Interview with James Wu from Acumen Fund

James Wu, world traveler (by JenLamBrooklyn)

My friend and former colleague James Wu has generously agreed to be interviewed about his work with Acumen Fund, an organization whose philosophy has helped shape the way I think about aid, enterprise, and the developing world. He’s been incredibly busy lately (always?) – check out the amazing event he’s been working on here – so I particularly appreciate the time he took to reply to my questions. Without further adieu, James Wu:

Give us your “elevator pitch” for Acumen Fund. Go!
At Acumen Fund, we’re trying to change the way the world is tackling poverty. It’s our belief that poverty will continue to exist as long as it’s positioned in terms of income and wealth. But, once you embrace the principle that dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth, you can begin to imagine what a world looks like beyond poverty and start to build solutions that are founded on this principle. Dignity begins when individuals have an opportunity to make choices that will improve their own lives, rather than having to depend on charity or handouts. So, Acumen Fund finds innovative entrepreneurs who are building sustainable businesses in East Africa and South Asia that provide access to critical goods and services like health, housing, water, energy, and agriculture.

What are Acumen Fund’s biggest digital media challenges?
Our biggest challenge is creating a platform that allows our supporters to become long-term stakeholders invested in our mission and true ambassadors of our brand in a sustainable and scalable way. I’d argue that our current user experience is fragmented and does not reflect the ambitions or aspirations of our organization or our community as a whole.

Talk us through the production of one of your recent Acumen Fund videos. Where did the idea originate? Did you have any difficulty executing the concept? How do you feel about the final product?
Good…Better…Even Better was the video that we produced for our end-of-the-year holiday campaign. We’ve been struggling for years to explain Acumen Fund’s model and what makes it unique in simple memorable terms that could be easily understood by a broad audience. This video was our first strategic attempt at doing so and originated from a challenge posed by one of our advisers. The script and treatment for the video went through a dozen iterations. In editing the script, we tried cutting out as much jargon and cliche as possible. We knew we wanted to have several members of our community on camera saying different lines, so had to write a script that could be delivered by non-actors. In developing the treatment, we wanted to use animations to bring the message to life and prevent the piece from becoming just another talking-head video. At the same time, we insisted on custom hand-drawn illustrations over traditional type-based motion graphics to avoid the off-the-shelf feel that had become the standard in the non-profit space, popularized by the Girl Effect. We found Seth Brau by simply scouring YouTube and Vimeo for animated videos and felt that he had the versatility and creativity to deliver what we were imagining but couldn’t quite articulate. We were thrilled with the final result and for the most part, the response from our community was overwhelmingly positive. To date, the video’s been viewed nearly 150,000 times and helped contribute to our biggest holiday fundraising season in Acumen Fund’s history. Most importantly, it continues to serve as a great way to introduce people to the principles behind our work.

If you have any questions for James, leave them in the comments and I’ll see if he’d be willing to make an encore performance.

Tags: Acumen Fund, Africa, Asia, Development, Interview, Poverty