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A key change at iCommons
If you're not part of the iCommons mailing list, take a look at the letter that Heather Ford, Executive Director of iCommons, sent to the list yesterday:
Dear friends,
At the 2 August iCommons Board Meeting, the board decided to make some difficult but necessary changes at iCommons. It has become clear over the past months that our vision for iCommons is different from the... more
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Fundraising with a twist
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 This year Creative Commons employed some fun ways to get you to donate to their annual fundraising campaign.
As stated on the CC site, with the help of Revver they "hacked the fundraising system" - so when you watch the selected Creative Commons videos, they get paid! They also enlisted Flickr, for the CC Swag photo contest, which produced some never-seen-before uses for CC swag.
And since it is the season to be giving we spoke to Melissa Reeder, CC's Development Coordinator, on the progress of the campaign so far, and why CC is an organisation that you should support.
icommons.org: Why was the fundraising campaign initiated?
Melissa: The Creative Commons annual fundraising campaign originated as a way to satisfy an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requirement, however early on in the campaign we saw this initiative as a way to both satisfy the government and more importantly reach out to our community and strengthen that relationship.
Historically CC has been supported by large foundations such as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Omidyar Network, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation as well as the community. The public, up until last year, had financially supported us through our store and intermittent cash and in kind donations. We realized that by traditionalizing an annual campaign we could both build community and sustainability at the same time.
This year we chose to focus the campaign more on building community and raising awareness about CC's mission than on the financial commitment we need from the community (even thought that remains a vital component).
icommons.org: How will the money be spent?
Melissa: CC has a history of spending a low percentage on administration in order to support and grow our various programs. Over the past year we have been working diligently expanding both our legal and tech tools based on feedback from the community and exporting the philosophy of the commons.
An example of this later point would be the Salons. The Salons were initiated in the US as a way to build and interact with our community in real time. The Salons are a forum dedicated to discussing the broader issues surrounding our global digital commons. They provide the space for people to discuss those issues away from their computers and instant messenger. The global community quickly embraced this model and now there are Salons in San Francisco, New York City, Toronto, Berlin, (known as Creative Commons User Group), Beijing, Warsaw, Seoul, Johannesburg, and most recently Brisbane. The initiating of this forum would not have been possible without money donated from last year's campaign.
Some programs that we look to expand this year are:
- Building on ccLabs, which is a public space dedicated to demonstrating the innovative new tools CC is working on prior to their final release so that the community can discuss their ideas and concerns. This is a way for us to make sure that our tools remain relevant with our constituencies needs.
- Commercial rights licensing so that CC artists can utilize the CC licensing infrastructure to (hopefully) make money ' there's an example using Magnatune here.
- Finalizing Version 3.0 of the CC licenses to ensure that our licenses remain current and relevant to the communities they serve.
- Working towards FDL compatibility so that projects like Wikipedia can be remixed with CC BY-SA licensed content.
- Building a Canadian Public Domain Wiki to improve ease of identification of works that are in the public domain in Canada.
- Continuing our presence in Second Life, which aside from being fun, encapsulates so much of what CC is trying to promote ' a digital platform in which people can get creative and easily express themselves without burdensome technical and legal frictions.
Some program areas we hope to initiate or grow:
- Building a stable 'free culture' infrastructure.
- Adding tangible support to authors.
- Extending the base we've already built.
- Expanding our work in education.
Stay tuned for more details about new programs in each of these areas!
icommons.org: Where are most of your donations coming from?
Melissa: At this point in the campaign, the highest percentage of donations is coming from technology corporations. We have experienced a significant amount of support from individual members of the community, often in innovative ways such as donating the proceeds of an auction of a historical domain name on eBay, to generating revenue for CC through Revver to straight traditional donations, to spreading the CC mission by participating in the CC Swag Photo Contest.
One amazing story of support, which humbled us, came from Switzerland. A journalist of a prominent Swiss magazine used some text from a CC BY NC SA 2.0 licensed blog violating the license conditions. The CC licensor brought the issue to the magazine's attention and after some back and forth negotiation, agreed upon financially compensating the author by donating the funds to CC in support of our fundraising efforts.
That being said, there are ten days left and we have yet to reach this crucial goal. I encourage everyone to give in whatever way they can.
icommons.org: How did the Revver fundraising project develop?
Melissa: Simply put this was Larry's idea ' we just ran with it and apparently our community has as well. We have raised approximately 950 USD, and even though that may seem nominal in the face of the 300,000 USD goal, the implication is that roughly 300 people have viewed and clicked on the add at the end of the videos. So that means that hypothetically there are 300 people out there that have either been introduced to CC or their knowledge of CC is that much more cohesive. We are also about to launch a portal where community members can upload their cc-licensed videos directly to our account if they want to help support CC with the generated revenue. This portal was generously built by one of our community members on his own volition.
icommons.org: What has the response been to the campaign?
Melissa: As I alluded to above ' the response has been overwhelming. The amount of support that I have seen globally is very significant. We send out swag for donations all around the globe and I receive emails consistently about new ideas or how to augment the ones that we've already initiated. I am so encouraged by the fact that the global community feels comfortable enough contacting me with their ideas and suggestions on how I can make this a better more effective and productive campaign.
The Revver statistics paired with the CC Swag photo contest group members and entrants shows me that the community is involved on multiple levels - that they want to participate and for this I am truly appreciative. Even though I am aware of the goal that we need to meet by the end of this month ' I can't help but express how pleased I am with the community support and participation in initiatives such as Revver and the Flickr Contest. Because in the end it's our global community that matters most.
That being said we celebrated CC's birthday with a party on 15 December, which turned out to be an international and virtual celebration. We wanted to celebrate CC with our community so we devised various ways for all who wish to participate. It wasn't only a celebration of CC's birthday but it also happened to coincide with ccItaly's launch date and the launch of the Portugal licences. We saw our birthday as a way to celebrate all the work and progress that has been accomplished and hopefully will be accomplished in the future, the close of a successful fundraising campaign and most importantly to celebrate our community, for whom we exist.
icommons.org: How difficult has it been to pick the CC Swag contest winners?
Melissa: We had to monitor the CC Swag Photo Contest group closely because of the outstanding quality of all the entries. We put significant time and consideration into assuring the winning photograph exemplifies all 4 categories on which we judged. Also, we assured that the decision did not just lie with Eric Steuer (CC's Creative Director) and myself but that multiple voices and opinions around the office are heard and considered heavily.
icommons.org: If you could give one reason why people should support CC in the campaign, what would it be?
Melissa: First off let me just say that people should support CC yearly, not just during this campaign. We have a very close relationship with our community and we work very hard to maintain and strengthen that relationship. Without our constituency we would not exist, or not nearly in the effective capacity that we do; and we respect and honor that relationship. Part of a non-profit relationship is that both sides are committed to supporting each other. As we are committed to providing the world with legal and tech tools that enable a participatory culture, we hope that our community supports our mission enough to take it upon him or herself to help disseminate and financially sustain our work. Our license growth statistics alone prove that people support us ideologically. We are now boasting 140 million licenses - that does not sound like unsupported work to me.
I would like to boast that a significantly large percentage of our funding comes from the same supporters, I would love to get to the point to where I can say that our community supports our work so much that they now make up the largest percentage of our financial base. Even though the actualization of that dream remains to be seen, I have hope and faith in our community and in our mission.
Over the past four years we have worked diligently, and perhaps a little obsessively, to progress our mission and our place within the movement towards a global digital commons. Digital technologies and access to those technologies have burgeoned over the past few years. They are now a platform for instant global collaboration and communication and they are changing at an unfathomable rate based on the perceived needs of this new world. They offer ways to create, share, and remix what was unimaginable five, or even two years ago.
Where do you think this digital world will be in next five years? Or the next two? Or tomorrow even? We are working today to make sure that the same freedoms that we enjoy, the freedoms that flexible licenses allow, will be a part of the technological world tomorrow. To make sure that our freedoms are not restricted or taken away by building in a layer of protections now and encouraging critical mass around their use so that more and more people will become familiar with the debate and realize that there are options, and that the infrastructure that we have relied on for so long is no longer relevant, and that a sharing global economy is our bright future.
If I was going to give to an organization I would want to give to one that promotes a participatory world, one where we can freely exchange ideas and build upon the ideas of others. I would not and will not support a world that wants me to be a passive consumer ' one that takes in information but is not allowed to react to that information in whatever manner I feel is appropriate for me as a co-creator of our culture. That's part of the reason why I support CC.
Photograph: One of the CC Swag contest winners, by andyket, CC BY 2.0
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