is unique among the

other SE organizations in this study because of its reliance on highly trained volunteers to meet

its mission and goals. The diversity of its key stakeholders is reflected in its communications

strategies which until recently were integrated with its development and program management
 40

divisions. SE5 has created few documentary films in during its tenure and the ones that it has

created have been used primarily as show pieces for donors and stakeholders. The current

documentary pieces on the organization’s website were produced by the development team.

SE5 Communications Professional. In the ten plus years that SE5 has been in operation,

the founder (who was not available for interview) was focused almost entirely on the program

development needed to make her vision a reality. As long as the organization was able to keep

funding and key partnerships in place, public relations and media were a lower priority. At the

time of this interview, the Director of Communications for SE5 had been in her newly created

position for just under a year having migrated from the development team. She noted a

significant shift in the organization after the team put pressure on the CEO/founder to create a

communications position and engage in more outward facing communications.

SE5 Filmmaker. The SE5 communications professional couldn’t remember the name of

the filmmaker who helped with their most recent promotional video and further attempts to

contact her to get that information were not successful. The author was unable to interview the

filmmaker for this organization.

Data Collection

Whether an interview is conducted in-person or over the phone or computer, there are

advantages and disadvantages to each method that affect the quality of the data gathered. The

author of this study determined that the benefit of being able to symbolically interact with an

interview subject to add depth and conversational flow to the interview process outweighed the

safety of anonymity that the telephone interview offered (Berg, 2009). Therefore, whenever
 41

possible, interviews were conducted in person and audio recorded using two methods of data

capture: a computer with microphone and a smart phone. When location or the busy schedule of

the subject made it impossible to conduct an interview in person, the author used Google

Hangouts, a web-based video-conferencing tool to facilitate and record the interviews. One

interview with a respondent living in Kenya required a simple telephone interview due to the

poor internet capabilities in that country. In addition to digital recordings of all interviews, the

researcher took copious notes during each interview as a way of helping to guide the flexible

portions of the interview and as data backup should the recording technology fail. Technological

failure on the first interview (SE5) rendered the audio and video recordings useless, leaving the

researcher to use written notes to reconstruct general concepts and ideas.

Each interview lasted approximately forty-five to sixty minutes where possible. Because

of the nature of the interview questions and subject matter, it wasn’t necessary for the interviews

to be longer. Where possible and necessary for clarification, interviews were followed up with

additional questions via email.

The raw data gathered from these interviews was transcribed manually by the author.

Those transcriptions, along with the field notes taken during observation, produced a sizeable

text for analysis totaling 1,769 single-spaced lines.

Although the original scope of the study required that data be collected from four

filmmakers and four social entrepreneur organizations, the decision to end data collection

without the final filmmaker interview and begin analysis was made, though not arbitrarily.

Merriam (2014) points out that, while in the process of data collection, it is common for the

researcher to discover many more possible avenues of inquiry. It can become difficult to know
 42

when enough data has been collected to begin analysis. Beyond the practical reasons to stop

collecting data (such as running out of money or time) Lincoln & Guba (1985) indicate four

criteria that should guide the researcher’s data collection decisions, including:

Exhaustion of sources (although sources may be recycled and tapped multiple times);

saturation of categories (continuing data collection produces tiny increments of new

information in comparison to the effort expended to get them); emergence of regularities

- the sense of "integration" (although care must be exercised to avoid a false conculsion

occasioned by regularities occuring at a more simplistic level than the inquirer should

accept); and over-extension - the sense that new information being unearthed is very far

removed from the core of any of the viable categories that have emerged (and does not

contribute usefully to the emergence of additional viable categories. (p. 350)

Many of these criteria are related to the process of constant comparative analysis which will be

discussed in the next section; However, it is worth noting that the decision to end data collection

for this study was related more to practical time constraints and an exhaustion of sources than a

saturation of categories or emergence of regularities.

Data Analysis

The author used a modified version of Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) constant comparative

analysis method to organize data and derive a descriptive analysis of the results. Goetz and

LeCompte (1981) note that constant comparative analysis is the process by which:

Social phenomena are recorded and classified while also being compared across

categories. Thus, the discovery of relationships, that is, hypothesis generation, begins
 43

with the analysis of initial observations, undergoes continuous refinement throughout the

data collection and analysis process, and continuously feeds back into the process of

category coding. (p. 58)

With the transcribed interviews and field notes as text, the first phase of analysis was to

identify segments in the data that could potentially answer the research questions (Merriam,

2014). Each line of the text was entered into a computer spreadsheet and examined independent

of its context in order to determine if that unit of data could have meaning to the study.

According to Lincoln & Guba (1985) a unit must meet two criteria:

First it should be heuristic - that is, the unit should reveal information relevant to the

study and stimulate the reader to think beyond the particular bit of information. Second,

the unit should be the "smallest" piece of information about something that can stand by

itself - that is, it must be interpretable in the absence of any of the context in which the

inquiry is carried out. (p. 345)

Using the research questions as a guide, the author used open coding, or emergent

coding, to discover previously unknown ideas and possible categories, starting first with the most

general categories related to the study. As main categories began to take shape, the author

utilized Glaser and Strauss’ (1967) first rule of the method to return to previous data units in

different groupings that are coded similarly and compare them, making notes about the

similarities and differences and adding subcategories and cross-referential categories. Lincoln

and Guba (1985) indicate that this process of constant comparative analysis forces the researcher

to think both descriptively and explanatorily about their text. Throughout this process of data

mining, the author kept detailed notes about possible connections and links which she was later
 44

able to corroborate or refute during the process of axial coding in which she combined all the

data independently of groupings and sorted by category looking for relationships (Merriam,

2014). Coding, both inductive and deductive, continued until the author felt the categories met

the criteria of saturation in which no new ideas were emerging.

The goal of this study was to provide a descriptive context to the communications

environment of social entrepreneur organizations and make some provocative suggestions about

the ways in which they use (or don’t use) documentary film. Lincoln and Guba (1985) point out

that constant comparative analysis in its full form is meant to lead to the creation of theory,

which does not meet the scope of this thesis. However, constant comparative methodology

offered this study a clear, step-by-step process for informing data categorization and organization

in light of emergent information found in the semi-structured interview.

Establishing Trustworthiness

Regardless of the rigor and care applied in the use of any technique or method of

qualitative research, it is impossible to mimic the hard objectivity of quantitative research. The

inherent fallibility of the human instrument as well as the reality that the use of any methodology

imposes a certain perspective on reality (with theoretical assumptions) means that concepts of

validity and reliability common to quantitative results seem much harder to achieve in qualitative

research (Berg, 2009). Merriam (2014) suggests that the difference lies in the fact that the

qualitative researcher is tasked with proving the rigor of the study in the results themselves:

Unlike experimental designs in which validity and reliability are accounted for before the

investigation, rigor in a qualitative research derives from the researcher's presence, the
 45

nature of the interaction between researcher and participants, the triangulation of data, the

interpretation of perceptions and rich, thick description. (p. 166)

This assurance of rigor is termed “trustworthiness” by Lincoln and Guba (1985). They

suggest there are four tenets of trustworthiness in qualitative research - truth value, applicability,

consistency, and neutrality – and more importantly, that there are several techniques that can be

employed during the collection of data, analysis of data, and data reporting in order to establish

it. The author of this study implemented three key techniques to ensure that her research was

valid and reliable.

Triangulation is the technique whereby the researcher combines several lines of site in

the process of interpreting symbolic and social meaning (Berg, 2009). In layman’s terms,

triangulation requires that the researcher have three different ways of looking at a piece of data

before she can supply an interpretation that means something. Triangulation can offer more

confidence that the research has truth value and neutrality. Triangulation for this study came

from the use of two different data sources to create the text for analysis and close readings of

seminal texts about the culture and positioning of documentary filmmakers and social

entrepreneurs respectively. These three viewpoints intersected to confirm that any reading or

interpretation of reality had a viable context for conclusions.

Constant comparative analysis also offered a perfect opportunity to utilize member

checks to ensure trustworthiness (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Informal member checks were

included throughout the interview process and helped to inform categorization of data.

Additionally, a formal member check as described by Lincoln and Guba (1985) was performed

at the finish of the report, to “test the credibility of the inquiry report as a whole with
 46

respondents” (p. 373). By choosing a representative sample of each of the stakeholders in the

social entrepreneurial organizations and filmmakers to receive feedback on the verity of the

findings the author was able to ensure that the reality presented in the study was true to those

experiencing it.

Finally, this study utilized a modification of the technique that Geertz (1973) called thick

description in the explanation of results and findings relevant to the data. Though true thick

description is specifically connected to ethnographic research in which the ethnographer

provides deep context to a cultural phenomenon, the process of contextualizing and offering

more instead of less information was useful in this study. When appropriate, lengthy textual

representations of the subjects’ reality were included to corroborate an idea or thought. Thick

description is not an assurance of transferability, but its presence offers the opportunity for

“someone interested in making a transfer to reach a conclusion about whether transfer can be

contemplated as a possibility” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

Although no one methodology can ensure accurate results without acknowledged

limitations, the author of this study implemented several checkpoints throughout the research

process that will hopefully mitigate concerns of validity and trustworthiness. The results of this

research are recounted in the following section organized by way of the prescribed research

questions.
 47

FINDINGS AND RESULTS

RQ1: How do SE orgs in different stages of development currently use visual media in their

communications?

It became clear during the coding analysis that the construct of use had more meaning to

both categories of subjects than originally anticipated and required that the text be examined for

two separate and distinct ideas related to use - first, the intended audience that the filmmaker and

the SE organization hoped to reach (the people) and second, the channels of distribution they

intended to use to reach that audience (the location).

Intended Audience Use

This study found that with regard to audience and reach, there were specific patterns that

developed but they were not based necessarily on the stage of organizational development and

instead correlated more to the stated missions and goals of the organizational model.

Developing relationships with key partners. Communication with partner stakeholders

with the intention to recruit, demonstrate accountability, and influence advocacy was a large

category for all SE groups regardless of the stage of development. Since one of the key

components that define social entrepreneurship is the ability to create useful partnerships and

bring diverse actors together to tackle the problem (Bornstein, 2010), it makes sense that

maintaining these relationships would be a key focus of SE organization communications. SE2

used a short form documentary video to recruit learning fellows for a new social entrepreneurial

endeavor:
 48

We launched a little thing called the mill which was a marketing innovation lab and I

recruited a number of fellows. We got graduate students and post graduates from around

the world to come …and that video was the primary recruiting tool. If I sent that out over

my networks, we got hundreds of applications of people wanting to come…So it ended

up being quite useful in the end. (SE2 Founder, personal communication, August 28,

2015)

SE5, which has been in operation for more than twelve years, routinely used its documentary

promotional video to recruit college students for long-term volunteer partnerships and as a show

piece for anniversary galas to demonstrate successes and growth opportunities. SE4 used short

form documentary to recruit corporate partners for both fundraising and advocacy:

We've got a big corporate partnership push going on in India, so I've been working on a

promotional video for them. They'll show the three minute video to, you know, the auto

manufacturer with the idea that they will then partner with us to bring eyeglasses to other

people. (SE4 Senior Development Officer, personal communication, August 21,2015)

SE3 saw documentary film as the key to engaging stakeholders who act as gatekeepers and

powerbrokers around the social issues of their organization, “We want them to buy into the

concept of empathizing with people first and then deliberating over dogma and politics etc…

second”(SE3 Filmmaker/Founder, personal communication, July 24,2015). SE1 also viewed

their full-length documentary film as a way to invite political and government partners to “rise

up” and “get on board” as potential partners. In the Peery Film Fellow course, the filmmakers

were told that they must find ways “to enact more advocacy through media”(Peery Film Fellows

Class, 2011).
 49

Soliciting Funding. Fundraising, whether through investor capital or donations, was

another cross-stage use of documentary film for SE organizations. In some cases, the fundraising

use could be described as direct and the solicitation aim of the documentary was an overt

element in the content of the piece. For example, SE3 used a documentary film with a direct ask

for donations at the end as part of a Kickstarter fundraising campaign. SE4 noted that they were

looking for the best ways to use documentary film in their annual direct online fundraising

appeal. However, many of the organizations’ use of the documentary films as a fundraising tool

was more indirect. SE2 commissioned a documentary film explaining the complex concept of its

newest endeavor as a show piece to aid the founder in his direct ask to investors. The film did not

directly ask for money, but rather aided in the live ask. SE4’s founder, who currently keeps his

involvement in the organization at high-level administrative and big donor fundraising, also

showed documentary films about the organization during his many speaking engagements. As

one of the organization’s main fundraisers, these speaking engagements are often a part of the

fundraising funnel. SE1’s founder and communications professional both indicated that they see

the potential in the film to solicit funding in direct and indirect ways:

The hope is that so many people will see it and agree with what we're doing that we won't

have to worry about fundraising anymore. Wouldn't that be nice. (SE1 Founder, personal

communication, August 1, 2015)

I would love to have it to be able to leverage it with organizations. As we go out and try

to get donations from business, I would love to be able to use it a little more freely than

what we have to this point as part of presentations. (SE1 Communications Professional,

personal communication, August 4, 2015)

 50

We can rent out a movie theater and have people pay for tickets. We have (a theater

owner) who has said that if it's released, they'll show it in all of their theaters in the

intermountain area and give us all the proceeds. (SE1 Communications Professional,

personal communication, August 4, 2015)

Raising awareness among publics. This particular use of documentary was directly

correlated to the mission of that organization and as such didn’t ring true for all organizations in

the study. However, the pattern of use was clearly present in SE organizations that had a stated

mission of raising awareness to an issue or a cause. In fact, among those organizations, the use of

documentary film in all aspects of their communications strategies was more prevalent. SE3’s

founder stated their mission is “to do whatever it takes to enable people to answer the question

"what is it like to be me" and to enable other people to receive that story”(SE3

Founder/Filmmaker, personal communication, July 24,2015). Its use of documentary film as the

main tool to meet this mission was informed by its founder’s inherent belief, as both a social

entrepreneur and filmmaker, in the power of film. He said, “…my sense, my instinct says, that's

the most powerful art form and the most powerful tool available to us to accomplish the ultimate

goal of getting people to empathize” (SE3 Founder/Filmmaker, personal communication, July

24, 2015).

SE1 also stated its vision and mission in broad terms – to rescue and rehabilitate child sex

slaves and ultimately to eradicate child sex slavery all together. They viewed consumer-facing

awareness as a key to this mission and saw the documentary film and subsequent television show

about their organization as a key to this awareness among broad swatches of publics who

otherwise might not want to know or have access to information about the problem. SE1’s
 51

founder likened the power of documentary film to the work of author Harriet Beecher Stowe

who brought awareness to the true problem of slavery in the 1800’s. He said:

What I'm seeing is the same exact parallel, the same exact problem today where we've all

heard of human trafficking, we've all heard of modern slavery but it's so easy to turn a

blind eye to it because we don't see it. It's not in our face. It's easy to dismiss it. It's

something that happens far, far away. It has nothing to do with me… We can create a

movement and an awareness while it's happening and people can see it and rise up and

deal with it. So that really is the motive and purpose I guess behind this documentary.

(SE1 Founder, personal communication, August 1, 2015)

Beyond these three key uses, there were several mission-driven uses of documentary film

that were expressed in the course of the study that might represent an unintended benefit. SE1’s

film was developed for issue awareness, but because it captured real footage of child slave rescue

missions, that footage has been used as evidence in court hearings and other legal proceedings.

SE3’s films were created in service to their mission to bring awareness and empathy to the plight

of those caught in the middle of divisive conversations, but the first-person stories in those films

have also been used by the film subjects to aid in therapeutic situations.

Perhaps most interestingly, if mission was a driving force in the ways the films were

utilized in communications strategies, it also affected the ways in which film was absent. Several

SE organizations reported that their mission did not directly call for a more robust use of

documentary film in their communications or that the mission was creating competing priorities.

SE4 noted that their minimal use of documentary was not a matter of money:
 52

I think more than anything for (SE4) it's about priority. I think if we wanted to do a big

documentary film of the work that we've done of the issue of all of that, we could

probably find the resources. I think it would be possible. I think it's more about the

priorities within SE4 to do something like that. It’s not really our priority to get these out

too broadly. I think for now, I'm just happy with what we're getting. So and again, our

focus really is on the fundraising and there are only so many places you can use them

(documentary film) for fundraising purposes. (SE4 Senior Development Officer, personal

communication, August 21, 2015)

For SE2, the dearth of use was more about being careful of the information they give the public

while in the beginning stages of its experimental (and investor funded) development. SE2’s

founder noted that they were staying quiet on purpose:

We're really not telling our story at all right now… But I think once it has been a few

years or so, we might say ‘Hey, this is working and we're profitable and we have several

businesses and I can see the impact on employees and society.’ and I think we'll start

telling our story and these microdocumentaries will be a great way to start putting that

together. For now, I don't know that we have a story to tell…and I'm probably more

careful up front, because…I didn't want to get distracted with telling stories. I just wanted

a pure focus on business and have that little bit of the impetus of my investors to force me

to be prudent in all things related to business. (SE2 Founder, personal communication,

August 28, 2015)

 53

Distribution

The way an organization chose to distribute its documentary film was directly related to

the intended use of the film and the form of the film. There was no apparent correlation between

distribution and the stage of SE organizational development.

Theatrical Release. Documentaries intended to raise awareness and promote advocacy

that were also long form or feature-length were using theatrical release strategies to distribute the

film. That did not preclude those films from also being used in smaller, more intimate settings

for fundraising, donor relations, and film festivals. One of the two filmmakers whose films fit

this description noted that they hoped their film would be purchased by a major studio and

distributed widely through their channels.

Social Media. Four of the five SE organizations specifically discussed their use of social

media channels to distribute their documentary films. SE3 noted that the social media

distribution plan that was part of the original communications strategy helped shape the form and

content of the videos they used in their awareness campaign. The Peery Film Fellows course

talked about the technology and form necessary to create a video specifically for social media.

SE4 planned to distribute sixty-second customer vignettes on social media as part of their annual

funding appeal but discussed the fact that they didn’t have a distinct communications strategy

related to distribution. While SE1 used clips of their feature length video on social media, they

didn’t currently have plans to distribute it there.

Website. A cursory glance at the websites of the different SE organizations in this study

showed that only three out of the five have short-form documentaries on their websites at the
 54

time of writing. However, four of the five mentioned the need and intention to distribute video

on their websites as part of their communications strategy.

Additional Distribution Channels. In accordance with the varying types and uses of

documentary film, SE organizations reported distribution in several other ways. SE5 sent visual

media through mass email blasts to volunteers and other stakeholders. Both SE4 and SE5 noted

that many of their partners link to the SE videos from their various website, thereby creating a

secondary channel of distribution. The filmmakers from SE1, SE2, and SE3 all mentioned film

festivals as a potential distribution channel.

Barriers to Use

Beyond limitations of mission scope and purpose, the study found several additional

natural barriers to the use of documentary film for all SE organizations. The most overarching of

those barriers reported was simply categorized as time. However, the construct of time required a

more nuanced breakdown into several sub-categories.

First, documentary filmmaking is a slow and deliberate process that sometimes isn’t fast

enough to capture the zeitgeist of the moment. The issues are timely, the SE needs are timely,

and it can take months of work to gain access to the right people, the right places, and the

funding that it takes to make something valuable in the moment that requires it. This can mean

wasted money and resources as it did in the case of SE2’s investor recruitment video: “We got

funded before the video was finished. We didn't need it. We still sent it out, but by the time we

got it out there we were done at the bank” (SE2 Founder, personal communication, August 28,

2015). Or, as SE3’s Founder noted, time delays can affect the spirit of the whole operation.
 55

Navigating the tension between the need to be culturally relevant and of the moment and

yet do a lot of stuff to get it done in the moment can be frankly demoralizing sometimes.

I can't put together this thing in time to be culturally relevant. (SE3 Founder/Filmmaker,

personal communication, July 24, 2015)

Time constraints also manifested as a barrier in relationship to the human resources of SE

organizations. This lack of human resources bandwidth was characterized by SE4’s Senior

Development Officer in the following quote:

Every once in a while we get approached by somebody who's interested in doing

something like that, but I think up until now, the problem with something like that is that

even though its somebody coming in and they say that they'll do all the work, it takes a

lot of time and resources from our team and we just don't have the that bandwidth right

now. It would also be the question of "what are we going to use this for? What is the

benefit?" (SE4 Senior Development Officer, personal communication, August 21, 2015)

The perceived amount of time that it takes to work with a filmmaker, even if independent of the

organization, was corroborated by these instructions given to student filmmakers in the Peery

Film Fellows course: “Condense what you are doing. You should only take two hours of their

(SE) time. Set up a predetermined time plan for a busy communications person” (Peery Film

Fellows Class, 2011).

Another significant barrier to using documentary film was COST. Every subject in the

study, including filmmakers and the Peery Film Fellows course, made reference to the expense

of visual media, even if that expense was not perceived as a direct barrier to use. Most of the SE

organizations discussed the lack of funding as a barrier. SE5’s Communications Director noted
 56

that they were on a tight budget and when given money to make a documentary film, she was

charged with trying not to use the whole amount on the film. SE1’s Founder acknowledged that

without independent outside funding, they would not have been able to make a film like the one

they currently have:

I mean, look, if we had to spend our own money, we'd be out of business. They have

thirteen episodes. Thirteen full episodes. That's millions of dollars. That was a private

investor who came in with that to make that happen and it has happened…If I didn't have

them come in and I had to use our own budget, what we would produce would not be that

good. It would be really low-budget and we'd have very little ability to market it. (SE1

Founder, personal communication, August 1, 2015)

SE3’s Founder acknowledges that even if you make the film in-house and are a skilled

filmmaker yourself, there are outsourced skills that require money:

Technology takes money. Other people's skillset that you want to bring to bear, that costs

money… Whether it's animation of some of the music …I'm not a composer so I had to

pay money to a composer to get the music. Had to pay money to get additional editing

assistance. We can edit in general and tell the stories we basically want to tell but it's an

entirely specific skillset to be a great editor - to really get the cuts down to the perfect

pace. (SE3 Founder/Filmmaker, personal communication, July 24, 2015)

There were some outliers to this discussion of cost as a barrier. For example, as noted

previously, SE4 did not see cost as a barrier to creating and using even a feature-length film as

long as their mission and priorities would allow for it. Though she was confident they could find

the funding for such an endeavor, she did say that it would take time to find that funding,
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effectively creating another barrier. And while most SE organizations discussed the impact of

cost on their budgets, the SE2 filmmaker pointed out several times that newer technology was

actually making documentary filmmaking a more affordable option. In fact, he cited this cheaper

new technology as a central feature of their current agency business model:

Our founders, when they got started, they saw that a lot of non-profits or do-good

companies or companies with a social aspect, they didn't have any media or they had

really poorly made media….with the digital filmmaking coming with cheaper cameras,

cheaper editing software, it made it more accessible. The democratization of media.

Suddenly all these high end tools where they could get really good quality stuff was

available to people. Let’s find a way to make high quality products for these companies

that are less expensive. (SE2 Filmmaker, personal communication, July 15, 2015)

For the social entrepreneurial organization, there are as many uses for documentary film

as there are constraints and barriers. Whether these are unique to SE organizations is not born out

by this question or these results and is something that requires further research and discussion.

RQ2: How do SE organizations differ in their communication needs from traditional models of

business and NGOs?

The data collected in this study did not offer the correct type of information to answer

this question fully. In a review of the study design, it became clear that the exclusion of

traditional NGO respondents to the study made it impossible to compare and contrast the two

needs. However, the survey of SE organizations did yield valuable data about communications
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strategies within this group which allowed for some possible conclusions about the current

landscape in which these organizations are working.

First, there was a clear line between older, more established SE organizations and the

younger, more recently developed SE organizations in terms of their communications strategies.

The older SE organizations, represented by SE4 and SE5, admittedly lacked a formal

communications strategy. In fact, when asked about the strategy, SE4 responded:

I don't know if we really have any. It's something that I've been pushing since I've been

there…we don't have to do a lot of public-facing communications for fundraising

purposes. And the decision was made about a year ago that we weren't in the position to

do any type of advocacy work or anything like that and use communications for those

purposes. I'm thinking that might change in the next year, but I don't know. It's a tough

one when you have so many competing priorities in an organization and your

communications isn't linked directly to your ability to fundraise. It's hard to make

communications a priority. (SE4 Senior Development Officer, personal communication,

August 21, 2015)

At the time of this interview, SE4 was moving away from a cost-covering model of social

enterprise to one that focused more simply on the lowest possible subsidy to get their much

needed product to the customer. SE4’s Senior Development Officer believed this move was more

mission-driven. It also moved their organization a little closer to a traditional NGO model. While

communications was a lower priority for the SE4 organization because their model did not call

for it, SE5 was in a different position. The organization had just created the Director of

Communications position more than eleven years in to their operations after what the subject
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called the “positive pressure” on the CEO for a shift of goal and mission. Though SE5’s

communications “department” of one was new, the language in the interview indicated that a

communications strategy was forthcoming. SE5’s Communications Director spoke of branding,

crowd-sourcing for media, and strategically planning to communicate to several key audiences in

their website redesign – all traditional marketing-driven strategies. She also noted that although

she didn’t feel like she knew how to use the documentary film they have or distribute it more

effectively, she knew that there could be a better way. She repeatedly asked the author to share

the information from the study so she could learn more. What was similar about these two

organizations was that both were going through a transition of priorities at a modular level at the

time of the interviews, but their transitions created very different communications needs for each

based on the model that they were either going toward or away from.

The lack of a clear communications strategy or at least the perception that SE

organizations don’t generally have one was held up by a note about practical use of the

documentary film given to student filmmakers in the Peery Film Fellow course: “They (the SE

organization) might not know how they are going to use things. They are not used to thinking

about these things. Ask them these questions: Where will people use it? What audience are you

targeting?” (Peery Film Fellows Class, 2011).

In contrast, the newer SE organizations (SE1, SE2 & SE3) had a better grasp on their

communications plans, strategies, and tactics especially with regard to the films that they were

using in that strategy. All three discussed the important role that media relations and public

relations played in their ability to serve their mission. Even if the communications strategy was

in nascent stages of development, it was a high priority.

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One similarity that the author observed anecdotally about the newer SE organization was

their inability to articulate basic information about their mission and brands in a succinct manner.

In some cases, the interviewee made it clear that these elemental pieces of information were still

being developed. For example, SE1’s Chief Operating Officer discussed the current reworking of

their brand identity:

We're doing a lot of refining of that strategy right now trying to figure out what are our

key messages. What's our brand? How do we communicate with all the different

stakeholders that are out there? I think it's tremendous what we've been able to do before

I arrived in terms of getting the word out. Now we're trying to fine tune that. Who are we

and who do we want to be. And how do we get that to resonate with different groups of

people. (SE1 Chief Operations Officer, personal communication, August 4, 2015)

In other cases, it seemed that the SE organization was unaware of the discrepancy. SE3’s

founder repeated the mission of his organization four times during the interview in four different

iterations as though working on the verbiage during the course of the conversation. The

filmmaker for SE2 suggested that this lack of brand direction is reality for many SE groups as

well as NGOs and represents a need that is generally unmet in the social entrepreneurial world:

One thing I wanted to say really quick (sic) is that a lot of the problem with these

nonprofits a lot of the time is, you show up to a nonprofit and they themselves are still

discovering their own story. One of the reasons we’re not just filmmakers and one of the

reasons we are a full service creative agency is because we wanted to make sure that they

understood their story and their brand and why they hope to tell their story, so that when
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they make that video, their impact can be as big as it could be. (SE2 Filmmaker, personal

communication, July 15, 2015)

SE2 Filmmakers also suggest that creating and refining this brand identity is an important step

for social change-makers in the competitive world of fundraising and venture capital:

Ultimately people come to us because they want to distance themselves...the nonprofit

and the social entrepreneur world they're still trying to distance themselves from

competitors, set themselves apart, because you’re essentially asking for money

sometimes without a product. (SE2 Filmmaker, personal communication, July 15, 2015)

One similarity across the board for all SE organizations (and their filmmaking

counterparts) was the reliance on the “founder’s story” as part of the communications messaging

and strategy. For SE1, this story is a key to their emerging brand identity. They incorporate the

founder’s face prominently on the main page of their website, film posters, and magazine articles

and he is the main protagonist of their feature film. All three subjects that were interviewed from

SE1 acknowledged the importance of that story to differentiate them from other human-

trafficking organizations and meet their mission. For his part, SE1’s founder is conflicted about

this focus on his story as a communications strategy:

I think people can relate to my story. It's exhausting for me. I've been talking to my

media people and asking them to take my picture off the website and let's make this more

about SE1 than about me because it really is exhausting to me. There's this expectation

that I fear I'll never live up to…And then there's pressure. I've really struggled with that

and I've kind of been fighting with my media and PR people because they say we can't

take your picture off. We can't take your story off. …yet. Maybe someday, but for now
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people relate to you… I was just like everyone else before I knew what was happening. I

felt like vomiting too and here's the rest of the story and the why I created it and the

confidence people can have in me because I've been working in this field. So I get it. I

get that my story needs to be out there, but there's a lot of pressure. (SE1 Founder,

personal communication, August 1, 2015)

SE4’s Senior Development Officer has a background in traditional NGO and noted that, “with

the social enterprise sector in general, with our donors, our funders and kind of our general

public within the social enterprise space, the focus is really on the social entrepreneur” (personal

communication, August 21, 2015). She also said that while the age of the organization makes

that founder’s story a little less important in the day-to-day work of SE4, they “do still very

much leverage him and his involvement and his history with the organization in any of our

conversations with donors and things like that” (SE4 Senior Development Officer, personal

communication, August 21, 2015).

In the case of SE2, their current public relations strategy to “fly under the radar” and

refrain from storytelling is as much about the power of the founder’s story to create a brand

identity as anything.

Someday, if it's successful, I want to start telling our story again. But I don't want to tell

the story on a theory right now. We don't know if we're going to be successful or if we

fail, then I can tell the story too about how we failed. I'll be comfortable with that. (SE2

Founder, personal communication, August 28, 2015)

It is an acknowledgement that if he actively told their story now, it could create a perception

before they are, as an organization, ready to manage that perception. The Peery Film Fellow
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course also spoke to this general sense that the founder’s story has the power to define the

organizational brand identity. The student filmmakers were given the charge that they must get

founder footage because “they (SE) communicate a unique energy about the organization”

(Peery Film Fellows Class, 2011).

While it wasn’t clear from the research if NGOs and social entrepreneurial organizations

differ in their communications needs, we can see that there are some patterns of communications

needs that seem to exist within the SE culture.

RQ3: How does the practical communications culture of SE organizations interact with the

intent, content and effects of documentary?

In answering this research question, it first becomes necessary to define the practical

communications culture of SE organizations. The results of this study suggest that the practical

communications culture of the social entrepreneur organizations is influenced by the character of

the social entrepreneur, the social innovation model of the organization, the mission and goals of

the organization and finally, the role that filmmakers play within the organization. Based on the

constant comparative analysis of the research data, it became clear that the two influencers of the

practical culture that seem to interact with documentary film most deeply are SE character and

the role of the filmmaker. The next part of this paper will look at each cultural influencer

separately and show the ways that documentary film finds itself integrated in intent, content, and

effect.
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SE Character & Documentary

Social Entrepreneurs have several unique characteristics that make them different from

other creative problem solvers (Bornstein, 2010). Within the scope of this study, the author has

identified seven of these characteristics that were true of at least four organizations concurrently

and impacted the communications strategies present in these organizations’ documentary films.

Social Entrepreneurs rely heavily on research and active listening to accomplish their

goals. During the author’s observation of the TEDxBYU event, she wrote that, “social

entrepreneurs are excellent qualitative researchers who activate their knowledge”. SE3’s founder

demonstrated how this characteristic affected the practical culture of his organization:

So I began researching and researching and researching and that, still to this day, will

always be what is at the core of SE3 - if we're trying to get people to respond with

empathy as their first reaction, we need to continue to investigate and understand what

the heck is this thing. (SE3 Founder/Filmmaker, personal communication, July 24, 2015)

SE2’s founder also spoke about the way that research influenced his life and social

entrepreneurial endeavors.

I guess I could break my life into pieces and the piece at the university was coming up

with this theory and writing about it. In the field out there doing case studies, research,

longitudinal studies, one-off studies. Building a foundation and then consulting was

testing it. And so I felt like throughout those next 5 years I tested out a theory and a

process. (SE2 Founder, personal communication, August 28, 2015)

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This characteristic of SE2’s founder was also present in the filmmakers that he trusted to tell his

story and the story of his organization:

They came and sat down for maybe two hours in my office and just asked me a bunch of

questions and then two weeks later, they said, we've reserved these two to three hours and

we want to come film you. I think that they just took a bunch of the questions they asked

and learned about me and my background and the organization…they really took that

interview and put together the piece and I just showed up. (SE2 Founder, personal

communication, August 28, 2015)

For his part, SE2’s filmmaker noted that without research and a deeper understanding of the

organization and its mission, it would have been impossible to tell the “right” story that could

help affect impact.

We're not interested in telling our version of our client’s story so we go in and we ask a

lot of questions and try our best to just listen and then usually what happens is that we'll

break off and really think about those things and then come back to them and say this is

what we think…We bring our thoughts together, we kind of make a decision on this is

what we want to say, this is how we want to say it, and then we move forward. (SE2

Filmmaker, personal communication, July 15, 2015)

SE2’s founder believed that this focus on research and active listening had an effect on the

quality of the content that the filmmakers produce.

It comes down to the filmmaker being able to understand the organization and the

message you really want to share and be able to tell it almost in a better way than you

could tell it yourself. I kind of felt like they were able to accomplish that. I've worked
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with other groups who say, we want to do this or do that. And the videos are not that

great. Nothing that we've ever really used. There's a lot of garbage out there. I think the

fact that it was what I felt was a quality piece that I was comfortable with and confident

in sharing, I think it had a larger impact. I give a lot of that credit to the SE2 Filmmakers.

(SE2 Founder, personal communication, August 28, 2015)

When discussing his role as a filmmaker, SE3’s founder said that his research skills and active

listening were keys to developing the trusting relationships that provided him with access to

subjects who would be authentic on camera. Specifically, this special access made it possible for

SE3 to quickly and effectively distribute media that was timely and impactful.

Having access to the subjects made it possible. I might have had the idea, wouldn't it be

good if we told a story like this, but if I don't have access to the real people to tell their

stories, that can take years to cultivate access and relationships to them to get them to the

point where they'll trust me enough to tell their story. (SE3 Founder/Filmmaker, personal

communication, July 24, 2015)

Social entrepreneurs are fusion experts. They can bring people and ideas from several

different fields of inquiry to bear on the problem at hand. SE1 provided a model example of this

characteristic. The organization is characterized by its multi-disciplinary approach to attacking

the problem of child sex slavery. Their founder brings his knowledge of history, government,

and military operations to the table and finds other people, such as his Chief Operating Officer,

to fill in the gaps. He is able to attract attention and funding easily because he is charismatic, but

even more than that, he knows how to work across disciplines to see the bigger picture. The SE1
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vision to eradicate child slavery globally requires a vantage point much bigger than the world

view of one person adept at one thing.

From the perspective of the Peery Film Fellows course, ability to network and collaborate

was the number one factor in determining a successful entrepreneur. They also discussed that the

unique heterogeneity of SE organizations, which are a “conglomeration of nonprofit, private, and

public values”, may require an equally unique perspective on communications strategy.

Additionally, this characteristic of SE’s prompted one course professor to say that SE founders

are not used to “thinking about these things” implying that SE’s generally gather experts in their

sphere to help with communications strategy (Peery, 2011). This was certainly true of SE1’s

founder. While comfortable explaining the mission and goals of the organization and able to give

a broad stroke description of communications strategy, he deferred any deeper strategic

conversation to his Chief Operating Officer.

The role of SE’s as bridge-builders between disciplines and organizations directly

affected the way they connected to and participated with their filmmakers. When the mission and

goals of the organization called for it, the SE founder directly interacted with the filmmaker in

guiding the content of the films being made for and about them. SE1, SE2, and SE3 each had a

personal relationship with the filmmakers who were working for their organizations (or in the

case of SE3, they were one and the same). Each of these organizations had a mission that

required active and wide communication about their cause or product. The founder’s character as

a gatherer of talented and skilled people to help her meet her mission did not preclude

filmmakers.
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Additionally, SE2’s filmmaker suggested that good filmmakers able to impact the

effectiveness of a media piece must also be fusion experts in their own right.

Every person that we hire is not just an artist. Everyone is equal parts journalist, activist,

and artist. Because if you're not passionate about how you go about trying to tell these

stories, it's going to be easy to want to approach it the same way you did five years ago,

looking for manipulation and not sincere connection. (SE2 Filmmaker, personal

communication, July 15, 2015)

Social entrepreneurs are results oriented but willing and able to learn from mistakes.

SE5 points out that up until one year ago, their founder was only really focused on growing SE5.

However, now she was reflexively looking at how to reach key audiences and creating a new

model. SE2’s founder did not mince words about his drive to see results and measure success. He

spoke about his reluctance to spend time on public relations or communications right now

because he “just wanted a pure focus on business and have that little bit of the impetus of my

investors to force me to be prudent in all things related to business” (SE2 Founder, personal

communication, August 28, 2015). SE1’s founder says that while their detractors were set on

pointing out the weaknesses in their model and operations, SE1’s impact spoke for itself. That

focus on results is what set them apart from other organizations focusing on similar social

problems.

There are a lot of trafficking organizations that… are building a flag of awareness which

is great, but the flag of awareness is generally just sadness and darkness. Whereas, we

are very solution based and we're not vague about that part. Like, so many people are

kind of vague about what the solution is going to be, whereas our main product is
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extraction of kids who are enslaved. And when they see that that's what we're doing and

that's what we promise we do and what we do, it makes it all the more compelling and

people want to get on board. (SE1 Founder, personal communication, August 1, 2015)

SE1’s founder also said that it’s “good to be humble” in the face of detractors. This humility is

connected to a willingness to learn that was echoed by SE2’s founder. He was quick to point out

that whether they fail or succeed, he will be comfortable telling that story and learning from it.

In relationship to documentary film, this particular characteristic of being intent on

impact but ultimately more interested in learning often interacts with content. For SE1, this focus

on impact and results was present in the way that they built the documentary film overall so that

it was not a “name and shame” film. For SE1’s founder, it was important that they present the

film as a roadmap to hopeful solutions:

This is positive. This is a solution. We're not here to be one more group that's just

waving the flag of misery. Saying, "look how horrible everything is." The whole point of

this is that you can walk out of that movie feeling like there is hope. And they totally did

that. It ends with, "yeah this is really hard, this is a big mountain to climb, but people are

climbing it. It's actually doable. Kids can be saved." I think that's a message especially in

this world that gets lost a lot. (SE1 Founder, personal communication, August 28, 2015)

Additionally, the filmmakers of SE1 told of the organization’s first failed mission and

how that shaped the tenor and content of their film from something that was admittedly

“testosterone-driven” and focused on “getting the bad guys” to something that focused more

entirely on the victims.

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It's funny because very little of it when we first started was about the victims. The series

had a very sort of macho training and gun and all sorts of silly stuff. And then after that

first op(eration) failed, everybody kind of shifted and it did become more about these

little girls that were back on the streets. We had ‘em. They were in a van one hundred

yards away. They were really close to our location and we had to just let them go. That

was the first op and it really imprinted on everybody the importance that it's not about

"let's go and get these guys", it's about the victims. It's really about the victims. At that

point, everything shifted and from that point on for both the SE org and our film team,

the focus was always about the victims. (SE1 Filmmaker, personal communication,

August 7, 2015)

They continued on to explain that this shift is what ultimately made the film effective as a

communications and public relations tool. It gave them access to an audience that they believed

is “actually going to stand up and shout and stand up and do something” (SE1 Filmmaker,

personal communication, August 7, 2015).

SE3’s founder talked about experiencing what he called a “narrative of failure” in which

the intention of the film and its actual effect were completely at odds. This drove them to create a

system of constant evaluation and make some changes to the way they created and distributed

their media.

So we thought, were there things that we could have done differently or better that would

have made it much harder to weaponize? And we've done that a lot and we now have

pretty well built instincts. We can see the narrative – “so and so will weaponize it this

way.” So now we think, how can we preemptively shift it on this end before it's done so
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that it doesn't go there. (SE3 Founder/Filmmaker, personal communication, July 24,

2015)

The Peery Film Fellows course perhaps summed this up when they said to student filmmakers,

“Detours are part of the journey. Listen to your mistakes” (Peery Film Fellows Course, 2011).

Social entrepreneurs are restless and constantly innovating around their ideas. In the

Peery Film Fellows course (2011), students were told that a large part of SE’s inability to focus

on communications and public relations is the fact that they are “too busy innovating”. This

perception was corroborated in this study by SE4’s founder who had taken a step back from his

work with the parent organization to focus on a new endeavor that will collaborate with several

other key partners to do more advocacy work for eye care in developing countries. The evolution

of SE2’s founder from student to researcher to consultant to business owner also speaks to this

characteristic. SE2’s founder was also in the process of starting a second economically-

sustainable company while still in the throes of getting his first endeavor off the ground. The

sheer number and breadth of projects under the umbrella of SE3’s model was also a testament to

the founder’s commitment to constant media innovation.

With regard to film and use, this constant innovation and restlessness can create a barrier

to using film for the social entrepreneur. It’s hard to document what they can’t explain or what is

still in process of becoming. SE2’s founder put it this way:

It was during that time period when those terms were being created and started being

used. We weren't really telling our story to anybody. We were just out there in a sense

kind of learning and doing as we were going. (SE2 Founder, personal communication,

August 28, 2015)

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Social entrepreneurs are comfortable with uncertainty and take calculated risks. First,

the Peery Film Fellows students were taught to make themselves as flexible as possible to meet

the demands of their clients: “In these organizations, things change from week to week:

geography, location, people to interview. They are used to flexibility so you must be

flexible”(Peery Film Fellows Course, 2011). SE2’s founder said, “We don't know if we're going

to be successful or if we’ll fail, then I can tell the story too about how we failed. I'll be

comfortable with that” (SE2 Founder, personal communication, August 28, 2015). He also talked

about the risks he has taken by noting that it might have been easier for his organization if they

had just gone the safer route and taken grants and donations rather than investor capital to test

out the idea. However, he ended the discussion with, “so, we’ll see.” SE1’s founder spoke

candidly about the lack of ability to always know missions were fully successful because of

circumstances outside the organization’s control.

Unfortunately, we don't always know because the governments won't always tell us. We

hand the kids over, we have a good partner, a rehab partner that we always put in place,

but then there are laws in some countries that say, "Ok, thank you. You can't access these

kids anymore”. (SE1 Founder, personal communication, August 1, 2015)

They work hard to mitigate this uncertainty where possible, but it doesn’t stop them from

continuing their work: “We still get reports and we hope they're telling us the truth and we

continue to give resources to our rehab partners. And we think they're telling us the truth” (SE1

Founder, personal communication, August 1, 2015).

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For the filmmakers associated with social entrepreneurs, this flexibility and general

comfort in uncertainty as well as the propensity toward calculated risk-taking coincides with the

content and intent of documentary film on many levels.

For the filmmakers of SE1, the uncertainty of documentary film and the uncertainty of

SE1’s organizational mission affected the content in several ways. Because of the nature of the

SE1 jump missions, there was ever only one opportunity to get the shot. This meant that they

needed to incorporate several cameras in every situation which gave them a lot of footage to

work with in the editing process. Even with the extra footage, there were simply pieces of the

story missing when they got to the editing process.

We keep copious journals about every moment that happens and they're awesome. And

ninety percent of it isn't in the film because we just don't have it. We don't have cameras

in those quiet little moments during prayers or dinners or they happen to take place with a

person that we couldn't film... Because they're real cameras, I can only cut and tell the

story of what I have and what footage I have (emphasis added). You're editing and

thinking there are all these great things that happened that aren't in the film. (SE1

filmmaker, personal communication, August 7, 2015)

Ultimately, this uncertainty also affected the intent of the film in unexpected ways. Though it

was unclear to the Chief Operating Officer if it was intended from the beginning of the film

project or the organization, the role of the film in the organizational model became integral when

they realized it could be used as both evidence in legal proceedings and an awareness tool.

For this model to be successful, we needed the film to not only just make the stakeholders

aware but to also use the film to help solve the case...provide evidence to the prosecutors
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to put the bad guys away, so it served dual purposes there. (SE1 Chief Operating Officer,

personal communication, August 4, 2015)

Social entrepreneurs believe that they can influence large-scale transformational change.

SE3’s founder self-identified as a filmmaker second and a “World Changer… the altruist…the

rookie altruist” first and foremost. He talked about the genesis of one project in broad, sweeping

terms: “The very first kernel of that project began with ‘hey, let’s tell the world what it’s like to

be us’. It fits so well into the SE3’s mission” (SE3 Founder/Filmmaker, personal communication,

July 24, 2015). His focus on the “world” illustrated the general belief that SE’s have in the power

and scope of their ideas. The Peery Film Fellows course pointed out to students that SE’s are

innovators who are interested in solving the world’s intractable problems at a societal level. The

words ‘scalable’, ‘systemic’, and ‘replicable’ were used several times to describe the ideal SE

model. SE1’s founder describes their efforts as “force multipliers” for people who are like he

once was: overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem and feeling limited by resources. SE1’s

larger mission to eradicate child slavery speaks to their belief in their ability to affect systemic,

large-scale social problems. SE4’s work to provide “affordable access to eyewear everywhere”

again speaks boldly about large-scale potential and goals.

For those social entrepreneur groups that were currently using documentary film

regularly in their communications strategies, the intended effect of their media was directly

associated with their desire and mission to play a role on the world stage. SE3’s

founder/filmmaker told the story of his first cognitive childhood interaction with film and his

subsequent understanding of its potential to create an effect on people:

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Wow. This is power. I literally remember feeling...that's a lot of power and I want that

power. Really, ever since then I grew up and I said I want to work in media some way

somehow telling stories in a way that does what it did to me. (SE3 Founder/Filmmaker,

personal communication, July 24, 2015)

When SE2’s founder was first approached about using documentary film to further his

mission, he admitted that he was, “just kind of doing it to do it. Not necessarily expecting much

out of it. I guess you could say that I had low expectations” (SE2 Founder, personal

communication, August 28, 2015). The shift in his perspective regarding the power of

documentary to meet the wider scope and intended impact of his organization was reflected in

his description of a new project with the SE2 filmmakers:

There's a lot of tension here in Kenya right now with Al Shabaab (a militant religious

group) and it has created a really big divide between the Muslim and Christian worlds

and just people living on the streets and all these different tribes. There are thousands of

tribes and people who are disenfranchised and it’s not a very cohesive country in that

sense. It's really divided. So we want to have this video of someone running through all

cultures and facets of Kenyan life - kind of like pulling Kenya together but also being the

branding for our water (SE2 Founder, personal communication, August 28, 2015)

His belief that documentary can act as both a branding tool and a large-scale bridge building tool

for a divided society was eerily similar to the dual nature of social enterprise itself.

For SE1’s leadership, documentary film offered a way to meet their global mission and

scope, but only if the content was carefully shepherded by the founder. SE1’s founder talked

about the need for governments in other countries to get involved and “rise up” like he did. He
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was insistent with the filmmakers that the film frame his organization’s efforts a specific way to

facilitate that effect:

We were going to show the efforts that other governments are making, to focus attention

on them more than us. That's a hard thing to do because we're the protagonists of the

show. But to show them that we are working under them - I demanded to show that. And

they did that in the documentary. They made sure that there was a scene, at least one

scene where, I make it very clear that this is their operation and we're just helping them.

The idea behind that was to show and empower other governments to say, “look, these

guys didn't do it. They're just facilitators. We can do this.” (SE1 Founder, personal

communication, August 1, 2015)

Social entrepreneurs are trustworthy and have integrity. SE4’s Senior Development

Officer believed that their founder’s story was especially valuable because of the credibility it

brings to the organization’s fundraising efforts:

As a side note, I think SE4’s founder is a special case because he has such a high level of

credibility because he's actually an eye doctor. So he's a practicing eye doctor and has his

own practice in New York and so that brings credibility to the work that we do or his

involvement in the work that we do and his leadership. (SE4 Senior Development

Officer, personal communication, August 21, 2015)

SE1’s founder noted their success with the public is based on the integrity of their organization:

Our main product is extraction of kids who are enslaved. And when they see that that's

what we're doing and that's what we promise we do and what we do, it makes it all the
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more compelling and people want to get on board. (SE1 Founder, personal

communication, August 1, 2015)

For SE3’s founder, his life story is the document of trust for many of the people who connect to

his organization. Because he is someone who identifies as both Mormon and homosexual, he was

uniquely poised to negotiate between divisive ideologies and show others how to do it in new

and different ways. Additionally, he noted the ethical role he plays as a SE to authentically

represent his constituents in film:

it becomes my job as a documentarian and a SE to take whatever time it takes and

whatever work it takes to get to know you, who you are, what your story is what your

context is, everything about you and your situation and your subject so that I can then be

an accurate agent of storytelling and help you tell your story and help others do the work

to empathize with you. (SE3 Founder/Filmmaker, personal communication, July 24,

2015)

Ultimately this integrity offers a framework for his organizational goals as well as the art and

ethics of his film. The intention is authenticity in both.

SE1’s filmmaker said that documentary films, like SE organizations, require a

narrator/guide who is credible and authentic in order for the message to make it to the intended

audience.

And it has to be a smart voice. That voice has to be able to eloquently deliver your

message. If it's not, then everybody looks at you and says, ‘you don't know what you're

talking about.’ At the end of the day we got supremely lucky that the person who guides

us through this narrative happens to look like someone who stepped off the pages of a
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central casting brochure. And he's still so compelling and knowledgeable about the

subject that we can listen to him and know with confidence that what you're watching is

accurate. If we sat down and said we want to do a documentary about child trafficking

and we didn't have SE1’s founder … we'd just be a couple of numbskulls with a camera

wanting to make a difference. (SE1 filmmaker, personal communication, August 7, 2015)

The practical culture of social entrepreneurship and its valuation of integrity and authenticity

make finding a credible voice for persuasive media more possible.

SE1’s filmmakers were also quick to point out that they are normally narrative

filmmakers, but the documentary form offered them a more authentic and more powerful way to

tell the story. If integrity is a key to the social entrepreneurial character, documentary with no

second takes is perceived to be an art form that honors that integrity in its realness. As SE2’s

filmmaker says,

This is real. It's real people doing it. Our goal was to try to teleport the viewer into the

environment in the way we experienced it ourselves. I think the film does that. I don't

know that you could do a more powerful narrative version of this film to be honest with

you. (personal communication, July 15, 2015)

The Role of the Filmmaker in the SE Organization

During analysis, the involvement between the filmmaker and the organization and the

role that the filmmaker played in the organization emerged as consistent categories and were in

the data set to the point of saturation. Most importantly, they interacted with one another

regularly enough that a clear pattern began to emerge. The way that SE founders and institutions

engaged with their filmmakers made a difference in the intent, content, and effect of the
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documentary film that they were making. This involvement can be categorized in three different

ways: collaborative, independent, and interdependent.

Collaborative Involvement

Collaborative involvement between an SE organization and a filmmaker is most easily

characterized by a continuous and indivisible flow between filmmaker and SE. The filmmaker

adopts the SE organization’s mission, storytelling narratives, and certain aspects of its character

in essence becoming an extension of the social entrepreneur and organization. The SE

organization in turn becomes a producer in the film, lending its unique voice, direction, and

resources to the film to influence intent, content, and distribution.

Collaborative involvement is most clearly seen in the relationship between both SE1 and

SE2 and their respective filmmakers.

In both cases, the social entrepreneur and the filmmakers told very similar stories to

illustrate their relationship to the mission and communication goals of their organizations. For

example, SE1’s founder cited Harriet Beecher Stowe and her example of using the mass media

of the day, her book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, to incite the people to action.

So she comes out with this book, it does tremendously well and people can't believe it,

they are outraged, they start listening to the abolitionists. They rise up and they make so

much noise that the government has to act and that action in essence brings us to the civil

war and the end of slavery…And the people rose up, not because of the government, they

rose up because of people like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglas, Harriet

Tubman who started the underground railroad. (SE1 Founder, personal communication,

August 1, 2015)
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SE1’s filmmaker evoked the same story as a way to frame their mission and goals for the film as

entertainment with a cause:

The goal with this documentary is to really have the same effect that entertainment had

on slavery originally. Harriet Beecher Stowe used entertainment to help start a war

essentially. I don't know if she set out to do that in the beginning, but she wrote Uncle

Tom's Cabin and sold over 19 million copies and brought an awareness to the problem in

the North and literally started a war…That's really our goal with the documentary and tv

series... We want it to be entertaining but to really build an awareness and a campaign

behind it. (SE1 Filmmaker, personal communication, August 7, 2015)

SE2’s founder and filmmakers also share a similar narration regarding their affinity for

Coca Cola and Nike’s branding prowess as a model for powerful and effective film. SE2’s

founder said:

This is going to sound odd, but I've always admired Coca Cola… They're one of the

coolest companies - poison aside. They are marketing geniuses, the way they create

feelings and emotions and I just watched a number of their videos and how they told

stories - like share a Coke at these critical moments in time. There's this video that they

show at the Coca Cola museum in Atlanta - where you’re at a wedding or your first kiss -

there are these moments and Coca Cola is always there…and then realizing that there's

this issue in Kenya that is holding the country back that I think we can help address

indirectly and string this together and have that Coke moment (mixed with Nike) …and

the product just happens to be SE2’s product. (SE2 Founder, personal communication,

August 28, 2015)

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When the SE2 filmmakers talked about persuasive and subtle use of branding, they also

mentioned Coca Cola and Nike in very similar terms:

That's Coca Cola. Coca Cola sells happiness, unity. They sell, “if you drink coke you're

gonna feel better, you’re gonna be more likely to smile at someone on the street”. All

these companies, what they're doing is saying, “yes we have a product, and we want you

to take part in this product, but not just because it's our product and it's good but because

we're selling ‘if you do this you can feel this way or you can accomplish this thing”…

The biggest coolest brands are already doing that. Like Nike does that. (SE2 Filmmaker,

personal communication, July 15, 2015)

In articulating the goals and intended effects of their film, SE1 filmmakers used language

that mirrored the mission statements made by SE1’s founder and communications professional.

The filmmakers talked of finding the balance in their content that will cause publics “to stand up

and shout and stand up and do something”. They noted that the solution to the cause is the

creation of a movement (of which their film is an integral part):

It was the people who stood up. Not the government. So the governments are never going

to do anything. It requires the people to stand up. We need to replicate SE1 all over the

world as many times as humanly possible. I hope that it's replicable. I hope that people

out there stand up and say, "You know what? This bothers me as much as it does you and

I'm not just going to go to work every day from now on and not think about it. (SE1

Filmmaker, personal communication, August 7, 2015)

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SE1’s founder articulated the goals similarly, “We can create a movement and an

awareness while it's happening and the people can see it and rise up and deal with it” (SE1

Founder, personal communication, August 1, 2015).

SE2’s filmmakers and founder also mirrored one another in describing the social

enterprise and market-driven model for social impact of SE2. SE2’s founder outlined his model

as follows:

I really think that by focusing on a business that is possible to grow and scale, you'll

have a larger impact socially than by focusing on just social issues per se. The idea is that

I can raise more capital if I'm profitable, I can scale faster. I'll have more employees. Part

of the social impact is having jobs created for individuals. (SE2 Founder, personal

communication, August 28, 2015)

SE2 filmmakers summarized SE2’s principle model and ideology in this way:

We work with SE2’s founder and he goes to a country and I mean, he's a business

guy…He wants to help people, but he's a business guy. So not only does he find out

something that they want that improves their existence but also gives these people this

opportunity to have a business and he doesn't view them as "Oh, I'm lifting them up", it's

like, oh, these are my business partners, how can I make money. (SE2 Filmmaker,

personal communication, July 15, 2015)

Beyond just mirrored storytelling and similar articulation of goals and ideology, some

filmmakers also became an extension of the SE organization in a more practical fashion. SE1’s

filmmakers talked of being embedded in the SE1 organization during the filming of the

documentary. As the filmmaker put it:

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It's important to note that we're not all that separate. You don't know where one

organization stops and the other begins and we kind of like it that way. I don't know if

SE1 likes it, but we like it that way. (SE1 Filmmaker, personal communication, August 7,

2015)

And SE2’s filmmaker stated that the path to a quality film that meets the intended effects

of the organization “requires that (the filmmaker) is involved from step one. Otherwise the

mission, the vision, whatever the hope for the video- it will be either our version of their story or

a complete miss” (SE2 Filmmaker, personal communication, July 15, 2015).

It is important to also note that the business relationship between the filmmaker and the

SE organization seems to be of little import when it comes to collaborative involvement. It

didn’t’ matter if the film was being produced independently of the organization or if it is a work-

for-hire agreement. What distinguished collaborative involvement was its reliance on

connectivity and fusion of the two groups.

For their part, the social entrepreneur and his organization become full partners in the

production work of the film. SE1’s founder has participated in the creation of the documentary

from the beginning, heavily influencing the content:

I was careful about that. I fought really hard to the point that it affected my friendship

with the filmmakers even. But I demanded to have a say in this. The rights are the

filmmakers’ but there are certain things carved out that allow me to have (a say) - and a

lot of that was for the purpose of messaging but also for the purpose of safety, security -

making sure that no one’s face is revealed that shouldn't be revealed and that nothing is

taken out of context. (SE1 Founder, personal communication, August 1, 2015)

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The Peery Film Fellows course instructed student filmmakers to “show the SE footage

as you go. They are a partner. This sets up trust” (Peery Film Fellow Course, 2011). Trust

interacts with collaborative involvement throughout the data. SE2’s founder said that as his

relationship and trust with the filmmakers grew over the years, his involvement as a full partner

in the content and intent of his films increased.

It has changed. It's actually probably changed in a different way than you would think. In

the beginning I just totally handed it over to them... The third one was more like, I want

to tell a story and this is the story I want to tell. You need to help me tell it. So I didn't

want them to create the story. I had the story I wanted to tell. It took a little bit more

collaboration to help them see my vision. I had to be really clear and make sure we were

all on the same page. It's not like it was cumbersome, but it was definitely more involved

and they probably don't like that as much. (SE2 Founder, personal communication,

August 28, 2015)

The flow of a collaborative involvement between SE and filmmaker also has implication in the

distribution channels of the films. For the independent filmmakers creating a film about SE1, this

gave their film the benefit of the organization’s grass roots campaign resources. SE1’s

filmmakers acknowledged the advantage this gives them as they try to get the film and television

series picked up by a major studio or network.

SE1 has been out there building an awareness of themselves and building their own

eyeballs and building thousands if not hundreds of thousands of fans liking and following

them (on social media). The bigger that SE1 gets, the more it will help when the film

comes out. That's a given. That will be a huge benefit (to us) from SE1 in helping the
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film. When you launch a film like this that's smaller, even if you have a studio do it, they

want six to nine months of a grassroots campaign (which SE1 already has). (SE1

Filmmaker, personal communication, August 7, 2015)

Another important benefit to collaborative involvement in the distribution of the film may be the

role that the founder plays as someone who attracts attention and funding. Because they were

“producers” of the film in both content and intent, the founder’s role in distribution became an

asset to the filmmakers.

But (SE1 Founder’s) face and who he is and his participation and standing up and talking

and meeting. He is the face. He's the one out there talking about it. He's the one that

people want to talk to which is totally fine by me. You know we got supremely lucky in

having (SE1’s Founder) as our guide. (SE2 Filmmakers, personal communication,

August 7, 2015)

For SE3, there is no other model possible. Since he is both the SE and the filmmaker, he

is left to grapple with the barriers that such a model presents in a very real way. He noted that the

collaboration between SE and Filmmaker created a unique tension around the need to create

something beautiful that also meets the needs of the organizational mission and messaging.

Having worked in both (film and social endeavors) the thing that always comes to my

mind most about this intersectionality and trying to sort of negotiate relationships

between the filmmakers and the SE is the tension between the need to tell a good story

and the need to get our message out there…we want to promote ourselves as an

organization because we need money and we need support. But then a filmmaker says,

‘but I need to tell a story.’ People don't like to sit through a ninety-minute commercial
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and so getting people to negotiate that space so that both are accomplished is always the

toughest tension in doing that. And ultimately, of course, people like me believe that

you're going to sell your idea best if you wrap people up in a story. (SE3

Founder/Filmmaker, personal communication, July 24, 2015)

The barrier presented by this tension between artful quality and impactful messaging present in

collaborative involvement was corroborated by all of the filmmakers in the study.

One very interesting finding was the interaction between collaborative involvement and

the role of the filmmaker to the social entrepreneur. The data suggested that in a collaborative

involvement, the filmmaker becomes a sort of coach or process expert to the SE organization in

matters of distribution and brand development. The Peery Film Fellows course gave student

filmmakers a great deal of instruction on how to guide the SE in their communications strategy

and brand development. SE2’s filmmaker speaks often about the need for SE organizations to

allow them to help with branding:

A lot of the problem with these (organizations) …you do branding work, you show up

and they themselves are still discovering their own story. One of the reasons we’re not

just filmmakers and one of the reasons we are a full service creative agency is because we

wanted to make sure that they understood their story and their brand and why they hope

to tell their story, so that when they make that video, their impact can be as big as it could

be. (SE2 Filmmaker, personal communication, July 15, 2015)

Independent Involvement

If collaborative involvement is a connected flow between the SE organization and the

filmmaker that intersects with the intent, content, and effectiveness of the film, independent
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involvement is the opposite. It can easily be described as a completely independent entity

making a film about the SE organization with or without the consent or participation of the SE

founder or organization on some level. This level of involvement manifested in several different

ways in this study.

When SE2’s founder started to work with the SE2 filmmakers, his involvement was best

described as independent. He says that the first film was “their concept. As far as the content of it

and direction of it, they really took that interview and put together the piece and I just showed

up. It was just another interview” (SE2 Founder, personal communication, August 28, 2015).

Though he was approached by the filmmakers and agreed to be the film subject, he had nothing

to do with the content or intent of the film. In fact, he was surprised to discover the film’s

usefulness to his business after it was created and handed to him. He described the film this way:

Once it was all done, it was a great storytelling piece. I still randomly do get several

emails a day from people who say, "we saw this video and we heard about you" and it

randomly starts conversations on how we do what we do and how to do business in

emerging markets. I think the initial documentary really helped do a lot of that. (SE2

Founder, personal communication, August 28, 2015)

The barriers and opportunities with independent involvement are vastly different but both

interact with public relations. For SE4, independent involvement with a filmmaker represented a

threat to the control of messaging. SE4’s Senior Development Officer noted the inherent

difficulty in reigning in an uncontrolled film:

I imagine that SE4 and most NGOs would be a little uncomfortable with hiring or even

agreeing for a third party to come in and do a film that could potentially get out there
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without being able to somewhat control the message. Because then we also get into

potentially a situation where we're using all of our resources to respond to a very public

critique as opposed to using our resources… to improve.(SE4 Senior Development

Officer, personal communication, August 21, 2015)

The Chief Operating Officer of SE1 saw the lack of control inherent in independent involvement

as an opportunity rather than a barrier.

I appreciate that it’s a third party. I think it adds some credibility to it. This is a third

party group that's not us, taking the footage. We didn't hire them to do this. We're not

paying them to do this. They're an independent venture and…they were there. They can

provide a first-hand account through their creation, through this product that they're

creating. I think it actually helps. It makes our job easier. And if they don't like it, I can

say that it wasn't us. (SE1 Chief Operating Officer, personal communication, August 4,

2015)

Interdependent Involvement

Perhaps interdependent involvement represents a middle ground between the polar

opposites of collaborative and independent relationships. Interdependent involvement seems to

be characterized by an SE and a filmmaker who work together and need each other to tell the

story and meet the organizational mission, but the filmmaker functions mainly as a support to the

SE without really becoming connected to the mission and the organization enough to bear much

on content or intent.

SE5’s Director of Communications mentioned a sort of interdependent involvement with

their filmmaker. She noted that the videographer was helpful but perhaps SE5 micromanaged the
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process a bit much. They gave him the script to work from and then SE5 found the subjects and

did the interviewing to ensure messaging cohesion. The end product was professional and well

built, but if she could do them over again, she would focus the storytelling more on impact. She

was also not sure where else to use the films or how to distribute them more effectively. Perhaps

the interdependent involvement restricted the role of the filmmaker as a coach regarding

distribution.

Interdependent involvement also characterizes the way that SE4 interacted with its

filmmaker most recently. Although the author was unable to interview the filmmaker to get more

clarity, SE4’s Senior Development Officer said that for their domestic visual media, she is taking

the lead on content creation: “I went with the filmmaker to Bangladesh. I'm the one who did all

the interviews through a translator. I am really controlling the story and hopefully it will come

out well” (SE4 Senior Development Officer, personal communication, August 21, 2015).

Interdependent involvement offers a great amount of control to the SE especially with

regard to content and intent. However, the lack of a filmmaker guide can present a barrier to a

more meaningful experience with documentary for the organization and a decrease in the quality

and ultimately the effect of the media. It is difficult to know whether the lack of collaborative

involvement preceded lower prioritization of documentary film for SE4 and SE5 or if it came as

a result of previous lackluster experiences with filmmakers, distribution, and impact.

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OBSERVATIONS AND DISCUSSION

The purpose of this study was to begin exploring the intersection of social entrepreneurs

and their use of documentary film with the intention to map out current practices for future

research. There are a few conclusions that we may make as a result of the information gleaned

from the research that speak to that goal.

Documentary’s usefulness to social entrepreneurs is conditional

According to this study, documentary film is a useful tool for social entrepreneurs who

are implementing it in various forms to help support their communications strategy. However,

that use is not wholly unconditional. Documentary is most impactful for an SE organization

when the content of the film directly contributes to the stated mission of the organization, the

organization has some control over that content, and/or they have the resources (human and

financial) and infrastructure to support the making and the distribution of the film in a way that

directly reaches their target audiences. In fact, in some cases where that criteria is not honored or

met, the social entrepreneur or his organizational leaders may actual perceive the film as a threat

to their mission, an additional burden on already thinly stretched schedules, or a waste of energy

and time.

Considering what we have learned about the unique character of the social entrepreneur,

it makes sense that mission alignment, message control, and lack of resources would be barriers

to the use of documentary. Bornstein & Davis (2010) point out that social entrepreneurs differ

from business entrepreneurs in one key way: they choose to maximize social impact over profit.

Additionally, Bill Drayton attributes an unusual commitment and focus to their cause to the

modern social entrepreneur. This focused intent on their goals means that anything beyond the
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scope of their work, no matter how personally interesting or attractive, gets put aside. Film, if it

is not in service to the mission of the organization, does nothing to help maximize impact and is

therefore placed on a back burner of priorities.

With regard to the need to have a modicum of control in the film’s messaging, we can

look to the way social entrepreneurs must work within the societies in which they operate for

answers. As fusion experts, SE’s are constantly surveying the lay of the land and trying to

negotiate a complex social system to get their work done.

Social entrepreneurs don’t control major resources, and, unlike governments, they can’t

command compliance. They have to leverage resources that others control and influence

people by articulating goals that are meaningful. Social entrepreneurs are most effective

when they demonstrate ideas that inspire others to go out and create their own social

change (Bornstein, 2010).

Social entrepreneurs don’t control resources, but they do control their own story. That story,

whether it is the story of their “moment of obligation”, the story of their innovative model, or the

story of their failures and subsequent learning, is the greatest resource they have for leveraging

support and attracting followers and funding. When Bornstein (2010) profiles two well-known

social entrepreneurs, he says that, “both worked intentionally to ‘market’ their ideas, repeating

the same stories over and over to help mobilize resources, form partnerships, disarm enemies,

and woo political power brokers.” It makes sense then, that the story be protected and wielded

carefully.

If storytelling is at the heart of the social entrepreneurial experience, it might also explain

why filmmakers and SE organizations working collaboratively mirror one another in their
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rhetoric. As an extension of the social entrepreneur, the collaboratively involved filmmaker

internalizes and repeats the same stories because they have bought in to the social entrepreneur’s

well-articulated goals and found meaning in them. They in turn, become advocates of the cause.

Any tension between filmmakers and social entrepreneurs around message control may

be explained in part by the definition of documentary proposed by Grierson (1934): “The

creative treatment of actuality”. Documentary film in this normative form is a crafting of

experiences into a compelling narrative. It is, in essence, storytelling. The Filmmakers for SE2

discussed the importance of creative, artful storytelling in film:

Quality matters in storytelling. If you just have a handy-cam that's going around and

capturing it, it can tell people what’s happening, but they're not going to feel an

emotional attachment to it. Stakeholders aren't going to feel proud of the product, they'll

say oh cool, “I went and did good and now I can feel good.” But you tell a story...say it's

a well you've built somewhere... you flip that story just a little bit and you show people's

lives before the well and you show the anticipation and the work that goes into the well,

you show that it's not just the well being built, it's the well and the jobs that it creates.

And then you connect it to a kid in the village, connect it to education and the

possibilities that brings. All the sudden the stakeholder sees that they didn't just build a

well, they built part of a community, and as they do that it becomes shareable. They want

to share that story. (SE2 Filmmaker, personal communication, July 15, 2015)

It is possible that the heavy focus on storytelling as part of both the filmmaker and social

entrepreneurial identity creates a competitive environment when it comes to controlling the

message. This might speak to the several times in the study when social entrepreneurs and
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filmmakers respectively harkened to feelings of insecurity about their partner’s perceptions of

their increased control of the content and messaging, saying things like, “it was definitely more

involved and they probably didn’t like that as much” (SE2 Founder, personal communication,

August 28, 2015). Regardless of the level of involvement, message control is of paramount

importance to both groups since both see their value in terms of their ability to tell the story well,

whether to garner funding, be accepted into a film festival, or perhaps as Bornstein & Davis

(2010) note, fulfill their life’s purpose.

Trust is an important mitigation tool for the filmmaker in these situations. SE2’s

filmmakers garnered the trust of the founder by creating independent pieces of documentary film

at the beginning of their relationship free of charge. As he saw the quality of their work and the

artfulness of their storytelling, he began to see them as a partner to his own function as a

storyteller: “We weren't really telling our story to anybody, we were just out there in a sense kind

of learning and doing as we were going. And so the documentary was great for us because we

were able to tell our story” (SE2 Founder, personal communication, August 28, 2015). Even as

he became more involved with the content and concepts of the films he and the filmmakers work

on together, he still deferred to the filmmakers to craft a well-built narrative:

I have a bit of a working piece of this in mind and how it will work but I'm sure it will

end up totally different once they start putting their touches on it. They come and say we

have this type of camera, we should take this type of angle - they always add a lot of

creativity to it. I'm excited about it. (SE2 Founder, personal communication, August 28,

2015)
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For SE1’s founder, having control over content was important enough to his mission and

the success of his organization, that he required a legal agreement with the filmmakers.

No because I was careful about that. I fought really hard to the point that it affected my

friendship with (SE1 Filmmakers) even. But I demanded to have a say in this. The rights

belong to SE1 Filmmakers but there are certain things carved out that allow me to have (a

say)- and a lot of that was for the purpose of messaging but also for the purpose of safety,

security - making sure that no one’s face is revealed that shouldn't be revealed or that

nothing is taken out of context. (SE1 Founder, personal communication, August 1, 2015)

Colloquial trust was not enough in the case of an organization that services vulnerable

populations. And, while filmmakers don’t have to have the consent of every subject they film in

a documentary, the filmmakers for SE1 needed the cooperation of SE1’s founder in order to tell

the story in the most impactful way. Even collaborative involvement requires negotiation and

balance.

Though barriers of control and mission alignment are enough alone to hinder

documentary use by social entrepreneurs, the lack of financial and human resources is especially

problematic in the world of the social entrepreneur. Every SE organization in this study

mentioned some form of want when it came to resources that affected their use of documentary

film more effectively. Whether this resource problem is unique to social enterprise is not clear

from the results of this study. Whether it is unique or not, the challenge of continually raising

growth capital is an acknowledged constraint on social entrepreneurial organizations (Bornstein

& Davis, 2010). The slower, research-driven, wait-and-see approach that characterizes social

entrepreneurship affects investment opportunities, which can in turn limit financial resources.
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This study did not show that there was a difference in financial resources for film between newer

SE organizations and older, more established organizations, but it is still worth noting for future

research.

Documentary filmmakers bring much more than footage to the table

Since this particular study showed that the division between marketing and public

relations is so murky for social entrepreneurial organizations anyway, filmmakers may be able to

offer a service that falls firmly in the marketing camp. This study also showed that brand

development is a haphazard process for newer SE organizations by virtue of the constant

innovation and restlessness of the social entrepreneurial culture. This is one area where the

filmmaker can act as a true partner to the SE organization to maximize impact. SE2’s founder

discovered this when he allowed the filmmakers to take what he calls “complex and niche”

subject matter and independently create films about it.

I wasn't doing any marketing at all, partially because the work that I was doing was so

niche. It took a lot of explaining. People didn't really understand it. It was before the

words social enterprise and impact investing were even out there. It was during that time

period when those terms were being created and started being used. We weren't really

telling our story to anybody. We were just out there in a sense kind of learning and doing

as we were going. And so the documentary was great for us because we were able to tell

our story. What we do and how we do it and why we do it and I think it opened up quite a

few doors. People would see it and go, “oh wow, we've been wanting to do that” or “this

is exactly what we need”. (SE2 Founder, personal communication, August 28, 2015)
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Social Entrepreneurs may also use the filmmaker as a communications partner and coach to

brainstorm ideas about audience as SE1 did with its filmmakers. In fact, the filmmakers

discovered an unintended audience for SE1 that they are now able to work together to reach.

Although this study showed that every level of involvement has both positive and

negative impacts on content and effect of documentary, it seems that the best way for an SE

organization to involve their filmmaker as a communications coach is collaboratively. Bringing

the filmmaker into the fold as an extension of the SE provides him with an additional measure of

connection to the goals and missions of the organization. In that space, the filmmaker can use his

or her expertise to actively coach the organization on distribution, content, format, and other

possible uses for the film.

Whiteman (2004) proposed a coalition model of assessing the impact of political

documentary in which all parties to the documentary, including activitists and distributors, are

considered as part of the impact and success of the film. Though Whiteman’s coalition model

doesn’t advocate for a specific type of involvement between filmmaker and activists from the

beginning, it does recognize that documentary impact cannot be separated from the producers,

end users, and key stakeholders. It may be that coalitions and collaborations are exactly the way

effective and persuasive documentary are best created.

Paradox is present

The very use of documentary film in SE communications might indicate that both social

entrepreneurial organizations and documentary filmmakers are looking for the same thing:

authenticity that services the purpose of their work. The filmmakers in this study spoke of the
 97

tension between artful storytelling and meeting the needs of the organization and several pointed

to documentary film specifically as the answer to this particular paradox. Both SE2 and SE1’s

filmmakers cited perceived authenticity of documentary film as a boon to the impact and effect

of their film in getting the message far and wide.

However, when SE3’s founder reflexively noted that “no one likes to sit through a

ninety-minute commercial” (SE3 Founder/Filmmaker, personal communication, July 24, 2015),

it seemed that the filmmakers may also be aware of the inherent problem with using

documentary film in a promotional sense. If SE organizations and filmmakers were to subscribe

to the purpose of documentary film in its Greirsonian iteration to serve the public good

independent of institutions, then the only type of involvement between the two parties that really

allows for such purpose is independent involvement.

For their part, SE organizations seemed to be more conflicted about the need for

authenticity when compared to the need to control their message. This is no more apparent than

in the level of involvement they had with their filmmaker. Though we see elements of

independent involvement in SE1 and SE2, collaborative and interdependent involvement are

ultimately where all five SE organizations find themselves in relation to their filmmakers.

Though we cannot make a conclusive argument from the data present in this study, it might be

that the use of the documentary form for SE visual media is an unconscious mitigation of the

actual lack of authenticity inherent in their need for crafted, branded, and frankly, marketed

messaging.

Perhaps Nichols (2010) gives SE organizations a way out of the paradox and the

judgement of the documentary purists with his expanded definition of documentary film and
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admission that academies and institutions play an important role in getting documentary to the

people:

Whatever its role, these institutions contribute to the reality of what gets made and how it

looks. They often impose standards and conventions on the work they support, and their

goals and criteria change over time. Without them far fewer documentaries would reach

their intended audience. (p.19)

At the beginning of this paper, the author reviewed literature that called for a shift from

marketing constructs to more relationship building features of public relations as a way to further

imbue social causes with authenticity and truth-telling. It is interesting to note that throughout

the interviews, terms such as “branding”, “audience”, “reach”, and even the word “marketing”

were mixed with more relationship-based terms that spoke to the need to develop two-way

communication with relevant publics.

Perhaps the paradox inherent in the very culture of social entrepreneurship is worth

looking to for answers. The two terms “social” and “entrepreneur” that come together to define

the category indicate a delicate balance or tension between more traditional market-driven goals

and the social good. Although this study has used a definition of social entrepreneur that does not

force the market-driven social enterprise model as a qualification for inclusion, it becomes

difficult to ignore the cultural influence of social enterprise in the category. SE organizations

may even find themselves navigating the confusion in their communications as SE4 did when

they determined to shift their focus and revise their model:

In the past, up until this year over the past several years, we've been focused on

trying to become a sustainable company or have sustainable operations in the countries

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where we work. For example in India, we were really focused on our stores becoming

what we call cost-covering. The sale of glasses pays for the operation of the store.

However, what we were finding was that in doing that we were confusing our staff in the

sense that we were asking them to focus on profit or cost coverage as opposed to focusing

on the population that we're trying to reach which is people at the base of the

pyramid…And so what we did is we took a really hard look at that and decided that

instead of focusing on cost coverage, we're focused on the lowest philanthropic subsidy

possible needed to … bring a pair of glasses to the people within our target population.

So it's been a really interesting shift for us because it's much more...I'm much more

comfortable with it because I think it's much more mission aligned. And I feel like we're

reaching the people that we want to be reaching and that's an important goal for us. (SE4

Senior Development Officer, personal communication, August 21, 2015)

SE4 also discussed the way this confusion of competing goals that represent the “social”

and the “entrepreneurship” affected their communications. She said,

I think when we first started out it was focused on not only bringing glasses to people but

also giving jobs to women in particular and giving them income potential. I don't know

exactly when we moved away from telling that story. What was happening was that the

message was getting kind of confused. Are we telling the story about the need for

eyeglasses and the access to eyeglasses or are we telling the story about entrepreneurs

being able to support their families. Again, I wasn't here at the time but my understanding

was that the message was confusing. (SE4 Senior Development Officer, personal

communication, August 21, 2015)

 100

Bandinelli and Arvidsson (2012) address the paradox of messaging involved in the

confluence of these competing priorities and the impact they have on authenticity in the world of

the social entrepreneur. They note that social entrepreneurs are encouraged to “brand”

themselves as changemakers in order to gain a reputation that will lead to trust in their personal

ethics and impact that will eventually lead to access to financial capital. The irony of self-

branding as a path to reputation is not lost on the authors. Branding in and of itself is a marketing

construct that speaks to the media-logic that Cottle and Nolan (2007) so fiercely rallied against

as a barrier to authentic communication. In this particular way, social entrepreneurs are not

unique from other social organizations trying to differentiate themselves.

In fact, one of the biggest questions that arose during analysis of this data was exactly

how social entrepreneurial organizations differ from their NGO counterparts, especially in

consideration of documentary film. The scope of this study did not allow for definitive

conclusions in one direction or another. The role of the founder’s story in communications

strategies and documentary content may, in future research, rise to the surface as one of the truly

unique cultural phenomena in the social entrepreneurial landscape. As further study contrasts and

compares traditional NGOs and SE organizations, the role of documentary film as a tool for both

may provide an interesting case study for differences and similarities.

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LIMITATIONS

As with any research, there are factors that may have unwittingly impacted the results

and findings of this study. For the purpose of full disclosure and by way of invitation to improve

upon any aspect of the study, those limitations are listed here.

First, the author’s relative inexperience at conducting qualitative research, including

coding and constant comparative analysis, may have impacted the quality of the results. The

author used thick description in order to mitigate any error in coding as possible.

Second, the sample breadth was limited by the lack of access to SE4 and SE5’s

filmmakers. Having their perspective may have offered an additional insight into the

interdependent involvement segment of the text and it is worth exploring in more depth in

another study.

Third, technological failure in recording the interview of SE5 limited the text for

analysis. This gave the author only snippets of data to work with and inhibited a fuller

comparison between newer SE organizations and more established ones.

Fourth, the lack of inclusion of traditional NGO models in the interview text for

comparison did not allow the author to fully answer one of the research questions. It now seems

that the question was too broad for the scope of this study and would have required too much text

to analyze. The author suggests isolating that research questions for future study and developing

a separate research paradigm to address it.

Fifth, as a human instrument, the author acknowledges her own bias as a limitation in

the study. Because the interviews were conducted in person and via video conferencing, human

interaction was at play. In transcribing the interviews and coding, it was impossible for the
 102

author to separate her feelings and experiences from the interviews in a completely neutral way

from the data. However, this limitation is also what makes qualitative interviewing a rich

research experience.
 103

CONCLUSION

From the beginning of its existence, documentary film has been an express partner to the

interests of various causes, ideologies, and social movements. In the literature review of this

paper, the author has shown that research about the intent, content, and effect of documentary

film, as interpreted by scholars, often focuses on its relationship to activism and awareness

campaigns. Because there was still a great deal of uncharted territory with regard to how

documentary is used in practical ways by different groups of social change-makers, this study

attempted to answer questions that would illuminate the current landscape of use by one specific

category of social actor: the social entrepreneur. The relative newness of the terminology related

to the category of social entrepreneur coupled with the constant reinvention of communications

channels and strategy have made it necessary for this research to be viewed as exploratory in

nature.

As an exploration, this study begins to paint a picture of the ways documentary film is

currently being used as a tool for these organizations and the barriers that exist to using it more

effectively in public relations and communications strategies. Because of the sample selection

and the choice to have both the social entrepreneur and the filmmaker as interview subjects,

interesting data emerged that showed how the relationship of the filmmaker to the social

entrepreneur can affect documentary film use either positively or negatively. The study also

initially describes barriers to use, distribution, and effectiveness of documentary in social

entrepreneurial organizations’ mission-driven work. These initial broad strokes of understanding

are exactly that - a beginning.

There is still much more to learn to help influence the practical use of documentary by

social entrepreneurs. This study raised questions that might be beneficial to address in future
 104

studies both qualitatively and quantitatively. What elements of the social entrepreneur’s

“moment of obligation” story actually persuade people to action? Does the innovation model of

the social entrepreneurial organization impact the need for and content of documentary film?

Are there other types of film that could do the job just as well for social entrepreneurs and if so,

what needs to be present in those films to make them successful? For that matter, what does

“success” look like for both the filmmaker and the organization? If success looks different, how

does that impact content, distribution, and audience? For those organizations that need film to

fulfill their mission, what happens to the filmmaker role over time as the organization grows? Do

they ultimately need to have a filmmaker embedded in the organization in order to have the

biggest impact? What other characteristics need to overlap in the filmmaker and the social

entrepreneur to ensure a good working relationship and a professional match?

It seems that the next important step in this research track would take the findings of this

paper and apply quantitative methodology to some of the same questions in order to add scope.

Now that there is a clearer sense of the questions that need to be asked, a larger sample size of

social entrepreneurs, founders, and communications professionals along with more pointed and

direct questions in the form of a survey might allow for the findings of this study to be either

corroborated or refuted. On a very practical level, this might lead to the creation of a best

practices guide or “how to” for social entrepreneurs who need to include persuasive visual media

in their communications strategies.

Perhaps the best conclusion to this study came from SE2’s filmmaker when he learned of

the purpose of his interview. He said,

 105

If anyone wants their cause to get out there, that's what you have to do. You have to be

able to put it on the level that the masses can do something. You have to educate them to

the problem and then you have to provide them with an avenue where they can actually

do something. Where they can participate. That's the only way to make it go viral which

gets your cause out there and stops the problem. (SE1 Filmmaker, personal

communication, August 7, 2014)

Whether documentary film is the right tool for that job or not, it is the hope of the

researcher that this beginning examination will quickly lead to more scholarly conversations

about how to help the world’s most thoughtful and careful innovators “get their causes out there”

and support them in their efforts to solve the deepest and most troubling problems of our day.

Academia can be a contributor to that end.

 106

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APPENDIX A: Interview Questions

For social entrepreneurial organization

1. What is the mission/goal of your organization?

2. What are the communications goals of your organization?

3. Who are your target audiences and key stakeholders for general communication?

4. Why did you choose to make a documentary as opposed to another form of visual media?

5. How did you decide whether you make your film in house or out of house?

6. Who are your target audiences and key stakeholders for the documentary?

7. What are the target outcomes and behaviors that you are trying to elicit with your

documentary?

8. How are you currently distributing or using your documentary?

9. How do you plan to distribute or use your documentary in the future?

For filmmaker

10. What are you missions and goals as a filmmaker?

11. What do you hope to communicate by making documentaries?

12. Who are your target audiences and stakeholders for your films? (perhaps need to define

stakeholders)

13. Why did you choose to make a documentary as opposed to another form of visual media?

14. What was the motivating factor for making a film for this organization?
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15. How aligned do you feel with the goals and mission of the organization for which you

made the film? Can you tell me the goals and mission of the organization for which you

made the film?

16. What are the target outcomes and behaviors that you are trying to elicit with your

documentary?

17. How are you currently distributing or using your documentary?

18. How do you plan to distribute or use your documentary in the future?