April 20, 2000 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A new online effort is trying to use film and video to promote awareness of social problems — and the charities working to alleviate them.
The Visionaries, a non-profit group in Braintree, Mass., has started an Internet channel to broadcast its own stories about non-profit organizations and to show videos and public-service announcements created by charities.
The Visionaries Channel is part of a collection of video and audio content available through a Web site run by RealNetworks, a Seattle Internet company. Users can watch and listen to programming on the channel using RealPlayer software, which can be downloaded free from the company’s Web site (http://www.realnetworks.com).
Since 1995, the Visionaries has produced a series for public television — also called The Visionaries — that profiles charities around the world. More than 4,000 non-profit organizations have applied to be in the series.
“What we discovered very quickly by going through those applications is that there are literally thousands of stories out there,” says Bill Mosher, president of the Visionaries. “This presents a wonderful opportunity for us to tell those stories to a wide audience of people at a very low cost.”
RealNetworks donated the channel, which would normally cost about $250,000. The Visionaries then purchased from RealNetworks the bandwidth needed to broadcast video online and storage space on the company’s servers at a reduced, bulk rate, in order to provide the service to other non-profit organizations.
A charity that wants to show a one-minute public-service announcement on the channel would pay $1,000. That fee covers preparation of the announcement for broadcast on the Internet, storage on one of RealNetworks’ servers, and enough bandwidth for 3,000 people to view it. After that, the non-profit organization pays 15 to 30 cents for each additional view.
The Visionaries can also put the video on the charity’s own Web site. (Visitors to the charity’s site would still need the RealPlayer software to view it.) Mr. Mosher points out that this could, in the long run, save charities the money it costs to duplicate and mail videos — and that they would only be paying when someone actually watches a video.
During the first week of June, the channel will feature stories about non-profit groups working in Kosovo.
For more information: Contact John Capellupo, Vice President, the Visionaries, (781) 356-6804; johnc@visionaries.org; http://www.visionaries.org/channel.
