Green Media Toolshed works with campaigns and environmental groups to communicate more effectively with the public and the media. This has included the use of mobiles and SMS.
References / Past Projects
from Green Media Toolshed's website:
Green Media Toolshed is building and strengthening the communications infrastructure for the environmental movement. Green Media Toolshed is committed to providing tools and managing the communities' media assets (assets can be a variety of intellectual property, artwork, or hardware) to improve the effectiveness of communications between environmental groups and the public. Green Media Toolshed goals are to:
- Collect a suite of content and software to help environmental communications staff distribute messages to the public more effectively.
- Remove cost barriers and demystify the communications process so that our member groups can effectively use the media to promote conservation.
- Strengthen ability of conservation groups to influence national, regional and local media.
- Help protect, conserve and restore endangered species, habitats and natural systems.
In order to achieve our goals, Green Media Toolshed has adopted three strategies discussed below. We will focus on providing Media Intelligence, Organizing Visual and Opinion Content, and Investing in Infrastructure.
First, we want to provide our members with media intelligence and insights. Each year a growing number of publications and media outlets develop new approaches to the public. These outlets, including TV, radio, Internet, and print, play an important role in educating the public on issues affecting the environment. Green Media Toolshed aims to develop and maintain the lists that provide our allied interests with insights into who to contact, how to contact them (numbers, emails, address) and what stories might be most saleable (contact history). We will construct, distribute and maintain an accurate list of journalists' contact information.
Second, Green Media Toolshed will begin to organize visual and opinion content to be readily accessible to our members for use in communicating messages more clearly. We will organize the production rights and property rights of the content so that each contributor receives appropriate recognition. We will give new life to the impressive content that now lies dormant on the desks, bookshelves and archives of the collective environmental movement. Green Media Toolshed will collect and maintain a stock image library (of still photos, video, audio clips, graphics and computer animations) to be used by members in advertising, direct mail, events, websites, PSAs and other initiatives. The library would be built by recycling successful media assets and developing or acquiring images of most critical need first (specific species, sites and images of destruction, for example). The main sources of our library will be: 1) existing footage and images that many groups currently possess that could be shared with the collective; 2) organizing many professional photographers and potentially thousands of amateurs or individuals just starting in the field that have a commitment to environmental causes and will provide images to Green Media Toolshed as part of their commitment; and 3) cut rate deals with photo houses will be arranged for certain 'hard to get' images to reduce rates. Finally, many foundations already fund production of still and video images that will be "retired" into Green Media Toolshed for the general use of our members. We will work with foundations to encourage them to condition funding to encourage the release of visual content to Green Media Toolshed for the benefit of the entire community after some pre-determined period of time.
Green Media Toolshed will also organize the polling and opinion research of the environmental movement. Typically, clients have exclusive rights to information they've paid for from polling organizations, thus it is up to the client to decide if and how to share that research with other organizations. However, Green Media Toolshed will develop a collective 'filing cabinet' for past polling and focus group research findings on a broad array of environmental issues from member organizations. This information would help more groups target messages and campaigns cost-effectively, would save groups a lot of time finding existing information as they consider polling and would ensure that duplicate efforts are not undertaken. Again, many foundations already fund polling and focus groups for specific projects and organizations and could also encourage reasonable release of results for the benefit of the entire community.
Finally, we will work to reduce the barriers faced in communicating with the public through the media by committing to invest in delivery systems and communications infrastructure available for our members. Green Media Toolshed will access the best tools available for projecting messages to the public or for complementing stories. We will find new ways to collectively utilize the computers, production facilities and distribution channels that have in the past provided other interest with advantages in placing messages in front of the public. We plan on developing a lend lease program of digital/video hardware to add in production and story making resources of the movement, setting up agreements to digitize content for members and providing streaming video for their outreach efforts. We will push innovation farther and experiment with technology and ideas to assure that our members will have the raw capability to broadcast their messages to the largest possible segment of their target audiences.
