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By Games for Change Every year, the Games for Change Festival celebrates the most impactful digital games that touch on social issues and aim to inspire their audiences to action. As video game’s audience increases—with gamers in 60 percent of American homes, according to the Entertainment Software Association—so does their potential to impact even more […]

“It was too close for comfort, but maybe that was the point,” writes The Case Foundation’s Louise Storm of her first virtual reality experience. Viewing the New York Times’ series “The Displaced”—which tells the stories of three children displaced by war—her initial response was tears. But then the chief of staff to CEO Jean Case began […]

Following the buzz in journalistic circles, it seems clear that interactive stories and productions have the potential to engage audiences in new and exciting ways. But how does this work exactly—and when should funders be stepping in to invest more seriously in such experiments?

What is it: A campaign launched by Ford in late January that seeks to raise awareness about inequality in all its forms and what can be done about it. Ford asked people on social media one question: “Finish this sentence: Inequality is…”

On the one hand, President Obama dubbed this weekend’s historic climate change agreement in Paris “a turning point for the world.” On the other, it “didn’t save the planet,” according to environmental activist Bill McKibben. However, “it may have saved the chance of saving the planet.” Either way, there’s much more to be said and […]

Produced with support from the Bertha Foundation, The Freedom of Expression Foundation, and the Finnish Film Foundation, Joshua Oppenheimer’s new documentary The Look of Silence follows a 44-year-old optometrist named Adi Rukun who confronts the men who killed his brother in the 1965 Indonesian genocide.

“Soon the television cameras will get packed up,” reflected Alex Altman for Time the day after Michael Brown’s funeral, “leaving a town that has become the latest shorthand for America’s racial divide to figure out how to translate the energy, intensity and anger of the past two weeks into concrete change.”

Guest Post by Sara Federlein Last month, The New York Times “reviewed” the still-in-the-works Participant Media Index designed to measure the impact and engagement of social issue documentaries. Anyone in the nonprofit world knows that “impact” and “engagement” are the buzzwords du jour. 

  The 2014 Media Impact Festival celebrated the social impact of media, and its capacity to transform society. This yearlong showcase is the next evolution of the Film + Video Festival, which Media Impact Funders presented with the Council on Foundations for many years. To build upon notable work in the emerging field of documentary […]

A decade ago, America was hurtling toward an ill-conceived war in Iraq, justified by false claims that Saddam Hussein maintained weapons of mass destruction and that his regime had ties to Al Qaeda.