We are pleased to announce a new line of activity for GCRI, the production of videos on global catastrophic risk. We are beginning with a series of videos on the GCRI YouTube channel that present core fundamentals of global catastrophic risk for anyone interested in learning more and potentially getting involved. Depending on how it goes, we may expand to other themes and platforms.
On the GCRI website, our videos can be found at gcri.org/videos. For each video, we will publish a blog post containing information about the video, similar to what we do for publications.
Our videos are intended for wide audiences, to raise awareness and understanding of global catastrophic risk and motivate people to get involved. This is important for democratic participation in global catastrophic risk, potentially resulting in more substantial policies and other measures to reduce the risk. It can also strengthen the field of global catastrophic risk by bringing in new voices and supporters, including both professionals and ordinary citizens.
We see strong potential for video production to accomplish these goals. Video can present ideas in ways that written text cannot, such as by showing on-site footage, animations, facial expressions, and vocal tone. This helps to convey rich substance on complex topics like global catastrophic risk, including the emotional dimensions, which risk research finds to be especially important. Educational videos on global catastrophic risk and related topics have sometimes attracted large audiences (e.g., this and this). Successful video channels often cultivate substantial communities of people interested in the channels’ themes. Finally, video is probably the hardest format to fake with AI, making it relatively durable under current circumstances.
Video does have some drawbacks. Above all, it is difficult to do well. Video production quality can benefit from skill in a variety of domains such as audio, lighting, camera angles, motion graphics, and more. It can further benefit from investment in equipment that can be expensive. Even with all of that, producing a video can still be labor-intensive, especially relative to other formats such as writing. Media companies that previously sought to “pivot to video” have sometimes struggled, resulting in corporate downsizing.
There is no guarantee that GCRI video will succeed. However, given the potential upside, we believe it is worth a try as part of a broader portfolio of public engagement activities, such as publishing commentary articles on the new gcri.org website.
Monetization and Sponsorship
In the burgeoning “creator economy”, it is common for successful video creators to generate income from their videos. However, due to GCRI’s current nonprofit status, at this time, we are only able to pursue a limited subset of monetization opportunities:
1) We can encourage viewers to donate to GCRI, such as through the gcri.org/donate webpage.
2) We can accept non-advertisement “qualified sponsorship payments”. In US 501c3 tax law (see this and this), there is a distinction between advertising, in which the nonprofit promotes an entity in return for payment, and qualified sponsorship payment, in which the nonprofit can only acknowledge the entity and cannot in any way promote them. At this time, we are only able to accept qualified sponsorship payments. That means we cannot do the “brand deals” that are common in the creator economy.
For inquiries regarding donations or sponsorship, please contact us at development@gcri.org. Further information can also be found on our donate page.
Team Member Video Channels
GCRI team members may create their own video channels in which they present ideas related to their work with GCRI. These channels will be administered separately from GCRI, which permits them to be operated on a for-profit basis, including monetization via brand deals. This is analogous to the common practice of researchers doing book deals with for-profit publishers. To maintain a clear distinction between nonprofit GCRI activity and any for-profit team member channels, team members will work on their channels in their spare (non-GCRI) time and videos on team member channels will not be counted as GCRI outputs, such as on the GCRI website and newsletter.
At this time, there is one team member video channel: the YouTube channel of Seth Baum.