New Site Aims to Be YouTube for Charities

A recently launched Web site is billing itself as the YouTube for nonprofits. World Flix, a 501(c)(3) public-benefit corporation, empowers activists from across the world to bring attention to global issues through video.

The site hosts videos of social programs from across the globe and allows donors to pool their resources with other donors to help programs that otherwise would lack significant economic support. After a video raises its target amount, the site will continue to host updated video clips showing how the money raised is helping a given cause so that donors can see their contributions at work.

The Santa Cruz, Calif.-based site was founded by Laika Grant Mann, who worked as a family law attorney both in private practice and at the California Superior Court of Santa Cruz before attending Georgetown University to get her Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate, where she came up with the idea. We had a chance to catch up with Mann to find out more about the new site.

FundRaising Success: How did this idea come about?
Laika Grant Mann: I had been looking into moving into the nonprofit world from working at the courthouse, and when I was at Georgetown there was just an informal discussion of what would be your fantasy nonprofit job, and I said I had always wanted to be a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador, thinking everyone would laugh. And then everyone said, 'Yeah, I totally want to do that. I mean, everyone would like to be a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador to bring causes to life that no one really knows about.'

And someone else said they'd like to be a philanthropist, a Bill Gates or someone like that. That was just always in the back of my mind, and then a couple of months after I got back from Georgetown, when I saw my kids creating video clips and uploading them to YouTube, it just all kind of came together with that. You could be a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador, you could be a philanthropist through all of the new technology right now. So the common man, the ordinary citizen could do just fantastic things in the world by pooling their resources.

FS: What is the intent of the site?
LGM: The intent is to be a portal for all of these grassroots causes around the world. In the nonprofit world it's very difficult to get grants and funding, especially for small projects, $4,000 to $5,000. It's very labor intensive for these people to try to find money. What I'm hoping is that people will come to the Web site and maybe donate $10 to three different projects and then they can watch the progress.