Geralyn Dreyfous x +Impact Partners | Gamechanger Films
“Filmmakers are Cultural Entrepreneurs”
Geralyn Dreyfous, co-founder of +Impact Partners (2007) and Gamechanger Films (2013), embodies the spirit and vision of a social entrepreneur in every way. She has created platforms that seek to integrate philanthropy, entrepreneurship, narrative storytelling, and film to raise awareness and confront the spectrum of injustice, inequities, and crises in society, and ignite social change.
While attending the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Dreyfous was drawn to investigating the intersection of politics, social entrepreneurship, and narrative storytelling. She observed that storytelling creates value by enabling disparate groups to connect under a common purpose, and that it had historically been a missing sector in the realm of industry, philanthropy and social entrepreneurship. She formed the Philanthropic Initiative which sought to connect high net worth individuals/organizations with philanthropic foundations seeking to invest in storytelling as a central element of their business strategy. The agility and accessibility of digitally transmitted media presented tremendous opportunity for philanthropic foundations. It had the potential to stimulate networking and fundraising initiatives, build communities of audiences rallied behind a common cause, and change laws and traditional belief systems through powerful storylines.
“Nobody was funding film in philanthropy and no one was investing in storytelling in government… It was perceived as boring and analytical, and not capable of changing hearts and minds... It was an opportunity.”
In the past century, the underlying psychology of wealth and philanthropy has evolved tremendously, however, until recently it never involved storytelling as an asset. Beginning in the late 1800’s, industrialists such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Mellon, focused their philanthropy on building institutions and infrastructure such as schools and hospitals in order to revolutionize modern society. The emergence of “Wall Street” in the mid 20th century dramatically changed peoples’ perceptions and motivations, and directed the focus away from building social enterprises towards building wealth. In the 1980’s, there was a proliferation of venture capital firms who found opportunities investing in existing and emerging companies that demonstrated growth potential and would bring a high return on investment. The emergence of the Internet dovetailed with these opportunities for investment, and ushered in new developments in the realm of investment and philanthropy. Currently, the wealthiest people in the world are concentrating their investments in the business of building platforms to generate, transmit, and share data/information. For Dreyfous, investment in the business of content creation meant that the “moment for storytelling in the philanthropy business has finally arrived”.
“What ultimately attracts an investor to [the documentary filmmaking] space is the disruption element… The fact that you can make something that can rise above the noise, and that people will be talking about, and that will be causing people to think about things differently… It has a sort of social and moral currency that you can’t achieve in other sectors of your giving…”
+Impact Partners (2007) is a production company that brings financiers and filmmakers together to create films for social impact. It reviews nearly 1000 film submissions every year and chooses 10-12 projects for funding. Films are selected for the writers' ability to translate an impactful story that will resonate with global audiences and have residual social/community benefit and commercial viability.
Documentaries do not often make money, which has imbued their value for investors as risky. And, given the influx of streaming service and media company acquisitions and mergers, it has grown increasingly challenging to analyze the marketplace and evaluate the potential cost and distribution strategy for the films. Dreyfous described the challenges as the product of a recent cultural transformation: “We were in the golden age of documentary, and now we are entering the corporate age of documentary”.
Through Gamechanger Films (2013), Dreyfous has sought to address the lack of funding for documentary film productions. The documentary space had not experienced the same gender bias as was present in the scripted, narrative-based film world in terms of accessing funding, however it was clear that investors did not understand its value. As Dreyfous indicates,”[it was perceived as] a very second tier, cousin of, step child in movie business”... However, Gamechanger productions had currency because they were acting boldly, defying the odds, and increasingly making a difference. Ultimately, Dreyfous’s mission is to embed the social impact campaign in the filmmaking process and build a pipeline of emerging, diverse and inclusive voices to affect change throughout the world.
“Anything that requires leadership, requires storytelling”
For more information about +Impact Partners and Gamechanger Films work, click on the link listed HERE!