ALLIED MEDIA PROJECTS
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Allied Media Projects (AMP) cultivates media for liberation. Our media includes all the ways we communicate with the world. Our liberation is an ongoing process of personal, collective, and systemic transformation. We are a network of people and projects, rooted in Detroit and connected to hundreds of other places across the globe. Together, we grow and exchange ways of using media to create the world we need. The many deep-rooted problems our communities face are becoming more pronounced— from police violence and repression of dissent, to economic insecurity, environmental calamity, and more. In this context, we need media-based organizing that will elevate voices of those who are being harmed by these forces, fuel resistance, and offer visionary solutions. We need media that shifts narratives and culture over the long-term towards equity and liberation, while embracing complexity. We need technology that can support new forms of storytelling, circumvent repression, and facilitate h
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Allied Media Conference
The Allied Media Conference is a biennial, 4-day convening hosted in Detroit. The conference explores emerging futures at the intersection of art, technology, education, and visionary organizing. The conference brings together a vibrant and diverse community of people using media to incite change: filmmakers, radio producers, technologists, youth organizers, writers, entrepreneurs, musicians, dancers, and artists. We define media-based organizing as any collaborative process that uses media, art, or technology to address the roots of problems and advances holistic solutions towards a more just and creative world.
Sponsored Projects
Through our Sponsored Projects program AMP brings unique capacities of project support and development to the fields in which we work. The projects we work with tell us that it is rare to find partner organizations with strong social justice values and strong financial management systems. We are supporting these projects to grow and access needed resources, while deeply respecting their commitments to grassroots communities and the principles which guide their work. We provide fiscal sponsorship and financial management. We consult on project planning, management, and evaluation. We support your fundraising and communications strategy.
Speakers Bureau
The AMP Speakers Bureau amplifies the work of people and projects making media for liberation. We assist speakers in distributing models, practices, and theories of media-based organizing for liberation with the shared mission to facilitate education, joy, healing, inspiration, and transformative dialogue.
Where we work
External reviews
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
AMP envisions and attempts to model a world in which we, collectively:
Care for ourselves, each other, other species, and the planet;
Dismantle supremacist systems as they operate upon us and within us;
Assume responsibility for creating new liberatory ways of being, and;
Cultivate life affirming joy.
AMP’s goals are to:
Support and grow our network. We do this through administrative services that increase our communities’ ability to access resources and help make the radical practical.
Convene and shape our network. We do this through transformative events that foster critical connections between people, projects, and ideas.
Amplify the power of our network. We do this through storytelling platforms and programs that distribute media-based organizing genius in a multitude of forms.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Through the Allied Media Conference, the Sponsored Projects program, and the Speakers Bureau, AMP shares and supports strategies for using media arts to advance holistic visions for social transformation.
Allied Media Conference (AMC)
We convene more than 3,500 people biennially in Detroit to innovate and exchange strategies through the AMC. The conference features a unique range of workshop content that includes everything from breakdancing and video-blogging to animation and screen printing. Hands-on sessions take place alongside strategy sessions around how we can use these creative practices for transformative social change. More than half of AMC participants come from Detroit and the southeast Michigan area. The remainder travel to Detroit from more than 200 cities and towns from across North America and internationally.
AMP Sponsored Projects Program
Out of the Allied Media Conference emerge new projects and collaborations that continue year round. Through our Sponsored Projects program, AMP offers these creative projects access to a range of supportive services including financial management, project planning, fundraising support, and communications strategy. We currently work with more than one hundred projects ranging from unincorporated volunteer-driven groups, to larger initiatives pursuing federal non-profit status.
AMP Speakers Bureau
The AMP Speakers Bureau amplifies the work of people and projects making media for liberation. We assist speakers in distributing models, practices, and theories of media-based organizing for liberation with the shared mission to facilitate education, joy, healing, inspiration, and transformative dialogue.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
The convening space, training, resources, and back-end infrastructure AMP provides has contributed to a thriving national civic media ecosystem over the past 20 years. Based in Detroit, AMP serves a local-national and increasingly international network. This network includes artists, technologists, media-makers and organizers who are fighting inequality in their communities on many fronts, through a diversity of tactics. They work on issues such as climate justice, police accountability, equitable development, humanizing education, LGBTQ liberation, and much more. It is a majority people of color and a majority women, trans, and non-binary people. AMP’s three core programs, the Allied Media Conference (AMC), the Sponsored Projects Program (SPP), and the Speakers Bureau are designed to cultivate this powerful network.
The AMC is a leader in the field of national social justice conferences for the way we attempt to model the world we need in the practices of the conference. This looks like: a healing justice practice space where conference participants can receive massage, reiki, acupuncture and other healing services; a safety team that facilitates emotional support and transformative justice protocols in the event that harm takes place at the conference; and a Kids Track that integrates children into conference programming, rather than simply provide childcare. With each year, the AMC incorporates more of these types of experiments in modeling the world we need. As a result, many other national conferences have adopted similar practices.
AMP’s Sponsored Projects Program exists within a growing field of fiscal sponsorship. AMP’s program uniquely serves people and projects working at the intersection of media and social justice who want a fiscal sponsorship partner that is values-aligned. While the program has a national scope, we have a specific commitment to Detroit and are the largest fiscal sponsor regionally. With over 150 projects, we are unique in our size and commitment to projects led by and centering people of color, queer and trans people, and other traditionally marginalized groups. The SPP provides administrative services and shared back-end infrastructure that increases our communities’ ability to access resources and help make the radical practical, by removing common barriers faced by people of color mediamakers and organizers when moving from vision to action.
The Speakers Bureau works to distribute the skills, ideas, and media of the AMP network to the wider public. The SB currently supports 16 educators, writers, poets, actors, and performers producing high-quality education experiences to audiences in SE Michigan and all over the world, coordinating a variety of events, including poetry readings, dance performances, author talks, and live podcast recordings. The SB manages the administrative and logistical responsibilities of each event so that artists have the space to focus fully on their craft.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Demand for AMP’s programs has grown steadily since their inception but in recent years, the pace of growth has accelerated. For example, the average rate of growth in attendance at the Allied Media Conference from 2007 to 2015 was 20% annually. Between 2016 and 2017 attendance grew by 30% and between 2017 and 2018 it grew by 40%. AMP has received a total of 319 requests to join the Sponsored Projects Program since we launched the program in 2014. Nearly half of those have come in the past 18 months. The size and scope of many of our sponsored projects are also growing. For example, since becoming an AMP sponsored project in 2014, the Detroit Community Technology Project’s budget has grown from $244,000 to $1,000,000. Ten sponsored projects now have full time employees housed at AMP.
In 2018, AMP raised and or managed $5.9 million on behalf of our sponsored projects, a significant increase from $3.9 million in 2017. In 2019, AMP raised over $8 million on behalf of projects, and has stewarded $11.3 million YTD in 2020. Additionally, AMP recently purchased a 27,000 square foot property that will provide a permanent home for AMP and for many of our projects and partners.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
ALLIED MEDIA PROJECTS
Board of directorsas of 10/10/2023
Dr. Moya Bailey
Northeastern University
Cézanne Charles
Creative Many Michigan
Dana Britto
Fiscal Management Associates
Helixx C. Armageddon
Viacom Inc.
Elena Rose Vera
Trans Lifeline
Anne Choike
Wayne State University
Kim Hunter
Progress Michigan
Akua Hill
Community Development Advocates of Detroit
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? No -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? No -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? No -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? No -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? No
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 10/29/2020GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.