Author-vloggers Hank and John Green often end their popular “Crash Course” videos with a donation appeal to keep the YouTube show “free for everyone forever.” The multihyphenate brothers now hope they’ve figured out a way to do just that — by changing their production studio’s tax status.
Their educational media company Complexly, which has garnered billions of views through web series that explain just about every classroom subject from animal biology to Latin American literature, will now operate as a nonprofit.
The change is intended to ensure viewers have access to engaging, fact-based content that can compete free of advertisers’ interests in the attention economy. It comes as artificial intelligence gives rise to absurdist ” brain rot ” and distorted deepfake images while public media struggles to make ends meet amid sudden cuts in federal funding.
“Part of what Complexly’s trying to do is create good information on the internet,” Hank told the Associated Press. “Let’s actually just say that this is our goal. Like, our goal isn’t to build a big company and sell it someday.”
“There’s never been more information and yet there’s never been less information that you feel you can trust,” John added. “Our goal at Complexly has always been to make trustworthy content. And making Complexly a public good, for me, is the next step in that process.”
Strong audience and philanthropic support
Nonprofit status has been a consideration for several years, according to Complexly CEO Julie Walsh Smith.
The studio already receives sizable philanthropic funding — including $4.8 million last year. The nonprofit’s initial supporters are led by existing partners such as YouTube, PBS, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Other funders such as Arizona State University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute underwrite a number of “Crash Course” projects.
While about one-tenth of their revenue comes from a YouTube program that gives creators a share of advertising earnings, strong audience support made them confident in their ability to reach individual donors.
Complexly estimates that another tenth of their revenue comes from Patreon, a platform where fans can contribute to their favorite online creators often in exchange for bonus content. Monthly Patreon subscribers tend to give $5 or $10 to help them make shows such as “Crash Course.”
They also sell minted silver “Crash Course” coins every year that can cost thousands of dollars. Hank said they have relationships with the individuals who buy the most expensive versions of the coin — and that most of those high-dollar supporters have said they want to increase their support but maybe “felt a little weird” giving money to a for-profit entity.
The small donors provide general funds that Hank said give them flexibility to “invest in the ideas that we think are most likely to deliver impact through reach.”
It is “hard to do the thing that we have to do where we compete with MrBeast and cat videos and all of the very attention-grabbing dashcam fights that YouTube has to offer,” he said. “But we really take that responsibility very seriously. We are not just here to make educational video. We are here to make educational video that people choose to watch. And so that’s the fight that we are fighting.”
New roles and new shows
The nonprofit transition requires Hank and John, best known for his young adult novels “The Fault in Our Stars” and “Looking for Alaska,” give up any equity they held in Complexly. While the Montana-headquartered nonprofit expects to maintain its staff of roughly 80 employees, Smith says its growth means they no longer require the founders’ “day-to-day leadership.”
John will move forward as “founder emeritus” — he doesn’t know exactly what that means but says he is “looking forward to finding out” — while Hank will join the nonprofit’s board of directors and continue hosting some shows.
“The way I like to think about it is they’re going from leaders of the organization to cheerleaders,” said Smith.
John promised that the viewing experience won’t change much. If anything, he said, there are potential new shows “that have long been great ideas that weren’t possible because they didn’t make sense from a business perspective.”
Complexly is committing $8.5 million to new content that neither its founders nor CEO would discuss yet. But Smith did say they are seeking additional funding for an upcoming series that will go behind the scenes at zoos and museums to spotlight the specimens they don’t display.
As far as new mediums such as TikTok go, Smith said they’re focused on YouTube while staying committed to being in the spaces “where audiences are spending their time.”
Living in an “advertising-funded internet”
The duo has long tried to crack the economics of the internet.
They founded the crowdfunding platform Subbable in 2013 to help creators raise money for specific projects. There was even a point where Hank tried to form a union for creators, whose livelihoods are subject to the unpredictability of social media platforms’ algorithmic priorities and advertising share models.
This shift wasn’t motivated by any doubts about their business’ health, they insisted, but rather other concerns.
“We’ve always worried about being overly reliant on advertising,” John said. “I think that an advertising-funded internet is a complicated place to live, as I’ve observed from the last 25 years of my life.”
By leaning into philanthropic funding, John says the desire is for Complexly to exist “for the good of the people who benefit from it” and not “for anyone else’s benefit.”
“That’s not the same path a lot of digital media companies take,” Smith said. “Often, they’ll put premium content behind paywalls or behind a subscription service. And we’re just never gonna do that.”
No strangers to the nonprofit world
It’s hardly their first foray into philanthropy.
The brothers say they have granted more than $17 million to dozens of charities through their Foundation to Decrease World Suck. They fund those donations with the profits from everyday purchases made on the Good Store, their online retailer.
That familiarity has made them aware of the fact that many nonprofits struggle with the nimbleness required of a digital production studio. But they emphasized that there are many ways to run a nonprofit. John noted that Partners in Health — one of the Good Store’s charitable partners — track tuberculosis in Lesotho with an app that is “on par with anything being done in the private sector.”
“It’s perfectly possible for nonprofits to be innovative and fast movers,” John said. “It’s just that you need to set that up from the beginning.”
“Can we signal to other people that there is no reason why you can’t do this and also model, as we go forward, that if that’s a choice that other people want to make then there’s good ways to do it?” Hank added.
