Ideas Beyond Borders

As an Elevate Prize Fellow, IBB founder Faisal Al Mutar has been inspired to develop two new marketing strategies to advance our goal of becoming the leading source of information for young Arab adults who want to explore and engage with content about democracy, human rights, science, and pluralism. First, we plan to develop a new, full-featured Arabic website, further expansion of our social following, and deepening engagement among our millions of followers with our content. Second, because we are also concerned with championing our message in the West, we envision a new US-facing program featuring a podcast, initially marketed to our 350,000-plus Global Conversations blog audience. The podcast will facilitate a truly global and diverse conversation about the ideas that enable peaceful, modern societies. It will also serve as an extremely powerful content-led engine for sustaining and growing our donor base. Having already benefited directly from the Elevate Prize Foundation’s marketing expertise and financial support, Faisal and IBB are excited about the opportunity to deepen our partnership, and to use the new funding to iterate and grow these transformative initiatives. 

IBB is a way of making good on my promise to make the Middle East a better place. My vision is to create the conditions for a Middle East-inspired and centered age of enlightenment by providing access to critical, censored content--led by and for the region’s young people. 

As someone who grew up in Iraq and as a participant in youth-led movements for change, I have thought long and hard about why we have struggled. Simply put, Arab youth do not have access to the ideas they need to succeed. If you want to create your own pluralistic, peaceful society, you need to understand how they actually work! That’s why I created IBB as a digital-first educational platform for overcoming the region’s authoritarians and their censorship, and that’s why we must become the leading source of knowledge for Arab youth who want to explore content about democracy, human rights, science, and pluralism. This is how we will build a youth movement equipped to transform the Middle East and to put an end to the extremism and violence that plagues us.

In the Middle East, basic information about living a modern informed good life is almost entirely inaccessible. Only 3% of online content is available in Arabic, which is stunning since Arabic is the fourth most spoken language among internet users. Why? Authoritarian regimes, sectarianism, extremism, and censorship combine to create a crippling lack of access to empowering information about science, human rights, economics, and more. As a result, Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) youth face devastating gaps in knowledge and are ill-equipped to create the modern society they deserve.

To meet this challenge, IBB launched Bayt Al Hikma 2.0 (or the House of Wisdom 2.0) with the express aim of creating the conditions for a revived Enlightenment in the Middle East. BAH2.0 is a free-to-access online hub of knowledge and a bustling community where youth can explore and discuss significant ideas that are otherwise largely inaccessible. By translating and sharing relevant topics and inspiring discussion, BAH2.0 rekindles the pursuit of knowledge and diversity of thought that creates the basis for a vibrant civil society. BAH2.0 is a culturally relevant, powerful, and optimistic statement of the potential Middle Eastern youth have to seize and create their own future.

IBB is uniquely positioned as the sole current international NGO in this space, with distinct advantages as a disrupter of the MENA region status quo:

• We are digital-first, and possess a large social following and a rapidly growing user base, and are therefore scalable;

• We remain laser-focused on providing translated content about key topics that Arab youth otherwise find it extremely difficult to access;

• BAH2.0 content is vital, interesting, and engages millions of Arab youth, who are watching videos on critical thinking, human rights, and more--all topics that might ordinarily be considered boring; 

• The topics we choose are designed to equip Arab youth with the tools they need to think for themselves and sustain change on their own;

• As an Iraqi-led organization with deep roots in the MENA region, we do not face the same distrust with our target audience as do Western government-led organizations;

• This also allows IBB to be perceived as a culturally relevant and more trustworthy brand;

• As a US INGO, we face significantly fewer constraints from MENA region censorship efforts; and

• Our publishing and social media distribution are regional and even global in character, whereas local publishers are often limited to national distribution.

In 2020, IBB engaged more than 30 million young people with its Stop the Spread Covid-19 public education campaign, significantly exceeding our original targets. In 2021, we expect to engage more than 50 million via our social media channels and to attract more than 1 million website users. 

IBB's goal is to become the leading source of information for young Arab adults who want to explore and engage with content about democracy, human rights, science, and pluralism. By 2024, having built the digital content engine, marketing program, and distribution network and scaled its social media and website user base beyond the 15 million mark, IBB will be competitive with the region’s state-sponsored media outlets.

As a startup nonprofit, IBB currently measures social media impact (# followers, # likes, video, and content views, engagement statistics). We will deploy our first BAH2.0 user survey to both our social media followers and website subscribers later this year, to assess user interest in our content; self-reported change in knowledge, awareness, and practice; and net promoter scores. By next year, we expect to be able to set targets for user change in knowledge and awareness. Results will be used to deepen engagement and increase impact.

Bayt Al Hikma 2.0 is IBB’s digital-first strategy for enabling millions of MENA youth to engage significant ideas and concepts that will enable a renewed, enlightened way of living in the region. Having engaged 30 million through social media in 2020, our goal is to engage 50 million this year. While this might be considered indirect, IBB believes the program is impactful based on its scale and uniqueness: BAH2.0 stands alone as a home-grown alternative to a veritable flood of disinformation from authoritarian-run regional media sources. IBB has thus far directly served 149 youth, and expects more than 70,000 will receive IBB educational resources in 2021. Further, we expect our new BAH2.0 website (in development) to grow from 500,000 to 1 million users in 2021. Depending on new features and timing, we expect an additional small percentage of these will receive educational services, thereby increasing the direct service count.

IBB's goal is to become the leading source of information for young Arab adults who want to explore and engage with content about democracy, human rights, science, and pluralism. IBB has set new goals for BAH2.0, including (by 2024) annually engaging 100 million MENA youth with Enlightenment-oriented content, educating tens of thousands of youth about critical thinking, human rights, pluralism, science and other Enlightenment ideas; and directly expanding the ability of hundreds of activists in the region to spread Enlightenment values through the Innovation Hub, IBB’s new fellowship program. We plan to achieve them by continuing to invest in marketing BAH2.0, and investing in the infrastructure required to provide engaging educational content. From a UN Sustainable Development goal perspective, IBB’s goals most closely align with Education’s target 4.7, which identifies “human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution” as a contribution to sustainable development. Our monitoring and evaluation approach continues to develop and now includes setting and monitoring output targets (e.g., social media engagement, # website users, # people completing courses or self-study programs, % change in knowledge, etc.).

IBB primarily faces a financial constraint. For this reason, IBB is investing significant resources in individual major gifts and foundation relationship development with the goal of doubling annual revenue to at least $4 million by 2024. With Elevate Prize Foundation’s technical and financial support, IBB would develop a US-facing “Global Conversations” podcast program (see below for description) that would provide a) meaningful program content; b) sustainable earned revenue in US and Canadian markets, with some potential in Europe and Australasia as well; and c) a “native” source of qualified individual giving prospects that would enable IBB to meet its philanthropic revenue goals. This last is of great strategic importance for an international organization like IBB, which does not have a native constituency in the US. 

With increased revenue in hand, IBB would in turn invest in the technical and human resource infrastructure needed to meet its MENA-based impact goals. Apart from investing in program services, IBB will also need to invest resources in protecting online privacy for the BAH2.0 community--absolutely critical given their exposure to authoritarian pressure campaigns in the region.

IBB is prepared to leverage the Elevate Prize in two ways. First, by investing in a new North American-focused Global Conversations podcast (working title, also the name of our Global Conversations page, which has a following of more than 300,000) featuring the ideas that propel the pro-Enlightenment movement and elevating the thinkers and activists who make it happen, both in the Middle East and around the world. We have reason to believe success is possible because the Global Conversations page, founder Faisal Al Mutar and co-founder Melissa Chen already have significant social media followings; the latter appear frequently on podcasts.

A tailored media campaign designed to successfully launch this podcast is crucial to its success. With regard to the public good, we believe the podcast will inspire US-based activism in support of Enlightenment values at home and abroad. In these times, authoritarianism and its adherents threaten liberal, enlightened societies everywhere. As we have suggested above, a successful, growing podcast would yield both earned revenue and a natural constituency for additional philanthropic support that will propel IBB’s growth.

As an organization that considers pluralism to be a core value, Ideas Beyond Borders is committed to diversity in recruiting board, advisory board, staff, and consultants. IBB accounts for diverse viewpoints and perspectives when recruiting, in addition to considering gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion.  IBB’s urgent recruiting priority is to diversify its Board and Advisory Board, with particular attention to gender, race, and ethnicity. We have in the last month recruited one new female board member, and have two more in the pipeline.

The IBB leadership team includes the Board, Advisory Board, and staff. From a programmatic perspective, it is most important that IBB be “of, by, and for the Middle East.”  While founder Faisal al Mutar is the most prominent indicator, the MENA-based team is entirely MENA (no ex-pats), 50% female, resides in 12 different countries, and includes LGBT members. From a US perspective, there are three full-time staff; of these, the Executive Director is one and the second, IBB’s program director, is female. The Advisory Board is 25% female and 25% persons of color. The board, consisting of five members, consists of two persons of color and one female.

My work as a counter-extremism practitioner includes time as a manager at Movements.org (initiated by Jigsaw). I continue to share insights at Jigsaw and continue with many speaking engagements (ramping up again as the pandemic recedes). IBB, an organization that helps prevent extremism by promoting a positive, pluralistic Middle East, emerged directly from my immersion in the discipline. I utilized my more than a decade of experience building online movements (including Global Conversations at 300,000+) to build our following of 4.8 million. I also built an international network of professionals, academics, activists, and social influencers, whom I now call upon to share insights with our followers or develop new initiatives. I parlayed my network and experience as a translator to build IBB’s translation competency. We now have more than 40 translators, many with advanced degrees in medicine, science, or engineering. 

We also built core competencies in communications and digital advertising. As a result, we are highly capable of creating digital content to hyper-target MENA youth, including 'memeable' videos, graphics, and social media posts to communicate contentious or difficult-to-understand material. In short, if I don’t personally have the knowledge, I find talent to get the job done.

At this time last year, IBB was in the midst of confronting the COVID-19 crisis. Early on, we pivoted successfully from our normal content to presenting accurate, factual information about the pandemic and equipping Middle Eastern youth with the tools they needed to resist the conspiracy theories and disinformation regional authoritarians and extremists were spreading. 

It was risky: drop everything and do this instead? We felt we had to act. With the world turned upside down by this pandemic, we had a moral imperative. What I still didn’t know at the time was whether we would meet our goals, or fully fund the effort. 

In fact, we blew past our goals and engaged more than 30 million Middle Eastern youth with our Stop the Spread campaign. And along the way, we built an entirely new way of delivering our program, including video, infographics, articles, books, podcasts and more. Not only that, our funders came along with us, ultimately contributing more than $500,000. 

This year we are deploying the same campaign-based, multimedia strategy to reach more than 50 million people with our Middle East Enlightenment campaign to engage youth with the idea that, in fact, a renewed Enlightenment is possible.

IBB and Faisal have been featured in the news: 

If selected, IBB would invest Prize grant funds in developing and marketing a new Global Conversations podcast, primarily for the North American market, but also Europe and Australasia. We believe the project would also capitalize on the Foundation’s strength in marketing and communications, so in our view, this would be a collaboration involving the best of what the Foundation has to offer, as opposed to “just funding.” 

From a goal perspective, the investment would help establish a US-based program initiative, something we consider to be important in developing a global movement elevating Enlightenment values. That said, a content-rich podcast that attracts regular listeners is, in our view, the path to developing sustainable earned and philanthropic revenue. 

The reason for this is that in an increasingly crowded marketplace, donors are deluged with appeals from any number of sources. The podcast will offer engaging content, and help differentiate IBB from other international causes. Thus, Global Conversation podcast subscribers would contribute to earned revenue, but would also become qualified individual donor prospects given their resulting awareness of the IBB cause. 

IBB collaborates with more than 20 organizations and dozens more on a less formal basis. Key partners include the Wikimedia Foundation and MENA region Wikipedias. IBB is currently conducting a research project designed to help Wikipedia create a sustainable volunteer base that creates Arabic content; also, more than 20,000 Wikipedia articles have been translated by IBB to date. IBB also partners with the cryptocurrency nonprofit MobileCoin to support the technology’s use in the region. We also partner with Jigsaw (Google) in using Project Shield, which provides security against DDOS attacks, and Tunnelbears, to provide donated VPNs to protect vulnerable IBB translators. 

MENA region-based social media partnerships such as I Believe in Science, Egyptian Researchers, and others have significantly expanded IBB’s reach by more than 3 million followers. IBB also collaborates with publishing, translation, and production partners, including Masterword, Fuse School, Asafeer, Hindawi, and others. E.g., our partnership with Masterword, an internationally regarded translation company, resulted in the high-quality translation of 15 books, including Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now.  

IBB is committed to collaboration, and regularly engages in conversation to both better understand successes and failures in program design and delivery, and to identify additional opportunities for collaboration.