Project Multatuli’s Devina Heriyanto on running a membership program with empathy and curiosity
Devina Heriyanto is the membership manager at Project Multatuli, a public service journalism collective in Indonesia.
In this Splice Pink episode, we spoke with Devina shortly after we met her at Splice Beta in Chiang Mai in November 2022. She talked us through the intricacies of bringing ‘depressing’ reporting around marginalised peoples to a community that supports Project M’s mission.
We got a sense of that mission when we asked Devina to describe their core members. “It's people like me,” she replied. “People who have empathy, people who have intellectual curiosity, humility, and [with] solidarity to support this organisation who is doing great things [that don’t] necessarily benefit them personally.”
Have a listen, be inspired — and then sign up.
Hosted by Rishad Patel and Alan Soon. Produced by Alan Soon.
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The transcript
Alan: Hey everybody. This is Splice Pink. And Pink is where we have quick conversations with people across the global media ecosystem from media startup founders, journalists and funders to all the tech data design folks. And that of course includes membership
Rishad: managers. Like Devina Heriyanto, she's the membership manager at Project Multatuli an outfit we have great respect for and Devina's based in Jakarta.
Devina tell us, tell us more about your role.
Devina: Hi, yeah, my name is Devina. Got to be here. I'm working as. Membership manager for Project Multatuli or as we like to call it Project M. And I'm doing everything regarding membership from setting up the program itself. Like before the launch I borrow a lot from the Membership Puzzle Project guide, and up to now I'm running the day to day operation, which includes thinking about merchandise, shipping them off to our CEO or Friends of Multatuli, and also asking our members why they haven't renewed their membership.
So yeah, that's me.
Alan: So you ask them why have you not renewed and what is often the, the, the answer you get?
Devina: They don't have money, or sometimes it's just, I forget .
Rishad: So I want to jump in with a question that comes before you ask them why they're not renewing. What's the number one reason to be a member at Project M?
Devina: We actually did a survey back in July asking our members and also former members why they decided to join us. And the two most common answers are because they feel solidarity with us, with what we do as public service journalism. And the second one is that because they think that some of our reporting is relevant to them.
Alan: And maybe this is also a good, a good time for you to talk a little bit about the kind of reporting you do. Yeah. We've, we've gone straight into talking about your role, but I, you know, I think for, for those who've never heard of Project Multatuli, what is your kind of top line explanation of the work that you do?
Devina: Yeah. At Project Multatuli we serve the marginalised, and that's it. That's kind of our whole mission statement. We serve marginalised voice, the underreported, and also whole power accountable. We believe that by serving the marginalized, we can do the next two things. Like representing the underrepresented and holding power accountable because there's a news desert in Indonesia in which the marginalised are not talk about.
And when we talk about the marginalised in Indonesia, that includes like an immense majority of people actually, because In Indonesia, sometimes the news, the mainstream media only like to talk about the experience of male guy living in Jakarta or in Java the most populated island in Indonesia. So there are lots of people who live in other parts of the country whose experience are not talk about, and they are facing structural challenges that are not becoming attention in media and also by the government.
Alan: So what are some of these types of stories that, that you do, you know, when you say marginalised? So you mean non Java, non-male, non Jakarta citizens. What, what makes up a typical story that you would work on?
Devina: We have running stories of indigenous people who live all across Indonesia. These communities live in remote places, remote areas.
They're dealing with conflict. And they're basically mostly portrayed as having land conflict with the government because they're also considered as illegal squat, even though they have been living there for like generation before the country even came into being. And we also did the stories about young people.
We have two stories on that. First one is, burnout or the burnout generations in which we talk about how young people, This is mostly still Jakarta based stories, how young people having to struggle balancing between school and work because they have to do internship and also because they want to pursue their career right in later future, but they're still very young and they're becoming burnt out.
Such a young age and sometimes the media don't talk about that. The media only Talk about how you can secure this internship, what you learn from that and what inspiration can you get from these people without talking about the toll that it takes on the young people itself. The next one we have is underprivileged, Generation Z or underprivileged Gen Z because in Indonesia, and I think it also applies in other country as well, sometimes the media and the government talk about Gen Z as this tech savvy, very opportunistic, highly educated, and that's not the real thing.
That's only like one person. So when we talk about the marginalised, the underrepresented, we talk about it in like every size, like from their ways of living, indigenous people to the young people who are not being represented truthfully in the media to the blue collar worker. So we have a series we call or Cogs in the Machine.
You. We portray the life of the courier, of logistic companies who have, you know work from day to night in order to deliver package for the e-commerce, and also logistic startups that gain the most benefit and also profit from them.
Rishad: That's amazing. You know, I've. Just looking at what you're talking about and what you've, what you've done in your past. You know, it seems like Multatuli really scored a membership manager that understands mental health, understands community. understands, you know, the lives of people that aren't necessarily like us in the media, and that you are able to understand where these people come from and have that empathy for them.
Devina: Yeah, I think it's because I like to read. And that's it. , I like to read everything from mental health to the experience of indigenous people and also critics regarding the big tech and startups like techno, solutionism and all that. So I think basically it all comes down to my own curiosity.
Like, I like learning about new things and also the project model is way of presenting new stories that haven't been covered in mainstream.
Rishad: I have one, one question about what, what, for you in your very specific point of view, you have this empathy. You also, you also have a strong allergy to stereotypes, it sounds like.
And so in your view, who is your core member in, in Multatuli who is that persona? Who is that? What are they like? Describe them to us.
Devina: It's people like me. People who have empathy, people who have intellectual curiosity and also humility and a kind of like solidarity to support this organization who is doing great things but not necessarily benefit them personally.
Like for our members, they. Really get the trade in our reportings because they're kind of like privileged people, but they feel the need to have this sort of like reporting strike and they want to support us because they feel that it's necessary, even though it doesn't benefit them personally.
Alan: Can you talk a little bit about the, the members themselves?
Like who stands out for you? You know, when, when you're going through your membership list and you're looking at all these names, who are you most proud of to have in there? I mean, you don't have to name that person, but just, just give us a, a, a profile of what that person is like.
Devina: Okay. So got, with that, we talk about the reportings regarding or Cogs earlier.
There's one member who after we've done that reporting, even before we have membership program, and he joined as a member, this person set up a petition for the government to take care about this problem, the problems that facing the gig economy workers. He set up a petition along with other organizations.
We don't have a union e-commerce worker here, but there is a really popular account on Instagram. His name is e-commerce. I will send you, Link later. And they basically become the informal union for startup workers in Jakarta. And together with the person who later become our member, they set up a petition to the Ministry of Work.
I forget the official nomenclature. And they based this reportings based on our series of reports. They waste the petition based on our series of reports. Yeah. And they even managed to gain like thousands of signatures and even met, even met with the minister herself. So I guess I'm proud to have this kind of person as the members, because he does not only care, but he actually does the hard work of mobilizing people, organizing this petition and so on.
Alan: What is your, the role of Multatuli in that, in that sense? Do you join these types of petitions? Do you also advocate for, for, you know, some of these issues?
Devina: At first because that happened while we were still in the very beginning of our work, so we didn't really join in actively. But personally, we help spread out this petition. And also later when we make another reporting that gain public attention, we help people who want to channel their donation to, in order to help the subject of our reporting.
Because again, the subject of our reporting are mostly underrepresented people. They're underprivileged and they need all the help that they can get, so, And our writers and contributors help to do that kind of work as well.
Rishad: How cool is that? You know, I have one complaint Devina . That I was, I'm actually trying to, you know, I was on your about page on the Multatuli website and after reading that beautiful page I really think you need a join call to action there because you've described your mission so beautifully.
You've described the, you know, how your people stand behind that mission and what they do. You've got those great photographs, and that's exactly where you need to catch me as a, as a member. But I'm persistent, so I'm gonna be, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and be a member on this call anyway.
Devina: Thank you. Are you on the English version of our website?
Yes. Ah, because on our English version we do membership in Indonesia language. Right? So we don't offer membership to foreign audience, and that's why it's kind of like hidden in the English version. But you can also donate or go to our Indonesia version and there's. Call to action button. I learned a lot from your, your about page presentation in Vida.
And while going through that session, I check our website about page, and I like, sort of like mental checklist on my, that's we have, that we, we should have this
Alan: That's always a good reason to act on it. I think that's, that's really incredible. You know, when, when we first heard about this project, it was from your co-founder Evi, right? And this was over a year ago, I think. And look at where you are now. And you were just telling us before we started recording that there are now 17 people as part of this organization, and that's really quite amazing.
Can you, can you talk a little bit about the different roles that you have in.
Devina: Yeah, so Project Multatuli has three main like chambers. I guess the first one is organization. That's where the people who built the foundation of the organization and keep us running, like they're the administration people.
Finance tax, IT consultant. And also the our legal aid. And the second one is editorial because yeah, we are a public journalism collective, so we should have an editorial team and we only have two writers. Who are full-time with us today, but we work with a lot of contributors, writers, and also illustrators as well as photographers all across Indonesia because we need them to report stories from their own respective region.
And the third one is sustainability, Audis development and membership, which I'm a part of. So there's also a collaboration director. Who come with us, who come with me to beta u There's audience development manager. He used to work at a labor union, so he's really great at understanding the things that we talk about at Project M and, and also me who works in membership.
Rishad: I'm curious about your, your reader revenue products. What are your plans ahead? I know that you guys get well-deserved grants and that you have a membership program, obviously. What are the plans ahead if you're, if you're able to share them with us?
Devina: Yeah. Our plan is to increase the contribution of membership, our greater revenue to our operation, up to like 30% in the next five years.
It's a long battle because right now we only have like five to. 10% at average. Yeah. It fluctuates from months to months. Depends on the kind of reports that we publish. And we want to reduce our reliance on Grant because it's not sustainable, obviously. But aside from membership and also grant, we also have this thing we call impact service, in which we collaborate with NGOs mostly who have.
Campaigns on the things that we also care about. And they help us pre help us produce reports and campaign on these issues because we are small organization and our reportings because we're doing slow journalism and we're covering parts of Indonesia that are not excessive. Easily accessible.
We need higher costs than the regular reporting. So yeah, this impact service and collaboration help us a lot in terms of making our content.
Rishad: So I'm really excited about your editorial meetings. You know, when I, when I buy your basic membership, I get invited to your editorial. That's, that's kind of cool.
I mean, you know, that's something we ask people to do all the time when, you know, when we ask them, Please talk to your audience and please talk to your users and talk to your community. What happens at those meetings and do they add to your, how do they add to your editorial plan?
Devina: We don't really have a long term plan in terms of our editorial, so can open these meetings to our members because we're doing it slow. We're taking deliberate approach to our reporting, and when this meeting happened, we invite our members. Right? Obviously, not a lot of them come like only like 10%, but it's good enough because it's already the biggest editorial meeting I've ever been in, and I work at a mainstream media for like four years before.
We get to hear our members thoughts or ideas and questions about our reportings, and at first we do it like the regular ways. Our managing editor will talk about the things that we have done are doing and will do, will do in the next like three months. And then our members get to chime in, ask questions provide suggestions and so on and so forth.
But then I told you that we did a survey back in July, right? One of the members said that this editor meeting feels like a town hall . Which I do not want that to happen. So and this member suggests that it would be better if we do pre-meeting surveys in which we take in question and ideas.
Alan: So I, I would've thought that, that a town hall is a compliment, right? This is the only way of gathering people together. Why? Why is it not?
Devina: It's too serious for us. We're never that kind of company. . Our meetings are, are always a mix between like an actual meeting and also a gossip session since we work on online. Right. We only get to meet every this meeting happen. Yeah. So we want to do it like as casual as possible in order to foster, like trust, belonging and so on, so forth.
And having. In a town hall style, We'll, I guess eliminate our members because they feel like it's a one way thing instead of two way conversation. So yeah. Anyway, back to the survey. So we started doing pre-reading survey and I put a. Put the ideas on Google Jam and during the meeting the members can vote on the jam on which ideas they want to talk about.
And then we start from that on like the first meeting we did that with the pre-meeting survey and also the Google Jam. The meeting changed, like it was really member led discussion. They. Talk really deeply about the topic of inequality in education in Indonesia, and our members are really smart.
They're like way smarter than us, and they told us a lot of things that we wouldn't have even thought about. So yeah, we start we just listen, took some notes, and we incorporate this suggestion into our series.
Alan: What would you say has been the, the, the most impactful feedback that you've received so far from, from your members?
Devina: Project Multatuli got its name from Multatuli which is a pseudonym for Max from this writer, right. And well, that itself means that I have suffered a lot. So our reporting present a lot of suffering in it, and our members constantly tease us about that. They say that, Oh, your writings are too dark. It's gonna depress me to write it, to read it sometimes.
And we feel that. Okay, fair enough. We cannot do that to everyone because to read us it doesn't only require time, but also mental energy and kind of, empathy or emotional preparation to do that because again our reporting is depressing and they constantly ask us to do these kind of reporting that is more inspiring, like hearted positive in a way.
And so when we want to set an agenda for indigenous people series. We think about that really hard. How do we present indigenous people in a way that is not depressing, but is also relatable to our audience? So yeah, we try to find more stories that are presenting not only their suffering, but also their resilience and.
How the grassroot movement can change things and so on and so forth. So that's really impactful because if our members haven't said that, probably we're gonna stick to these sad, depressing stories.
Alan: Earlier you, you spoke about how you want to increase your, your memberships basically you wanna double it in three years, you said, I think if that's, if my math works in five years, Yeah.
What's, what's, what's your biggest challenge in that? Is it getting the word. Is it about demonstrating the value of the membership or, or the journalism that goes behind it? What's what's the biggest challenge here?
Devina: For me right now, it's retention because sometimes people become our members because of our reportings, right?
And we have lots of topics that we need to cover. And sometimes when we move on to the next topic, our. Don't stay with us. They just, you know, forgot to renew their membership and they feel like they don't have any more interest in us because we already changed the topic. We already move on from the topics that make them sign up.
In the first place. And I guess the second thing is gaining more audience because we're still new and we're very niche in a way. Like we have this long report, thousands of words, and nobody reads this reports. So it's kind of hard to market ourself to people because obviously what we're doing is important, but how do we make it important and personally relevant to more audience, Right.
Rishad: Or perhaps different audiences, you know? Yeah. Because it feels like you guys do so many things and that you have this community that wants to support. and maybe there's a huge opportunity there to actually get the right products into the right, you know, to the right users and form, form audiences. From there, I'm sure you have a very dedicated audience for your reports.
At an perhaps institutional level or a policy level. I can, I can see that if I worked in policy, that I would really depend on Multatuli for a lot of my, you know, a lot of the way that I want my organization to think about Indonesia and the. So that might be maybe, maybe the answers lie there, you know?
As you can see, you know, we never stop being spliced and we never stop being excited about working with organizations as yours. That's why we love you guys so much.
Devina: Thank you. We'll think about that — it actually makes sense
Rishad: we're gonna have to wrap this right now. So thank you Divina. People you need to become a member.
It's projectmultatuli.org. Go go. Sign up. Go be a friend of Project M. That's a good way to start helping Devina reach her goal to get more members and spread the word. They have a five year plan and you can be part of it right here. Thank you. Yeah. That's a wrap for this episode of Spice. If you like this podcast you want get more, please subscribe.
Better yet, share this with someone and get in touch. We're on splicemedia.com thank you.
Alan: Thank you.