In this episode, we speak with Ole Chavannes, a media development professional from the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), about finding funding for exiled media outlets and dealing with donor bureaucracy.
Transcript
Ep 3: Finding Funding for Exiled Media
Sudeshna Chanda:
Welcome to the Exiled Media Podcast, where we talk about all things exiled media.
In today’s episode, we will talk about finding funding for exiled media. I’m Sudeshna Chanda, Program Officer and Marketing Manager at Zamaneh Media, and your host. And sitting here with me is Ole Chavannes, a media developer at the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB).
Thank you for joining us.
Ole Chavannes:
Hello. I’m a freelance journalist and a media developer. I’m mostly working for the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), which is the biggest network of independent journalists in Myanmar. DVB is operating both underground and in exile.
Sudeshna:
Right, thank you.
Ole:
We just celebrated 30 years of broadcasting. That is a pretty good achievement, I think. We kept the boat floating, but indeed it started in exile for many, many years, mostly in Norway. The Norwegian government was the main donor from the beginning and still is.
DVB was for a long time based in Oslo, in a little radio studio, using masts from the Dutch World Radio to broadcast shortwave radio into Burma. And then, when Aung San Suu Kyi was released, we moved back into Burma for the first time and we built a whole studio. I moved there also with my family. I created a lot of new formats and did a lot of fundraising also, locally. And then, unfortunately, one and a half years ago on February 1st, 2021, there was a military coup again, and DVB was also switched off and declared illegal. So since then, a big part moved into exile again. The main part of the organization is still inside Myanmar collecting news in secret.
Sudeshna:
Thank you for that introduction, Ole. We are very excited to have you here to share your experience with us.
Now, speaking of funding, we thought this topic was important to cover because —in our experience— finding funding for media outlets, in general, can be a challenge because journalism is often not seen as an end in itself in the development sector.
And of course, complicating the situation is the context of being in exile. Given that there is a geographical divide between the organization and its target audience, it often means that there are challenges with eligibility criteria. There are contextual differences between the host country and the home country. And of course, there are political barriers to accessing certain funding.
Many of our organizations have faced these challenges. However, a lot of these challenges have been overcome by a lot of our organizations quite tactfully over the years. Therefore, we thought it would be interesting to use this space to talk about the different challenges and experiences we’ve had and the lessons we’ve learned over the years.
Speaking of DVB and also your experience as a media development professional, what are some of the challenges that you have encountered, over the years, in finding funding for exiled media in particular, but also media in general?
Ole:
Indeed. It is a problem for exiled media to find donors who are willing to donate, even though you’re based in a different place than the one you are broadcasting to, which is where your target audience is. So this is the first thing I look at when I’m looking for donors… if they have these criteria. Very often they already mention it on their home page. They indicate if they do fund internationally, and don’t have any geographical boundaries.
As soon as they do, I don’t even dedicate time to reaching out to these donors because it’s a very obvious problem. I think it’s very old-fashioned in a way, but there are surprisingly many donors who are thinking in a very geographically limited way.
Very often, European funds are only for the EU, for example. For these I don’t even bother to approach them for this specific broadcaster, DVB, that is obviously targeting people inside Burma, but also other Burmese around the world. There’s also an English department (within DVB) that is informing people who are interested in Myanmar in English. So the donors that we have are fine with that and are funding us anyway, but it is complicated with all kinds of different salaries and laws, and different countries where we’re based.
Sudeshna:
Okay. That’s interesting. That’s good to know.
Do you think that, to a certain extent, you have the flexibility to choose not to approach certain donors, over approaching others, given the fact that DVB has been in this sector for 30 years? And then, thinking of younger organizations that have been around for less than five years, or that are only now going into exile, do you think that they also have the flexibility to choose which donor to go to and which ones not to?
Ole:
You might think that because we have done this for 30 years, we have such a track record and we have proven that we have an impact, but it’s not. We keep on fundraising. You have to keep on pitching yourself and you have to keep on convincing people working at all kinds of different funds that you do what you do transparently. Of course, maybe if you’re just starting and you don’t have a track record yet it is more complicated to be convincing. But even after 30 years, I have to very often start all over again. Even if this fund may be funding DVB for many years, very often people are changing positions and new people are working at the position. So you have to start all over again.
Sudeshna:
Speaking of different types of donors, I was also thinking that there are different kinds of funding opportunities, and different kinds of funds.
Ole:
Indeed, core funding and project funding. Those are the two main flavors, and as a media in exile, you want core funding. In my experience, that’s the best one. Core funding gives you the freedom to operate your newsroom the way you need to because news is unpredictable. There are always unexpected things happening and donors very often want to know exactly how you’re going to spend your money in the coming year. So, core funding is not connected to certain outputs and certain projects. You are mainly paying salaries.
Sudeshna:
Right.
Ole:
You need it because creating news is unpredictable. But unfortunately, core funding is pretty rare. If you have it, it’s a good basis. Project funding, on the other hand, is more common, but then you will need to agree on a project with much more detail, with a much more detailed budget, and you will have to justify also more in detail. It is more work, but it’s also very useful to have project funding.
You also asked about different kinds of funding. I experienced what I would call “Consortium Funding”. It was a big new initiative, the Myanmar Peace Fund. Many different governments around the world put lots of money into it. They were developing this consortium funding so we would be part, with DVB, of a much bigger project and media was one of the activities. That sounds as complicated as it was in reality. So that meant a lot of different meetings and a lot of different opinions. So consortium funding I would not recommend. You want your funding relation to be ideally a one-on-one relationship with the donor.
And then, there’s another funding possibility that I experienced. I would call it “Episode Funding”. There was this donor, Action 8, in Myanmar. They wanted to have some media about child soldiers and I organized this program called “DVB Debate”. It was a weekly debate program on television and online. They were funding just one episode, so they paid for all the cameras, the studio rent, and the transport of the speakers to the studio, but they also decided who the speakers were because they were paying for the episode.
It didn’t compromise our editorial Independence, but it was a little bit of a slippery slope. That is the one thing I would advise any exiled media: keep your core values very clear. Especially for donors, that they understand that they’re funding Independent media. It also means that donors don’t have a say in any editorial choice.
Sudeshna:
I’m glad that you brought editorial independence up because I did want to ask you about it even before you mentioned episode funding. For project funding, for example, when these projects are funded based on topics that the media organization covers, although the donor might not want to have a direct say in how the editorial decisions are made, just by choosing a particular project over another, I wonder if that also is in a way infringing on editorial independence.
And I guess the question that I have with regards to that is how do you circumvent that, especially when you are working on projects that are focused on certain topics that are funded specifically by your donor. How do you keep your editorial independence? How do you message it to the donor?
Ole:
That is maybe the most important part of this podcast: editorial independence is not negotiable. When I’m meeting a new potential donor it’s the first thing that I put on the table, editorial independence. If that is something that they want to negotiate, I would say don’t continue your conversation because what we are selling is independent media. The moment you compromise that, you lose your credibility with your audience and then, your whole work becomes useless.
What helps with donors in this first meeting is to do your homework and know where they come from, and their core values.
Sudeshna:
I’m sure that is a fantastic point for relatively young organizations or the ones that are going into exile now. This is a very important lesson to have with them when you’re starting up. You want right from the beginning to have drawn those boundaries for yourself. I can imagine once you are established, it must be very difficult to go back on those expectations. So, thank you for that.
Coming back to my initial question about donor best practices, can you share with us an example of a donor action, which you thought was exemplary?
Ole:
The coup that was committed in Myanmar one and a half years ago, on February 1st, was an incredible disaster for DVB. And then, there was one American donor that mailed me the day after saying, what can we do? They were really understanding and super flexible. I wrote down on an A4 the things we really needed. We needed to get people underground into safe houses. We needed to get people across the border. We needed money for that. It was very difficult to make a precise budget, but this donor was very flexible and they accepted that. Within four weeks, there were 40,000 dollars in our account for emergency aid. And we could justify that months after because at that moment it was just too crazy to do all that stuff.
One interesting thing that comes up a lot of times is the justification of these kinds of costs in this kind of emergency. Of course, we don’t have a receipt. Somebody is helping on a truck and paying the driver some money if they’re passing through military checkpoints. Of course, there’s no receipt of that. For these kinds of costs that save lives, you need to have a donor who is willing to be realistic and understand that these kinds of costs are not justifiable directly.
I agreed on this new emergency system where we did not have to submit all kinds of receipts that were very often not there, or we didn’t even want to have receipts because they could be traced back to the people who were hiding from the military. So we would make screenshots of all the news items we were making every day. And the donor would more or less consider it as a press agency and we could, you know, use that money to save lives. So this one donor, I cannot mention them, but this was a real really big help.
Sudeshna:
That is indeed quite exemplary. Do you think that was possible because you already had a relationship with this donor? Because you had already worked with them in the past? That it was possible because of this pre-existing understanding, and trust, that you had established with the donor, or was this the first time that they reached out to you in your entire time at DVB?
Ole:
It was based on the fact that we had been already working with them for years. They knew exactly what we do and how we work, and that we are totally transparent and manage to justify every penny at the end of the year.
Of course, if we hadn’t had such a track record (it wouldn’t have been possible). That’s also one piece of advice I would like to give when dealing with donors: If you want to make sure you are getting what you are asking, always do your homework, always be on time, and never miss a deadline. Don’t give them any excuse not to give you the grant that you asked for. But also, you have to be lucky to have a donor who has the flexibility to switch to a very different way of justifying the cost.
Sudeshna:
Absolutely.
You mentioned some donor expectations just now: being on time and staying with the deadline. If I’m not mistaken, I believe you have also been on the other side at some point in your career. You’ve also been on the donor side. Could you tell us a little about that experience?
Ole:
Yeah, that is true. I also worked for years for Free Voice and developing media all around the world. It was 14 years ago, so I realize how old I already am. I started with this kids’ news program at the border between Thailand and Myanmar.
So then I started for the first time with DVB, developing this news program for children called “Youth Voice”. Last week, they celebrated their fourteen anniversary.
Sudeshna:
Awwwn
Ole:
So you know, also for the record, how sustainable that investment has been. It’s still running, still informing children in Myanmar.
So yeah, I experienced it from that side. And what I just said, dealing with a lot of media organizations in developing countries, it is totally fine if things don’t go as planned and if things go wrong, but what is not fine is the partner not being honest about it. In the end, it’s about trust. That’s the tip from a donor perspective: if you’re exiled media, be honest about things that don’t go right or if mistakes were made. That is fine, but if you try to cover that up and show that things are going according to the budget, but in reality, they don’t, then you lose trust. That is the same as the situation between the media and its audience.
Sudeshna:
Honesty is, indeed, the best policy through and through no matter where you are.
Ole:
And more sustainable.
Sudeshna:
For sure.
Talking of sustainability, I wondered if there are a lot of donors that do long-term funding. I thought of this because you mentioned “Youth Voice” and that they completed 14 years this year.
I wonder if a lot of donors in this sector tend to stay with a media organization for a long period, or are these often short-term funding? And do you think that either way, that is changing in one direction or the other?
Ole:
I think if you go to the so-called media development conferences around the world, you’ll always hear beautiful speeches from ministers or directors of big funds, saying that it’s all about long-term investment and that it should not be short-term. Financially, it also doesn’t make sense.
In reality, I’m sorry to say that my experience is different. Most donors say that they’re in it for the long term, but you always end up with one-year contracts. Very seldomly a donor will commit for two or three years. It would make sense to have a long-term investment, and that way you can also make the organization very balanced and very stable. But in reality, most funding is based on twelve months. I wish it would be different but the reality is a little bit harsh there.
Sudeshna:
All right, moving forward, what are some of your words of wisdom for media organizations that are applying for funding?
Ole:
As an exiled media, in the end, you don’t want to be a donor darling. So you want to have your mindset and your strategy to become at least 50% independent from donor funding. Diversification of your revenues is absolutely key for sustainability. Of course, it also depends on how difficult the situation is, but especially in these days of podcasts, and YouTube at least sharing some of the profits with AdSense, you find can find different ways of also getting other funding. That would be my wise advice. And to use your words, always have a donation button on your website and make sure that the system works well and it’s not complicated.
Another thing could be that since you’re making media, very often there are people in your team who are also writing books. That’s another kind of product that you can maybe sell on your website. It could be a small but steady kind of income that you can control yourself. Also, another way of creating revenue is premium content. It sounds easier than it is. In reality, it’s a lot of work and it only works if you reach a big audience that is also rich enough to be willing to pay those extra bucks for it. And then, the least obvious one: your YouTube is pretty easy to monetize. It’s not a lot of money, I must say, but still, if you’re having an average of 10 million views a month, like DVB, then you can create some extra serious revenue with that.
One piece of advice is that if you are an exiled media and you are starting up, and maybe you are not so big yet, do not depend only on your AdSense income. That could also lead to a kind of weird dynamic where you need to have viral videos all the time. You are maybe tempted to create rather clickbait than some quality journalistic story. Try to find a balance where you do get donations from a donor that makes the operation possible and then also generate more revenues by your clicks on YouTube.
Sudeshna:
A quick note for our listeners. We also have an episode on revenue diversification, so I highly recommend checking that out as well after this episode.
Thank you.
Finally, one of the questions that I’m sure the listeners have as well as I do is, where do you find these opportunities? How do you reach out to donors?
Ole:
That is not so easy to answer. That is also years of experience, of networking, of reading professional blogs on new developments. If possible, if there’s no lockdown, go to media conferences and do your networking thing. There’s just a whole bunch of pretty obvious things to do.
There are a lot of different donors and in the end, it is also about the personal contacts, that they do trust you, and that they do feel that they are doing something special by supporting your activities. And like I said, be very clear about what you need, and also what you don’t. For example, that you’re not willing to sell out your independence, and also to keep the expectations real.
The thing is that exiled media are publishing what they do. They are reaching many people with what I do. So donors, in that sense, should have very easy access and find you on social media. Or maybe, when you’re at a conference, make sure that you do some presentation or that you are being interviewed by other media about your work. That is all contributing to your credibility and for donors to want to be part of your success stories, so to speak.
So, be proactive in your outreach and try to meet as many potential donors. And then be very strict also in the first meeting. If there is not a good understanding of what independent media creation means, then don’t put more time into that.
Sudeshna:
Fantastic. So then I guess my biggest takeaway from this is to communicate clearly, sufficiently, and honestly to your donors just as you do to your audiences.
Thank you, Ole, for spending some time with us. I for sure learned a lot. We are definitely looking forward to another 15 years of “Youth Voice”.
Ole:
Thank you so much. I hope it is useful and good luck with your very, very handy podcast.
