More Than a Spokesperson: Why More Foundations Are Prioritizing External Communications

The website of the L.A.-based Levitt Foundation has feature-film-quality clips of people singing, laughing and doing a conga line over the grass. The funding intermediary UpTogether produces a blog, video series and podcast designed to prove that “what you’ve heard – and may believe – about “poor” people is wrong.” Metta Fund, an aging-focused funder in San Francisco, hosts art exhibitions and tapped actor Danny Glover for a video explaining why we need to treat our elders with respect. And plenty of major funders have rolled out regular newsletters, blogs, even podcasts detailing their work.

In the past, most charitable foundations spent very little time and money talking about their work with the general public. Some still do. This lack of prioritization of communications is understandable in ways. After all, foundations are unique institutions that don’t need to win over voters or capture consumers’ cash. Many foundations continue to carry out their work far from the spotlight.

But overall, philanthropy has upped its communications game in recent years, as these examples show. I’ve found myself speaking to communications people at foundations with multihyphenate roles that include strategic planning, programming and leadership. For these foundations, outward presentation is not just about PR, and in some cases, comms is part of the mission.

So what gives? Why has philanthropy begun investing so much in communications? And what, exactly, does a communications team at a foundation do?

Communications then and now

When I started my career as a journalist back in the 1990s, I assumed that communications jobs attracted other English majors, former reporters, or those unable to land roles in a competitive field. Since then, the world of journalism has grown even more competitive, contracting so dramatically that writing articles and nonfiction books can feel like an expensive hobby. This is true even with philanthropy stepping in to support nonprofit newsrooms around the country. (Witness the Los Angeles Times announcement in January that it is laying off at least 115 people in the newsroom.)

The field of communications, meanwhile, has expanded to include a whole range of new and newly developed creative activities — storytelling, video producing, podcasting, blogging, tweeting, making Instagram reels, branding and “content marketing.” This makes sense for individuals keen to build a platform or become an influencer, and for-profit companies driven to push products and increase brand loyalty. And there’s always been a need for a good public information officer in the halls of government.

Nonprofits, too, need good communications to help court donors, write grants and support campaigns. But foundations sit far from the fray of money-wrangling and customer-seeking, yet many are also tapping into new forms of media and outreach.

Amplifying the message

Foundations, as it turns out, are selling something, too — their vision of social change and their desire to “move the needle on one or many issues,” said Anna Karrer Manley, director of communications at Metta Fund. “In the last 10 to 15 years, the sector has moved away from just having in-house PR to really understanding that to influence change concretely and shift thinking, we have to communicate. You can’t really advance your mission without communications.”

Karrer Manley (who holds a BA in German literature and global studies and a master’s degree in public administration) worked in grantmaking, fundraising and donor communications before moving to Metta Fund to launch its comms department in 2019, hired by the innovative leader Janet Y. Spears. Karrer Manley began by building infrastructure for communications and getting buy-in from the team.

“Then we developed our communications strategy, got clear on target audiences and worked on key messages and our annual communications plan — all tethered to Metta Fund’s organizational objectives,” said Karrer Manley. Citing the statistic that less than 2% of foundation dollars go toward traditional aging-related programs and services, she said, “Our priority audiences are other funders and policymakers. Our goal isn’t just to raise awareness of aging as an equity issue, but also influence other funders to give to aging organizations.”

Metta Fund measures the success of its attempted narrative change by tracking its social media engagement and general interest in the cause. “We have seen greater awareness and greater investment and collaboration from other foundations,” said Karrer Manley.

Supporting nonprofit partners

Vanessa Silberman, the communications director turned executive vice president of the Levitt Foundation, was hired as the third employee after the foundation hired its first professional staff member and an assistant. She oversaw the development of one of the most well-designed, well-written foundation websites I’ve seen. Revising the website was one of her first actions as communications director, and she launched it within a year of starting. The foundation had that website for 10 years and redesigned it a year and a half ago.

“Our website makes the case for why music matters, why public space matters, and why being able to access that for free is important. That’s what my goal is — for people to come away from our website and be like, ‘Wow, yes, music is essential for our civic life, our community life, for bringing us together.’”

The website helps grantees. While the foundation doesn’t need to raise money, the grantees do. As a dedicated communications person, Silber had the time and mental bandwidth to think and write about the larger benefits of music and public space, work that could then help grantees attract more sponsors and local funders, connect with their communities, and draw more high-quality artists to perform in its venues.

“The grantees are in the trenches, doing the work, but because I wasn’t doing that, I had the ability to tell the larger stories of impact,” said Silberman. I could connect the dots — the benefits of music to public health, the importance of public space, its impact on social isolation, how it’s essential to our democracy — all these bigger issues. That benefits the grantees by giving them a larger narrative to lean on and leverage for their own fundraising and building visibility. It gives them more in their own communications toolbox.”

Since Levitt funds performance venues and music series across the country, the “story” is basically the same for all grantees. Having grantees out in the field communicating the higher value of free public concerts amplifies the message of the foundation. “They’ve become these amazing ambassadors who can speak fluently about the work in their communities,” said Silberman.

Other funders lend their communications team’s expertise to grantees to help them tell their stories, sharing dedicated mental power that is often beyond the budget of nonprofits, particularly small, community-based or grassroots groups.

Improving programming

When Levitt began planning its AMP program, a music series for communities that lack a freestanding performance space, Silberman was in on early planning conversations. She said including the communications perspective from the start can actually make for better grantmaking, in this case by looping in public participation early and generating buy-in for a potential investment. For the AMP program, she came up with the idea of building in a public voting component for community applicants. This has served to raise awareness of the program and drum up support for it before it even began.

It also has helped the foundation decide where to invest by gauging the excitement of each community for a music series. “If nobody voted, that was an indicator that the community wasn’t that interested in a free music series or that the nonprofit wasn’t able to rally votes and might not be able to have the desired impact. Also, it helped democratize the grantmaking process while helping us narrow down the applicant pool. For example, we would review the top 25 finalists from online voting, rather than the 50 who originally applied.”

The voting also generated an email list of interested future concertgoers. “This created a starter marketing list for the nonprofit to market concerts to, should it get the grant,” said Silberman.

Learning from grantees and improving morale

Rae Oglesby, chief communications officer at UpTogether, was hired four years ago to build out a communications department for the now-20-year-old organization. UpTogether works on multisector partnerships to create guaranteed income projects around the nation and to garner evidence of their efficacy, as we’ve written.

The organization refers to guaranteed income recipients as “members,” and uses communications to connect with them and learn from them. Oglesby, who came to UpTogether after a decade working as a TV producer, following by a decade in nonprofit communications, spearheaded, among other things, the creation of the blog and podcast, a newsletter for and about members, and a monthly fireside chat on Zoom, hosted by Elton Gumbel, a former television sports anchor.

“We bring in a member from across the country and he asks questions: ‘What’s your story? Tell us about yourself, your goal, what you’ve been able to accomplish?’ And then we ask them their experience with us,” said Oglesby. Members say they often feel undervalued and unseen by the government agencies they interact with, but the fireside chats make them feel valued by the organization and seen as full human beings, said Oglesby.

For staff, who attend the chats, hearing from members can increase their connection to their work. “It’s optional, but it has become a highlight. Hearing from the members reminds them of why they’re doing the work and gives them what they need to power through those tough days,” said Oglesby. She is currently working on other ways to reach and connect with the 60-person, fully remote staff, including through an executive team newsletter and intranet system “to help it not seem so siloed and be able to communicate and stay aligned internally.”

Using various forms of communications has increased website traffic and led to people reaching out, such as college students doing research. “They’ve said, ‘I read this blog, I’ve heard your podcast. I’d love to learn more,’” said Oglesby. “It also supports our fundraising efforts. The team can take some of the pieces of the stories we tell and share them, letting people hear directly from one of our members, in their voice.”

Controlling the narrative

Metta Fund participates in the national “reframing aging” movement, a communications-driven effort to change the narrative around aging to create more public will for better policies for older adults, as I’ve written before. As Karrer Manley told me in the past, “We have in our society ingrained ageist views. We want to tell stories to counter those dark views of aging, and at the same time, bring to life real stories of older adults and the issues they’re facing. Storytelling plays a huge role in our intent to impact narrative change.”

Other comms people I spoke to also mentioned a growing interest in narrative change to support their mission. And while none of them mentioned it, another narrative foundations might want to control is the conversation about the sector itself, specifically the growing trend of assuming donors are self-serving billionaires using foundations mainly to improve their public image.

This narrative matters because criticism and pervasive questioning about the practice of charitable giving could have real-world consequences for how foundations operate, such as heightened government scrutiny and the ever-looming possibility of federal reform.

“It’s not just a vanity plate. It stands for something”

While some philanthropists may shy away from communications altogether due to concerns that seeking publicity will come across as self-aggrandizing, there’s a way to address this worry, said Silberman: talking about the impact of the work and shining a light on the grantees.

With a strong communications strategy, the name of the funder can even become part of the message the foundation wants to convey. Think about the general fascination with MacKenzie Scott’s latest grantees and her intentional use of the terms Yield Giving to signal the value of being a supportive donor looking to hand over power to others. Or the prestige of a MacArthur Fellowship, a hallmark of the world’s best and brightest.

Even smaller private foundations like Levitt can leverage the name as part of the work. “The Levitt name as part of the branding conveys the idea of the foundation — music, joy, transformation — because the mission is so specific and consistent,” said Silberman. “When people hear the name Levitt, they associate it with music, green space, being part of a positive chain of change. There is power in the name because it’s not just a vanity plate. It stands for something.”

Announcing a new player in town

Of course, there is still room for traditional PR in philanthropy, such as when a foundation is just getting started. Take the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, a five-year-old foundation that supports writers of long-form journalism, arts criticism, essays and social reporting (basically, literary journalists who haven’t switched over to higher paying jobs in comms).

“We’re like the little engine that could, trying to create a space to recognize a very specific kind of excellence in the field,” said Daniel Mendelsohn, director of the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, a professor at Bard College and a literary nonfiction writer and author.

To get the word out about its first set of awards, Mendelsohn reached out to Kimberly Burnes, a plugged-in publicist and consultant to the literati, whom he’d hired in the past to promote his own writing. “I just thought, I had never done anything like this, and we wanted to have a publicist who had a Rolodex, who would know who we should be sending press releases to, and who would craft press releases.”

After that first year, the foundation gained the information needed to take the work in-house. Now, Mendelsohn is considering the value of a more robust communications effort to help raise the prestige of the prizes and the work of serious nonfiction writers.

“I would like to put more energy into getting the word out about what we’re doing because it is underrecognized. This is something I now think is pressing. Nobody else is giving away money to these kinds of writers at this level and with this kind of consistency.”

Communications of the future

So what will “Upping the Communications Game 2.0” look like? For one thing, I expect to see more investment in narrative change. “Philanthropy has really caught on to the importance of storytelling, that raising awareness and messaging is not enough; you need to humanize the issues. That’s why so much of philanthropy has moved into storytelling and narrative change, really shifting hearts and minds on the issues,” said Karrer Manley. “Narrative change helps change culture.”

Narrative change is a trending topic, and we’ve already seen narrative change efforts focused on everything from border communities to climate change. Narrative change happens over time, slowly, more at the pace of a novel than a short story. Philanthropy has the ability to invest in long-term processes, making this a natural fit.

Another trend likely to continue is the growing respect for the work of communications professionals. “We all consume communications, so people can take it for granted and not understand the skill set that goes into this,” said Oglesby, noting that she’s seen an increased appreciation of the practice. “It is an art but also a science.”

Finally, more comms staff will likely move into leadership roles, as Silberman has. “It’s not extremely common, but you do see it, and it is an inspiration,” she said. “Because yes, communications matters. Communications is essential.”

Spoken like a true communications person.

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