Connecting the Dots Between Audio Media & Your Nonprofit

Growing Beans, a nonprofit organization specializing in coffee shops in Louisville, Kentucky, sources their beans from Nigeria and uses proceeds to fund schools and orphanages there. In their podcast, they discuss the history and impact of audiovisual media on nonprofits. The audiovisual medium dates back to the 1850s, with the first recorded human voice traced to a Frenchman using the phonogram. Audiovisual media has become a powerful tool for nonprofits in advertising and fundraising, creating a connection and intimacy with listeners. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been used by nonprofits to spread their message and gain donors. Visuals and videos are effective in capturing attention and showcasing the impact of donations. The use of audiovisual media continues to grow and improve nonprofit efforts. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Growing Beans website. My name is John Hall. I'm the Editorial Director and Chief Executive Officer of Growing Beans. Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar, Growing Beans is a nonprofit organization that specializes in coffee shops based around the Louisville, Kentucky area. All of our beans are sourced directly from the country of Nigeria, and all of our proceeds directly go back towards funding schools and orphanages in Nigeria. I'm joined by Grace Hall and Makeda Carbo, Caleb Langley, and Lucy Bane, who are also part of the Growing Beans team. And in this history of publication, we are going to be discussing the audiovisual media. You may have noticed that we are not doing a typical blog post like we usually do, but rather spicing things up and trying our hand at a podcast which fits into the audiovisual medium. In this episode, we will be discussing the history of the audiovisual medium, how it has impacted nonprofits in the past, as well as just where it came from and just a general overview of it. So, Makeda, do you think you could give us a brief history on the audiovisual medium? Of course, I would love to answer that question. I'm just going to do a quick little brief overview. I won't get into too much detail on this because there is a lot of history, but it also is important to know some of it. So, as I was doing my research, I came across the website titled Museum of Obsolete Media, and this exact article is titled Audio Media Timeline. It dates back to the 1850s, and this timeline runs all the way to present day. It says here in the article that the first time we see human voice recorded is by a Frenchman named Edouard Leon Scott de Martinville, and he uses the phonogram to record his voice, and it traces sound waves on smoke, blackened paper, or glass. This result was not traced back until recently in 2008, and there were several tracings found from 1860. So, yeah, that is the big one in the 1860s. The music box cylinder comes out. We start to get more discs in the 70s. The 90s, we get our first book music, and then in the 1950s, we get a sauna band, and then in the 1980s, we get more sauna bands, a different system for them. And then in 2010, we get Sony Caesar's Selling the Cassette Walkman in Japan. We get some albums in there as memory cards, micro SDs, flash drives in the early 2000s, and then we're up to the modern day, and we have lots of audio recordings as we know. All right. Very cool. Now, when would you say the audiovisual media first really started to take hold in the public? Yeah. So, we kind of see it first take hold. The biggest way is, I believe, in the cylinders to disc, which is like sound recording became a mass media, and that happened, like we said, really early on, but now today, as we know, we have all the things from music to audio recordings, just like this one you're listening to. And so, yeah, it was a very slow process, but also a very quick one for what it is today and what we know of it. But yeah, it dates back to the 1850s, all the way to modern day, the audio we all know and love. All right. Now, Grace, I know you've been reading two books that kind of discuss the different forms that we use to communicate. One is Marshall T. Poe's A History of Communication and Neil Postman's volume of Technopoly. They both have very different views. You can tell one sounds a little more pessimistic, that being Postman, whereas the other is a lot more informative. So, what would you say Poe's views are on this audiovisual medium? He mentions Plato's pessimistic reaction to theater and its corrupting society, and he cites Plato's assessment of theater as relevant to audiovisual media in particular because, well, when you think about it, watching a play is almost the exact same thing as watching a movie. Just one is live, the other is a sort of disembodied recording. And while I agree with Plato that corruption is possible with theater as it is with any form of media, if we are aware of how media influences us, we can be intentional with not only what media we use, but how we use it. And when it comes to audiovisual media, we must be careful in what content we choose to consume and let shape us. Here at Growing Beans, we are very intentional with how we educate nonprofits on how to use media to their advantage. Poe asserts there is an element of compulsion in speaking that is very similar to the human tendency to compulsively watch or listen to particular interesting things. At Growing Beans, this vitally informs how we strategize reaching our desired audience and bringing them to support our nonprofits. All right, thank you. Now, all this information is great, but Lucy, how does all this information, what does it have to do with nonprofits? How has it impacted nonprofits in the past? Yeah, so audio is really relevant in nonprofits throughout history and today. And just in the past, we can see how audio has allowed brands and organizations to market themselves and to advertise themselves, really get the word out. And Oxford already talks about this, and they just explain how audio can be a more expensive and time-demanding way to get your organization or brand advertised. But in the end, it's really worth it because it really creates this feeling of intimacy between the listener and the nonprofit. And so audio can just be a great tool in building more of a relationship between those who would help fundraise and build the money for nonprofits and the nonprofits itself. And it's just natural that when you feel like you have more of a connection to any organization, namely nonprofits, you want to help them out more. So you're more likely to give money and give more money, which is what nonprofits need to survive. So it's really relevant, and audio can be a great tool and has been a great tool throughout history, we see, in helping create that relationship and helping fundraising and advertising for nonprofits. That all being said, it is really difficult. It can be really difficult to use that tool because it just requires a lot of training and expertise because it's a bit more difficult than just writing itself. That being said, I would argue it's definitely worth it. So maybe it's not the easiest, but it does have the greater payoff in comparison to other forms of media in terms of just building that relationship and therefore building more of a likelihood that someone would be wanting to give to our nonprofit or your nonprofit. All right, awesome. Now, Caleb, you've had a lot of experience in this area. Can you think of any instances where this audiovisual medium has improved a nonprofit organization's efforts or efficiency? There's something about real human speaking on something that triggers a more personal and a more humanizing aspect. AI can simply write something down that's at least comprehensible, but when you try to make it say that same thing like a human, it doesn't sound quite right. Millennials, every generation since Gen X and all that, have gradually become more accustomed to modern technology, and with that, more specifically, social media. Social media has been used by nonprofit organizations to gain donors and spread their message ever since it became popular with Facebook in 2004 and Twitter, now known as X, in 2006. For example, Charity Water used their social media platform to gather donors worldwide, and were able to gather over 30,000 people in a span of 24 hours to participate in their campaign. The only way to reach that many people in that short amount of time is through the use of audio and visual media. Just yesterday, I saw a video on my YouTube recommended with the actor Simu Liu sitting next to a cute little dog, and he was speaking about the Humane Society of the United States fundraiser for animals. Nonprofits have used visuals and videos more specifically to capture the viewers' attention for many, many years, because you actually get to see what you're giving your money to and what it actually looks like in person, rather than just reading words about it. So it's more personal, it's more connected, and using videos to promote nonprofits is a practice that's only growing and has been growing and will keep doing so. All right. Well, thank you all very much for your input. That just about does it for this episode. Thank you all for tuning in and listening. Next week, we will have another publication for you, also as a podcast, in which we will be discussing the best practices, what you as a nonprofit organization can use to improve your efforts. So thank you all for listening, and have a great day.