10 Bright Ideas for storytellers, AI-ers, funders, community builders

👋 Hello! Welcome! And greetings to everyone, including new folks like Kate, Vinny, Zoe, Francesca, Matt, Sophia, Ejolee, Bobbie, Raina, and Janet.

Thank you to Francesca for being a supporting member of Future Community. I'm glad it worked for you and, well, the support makes a tremendous impact on the work and my ability to put this together. Thank you.

Starting next week we're mixing things up a bit. Should be especially useful for job seekers. In the meantime...onward, there's a lot to share today...

How nonprofits and creators are using AI for content

Last week I hosted a dozen(ish) smart folks at Newsletter Nerd Club. We talked about how we're using AI (and not using it) as part of our content creation, audience development and workflow support.

Julius Honnor who runs Contentious and created Content Health Check joined to share insights into how AI can support content strategy (should you have one).

Get the full recap and links here–and thank you 🙏 to all who participated.

AI and capital are wrecking our toolset and nonprofits aren't ready

I've been in and seen several conversations the past couple weeks about big changes to software that consultants, small businesses, and nonprofit groups use. Some of these shifts have been a long time coming. There's a whole ecosystem of mission-critical eCRMs and data products owned by Bonterra, several of which are being sunset or receiving little to no development (e.g. Salsa has been languishing for years; I hear that Action Kit will no longer support a Salesforce connector).

Organizations with the time, money, and capacity move to other, sometimes better, tools. All are dependent on their provider and probably one or several consultants, not to mention qualified and supported staff, to make use of their investment.

There's another class of smaller built for purpose tools that organizations big and small are losing. Lex Roman wrote this week about Airtable being acquired by Bending Spoons. TL;DR if you're an Airtable user you should map an exit soon.

Harvest, a time tracking and invoicing tool used by independent contractors and small businesses (I've been a user for 14 years) was acquired by Bending Spoons last year. These days, Harvest is busy sending out notices about 1,000% price increases to clients big and small.

There are plenty of good tools (and good people in software). And few if any organizations or independent workers who can roll their own tools. But way too many organizations have far too little time, money, or expertise to navigate turbulent tech business waters, much less build and maintain their own tools.

AI's role in this is two-fold. One, the costs being passed onto tech providers for AI services and development, not to mention AI-powered "features," have to be passed onto someone. Usually the user.

Two, "roll your own with AI" is increasingly the solutions advice coming to comms and development teams (and small biz) from leadership, boards, and consultants. There's a time and place for doing your own tooling. But constructing a stable of products dependent on AI-produced code you neither own nor control (and still pay for) isn't a system. It's a swamp.

Am I overstating the potential problems ahead? Is this just more of the same? Tools and companies supporting them come and go, so do people using them. Perhaps this is nothing much. But I see more and more effort (and money) going into tech tools, digital marketing systems, databases...and less going into direct service, education, organizing.

There's a greater need than ever for holistic organizational and sector-wide tech ecosystems that are nimble, NOT mission critical if they fail or go bellyup, and can grow (and shrink) with budgets and goals.

Yes, this is a pitch: It's time to raise more money and build community doing it.

I mentioned this last time and here it is again: we have room for a few new (and great) clients. We've recently helped groups like Earthworks, Story of Stuff, California Budget and Policy Center analyze their content, email, and digital strategies to improve retention and revenue.

Find out about our half-day assessments, strategy and coaching retainers, and the ways we can work together.

I'm also taking on a few individual job coaching clients if that's of interest.

Bright Ideas

Smart people with big ideas and useful tools...don't miss these.

First off, a can't miss how-to pieces for nonprofit communicators and creators: How do you actually start clipping for politics? by Max Levy is a great guide to the tools and tricks of pulling video shorts from the digital firehose. Not just for politicos.

Idea 1. What Americans Think About AI includes results of a national poll run by my friends at RAD Campaign and Women Who Tech. One takeaways for me is the saliency of concerns about social, community, and personal impacts. Americans are more concerned about AI's use in deepfakes, election disinformation, and the sexualization of women and children than its impact on jobs or the economy.

These are issues of power and agency. As with climate change, few if any leaders are acting on these big gnarly issues. No collective sensemaking is happening. Into the void steps collective anxiety. This is also driving and related to the backlash narrative around data centers.

Related: Pew did some research on American views of AI last March. Interesting read. Fewer questions about specifics of anxiety or potential.

Idea 2. Why did the head of Condé Nast direct his staff to prepare for a world without search traffic? Because Google zero is where we're headed and you need business models that don't rely on search. Read more in this Editor & Publisher article. Thanks to Phillip Smith for the link.

Idea 3. Check out Narrative Infrastructure: Arts and Culture for Liveable Futures, a new report researched and written by Navdha Malhotra at ClimArts. Thanks to Joshua Low for the link.

Idea 4. Anatomy of an AI Killchain is some seriously good digital visual storytelling. Found via the great Upturn newsletter, one of my faves.

Idea 5. Empty Storytelling: Why Your Success Stories Seem To Fall On Deaf Ears by Victor Akumu is a clear piece of insight on why so many "report back" pieces fall short. It's not about you (or the data). It's about results on the ground.

Idea 6. How an AFP beach snap became emblem of Europe's wildfire summer is the backstory of the the photo showing two beachgoers watching France burn across the lake.

Idea 7. Is the era of foundation dominance coming to a close? by Jan Masaoka for Proximate Press. Donor money is increasingly going into DAFs and other instruments that behave quite differently than foundations. I'd add that a lot of high impact moments and movements are skipping the foundation-donor-nonprofit intermediaries altogether. For better or worse.

Idea 8. Want to build audience and revenue through live events? These five news nonprofits have some ideas to get you started by Sophie Culpepper for Nieman Lab. News organizations (and many other nonprofits) need to rethink events as spaces of meaningful action, belonging, and (yes!) revenue.

Idea 9. Francesca Koe on Narrative vs. Messaging — and How Stories Shift Power is a great conversation for comms folks. Francesca, in conversation with Peter Altman, does a great job laying out the power and practice of narrative, shared language, and power.

Idea 10. Melissa Daar Carvajal, a storyteller and strategist working with the Schott Foundation for Public Education, on how movements are long-term projects made of real people, families, and relationships:

...sitting in Mississippi, listening to these stories, I was reminded that movements are often built by people who simply refuse to give up on their communities.

Events and Training

• Splice Beta is an annual 3 day event for news, audience, and related creatives across Asia and the world. It happens in Chiang Mai each November. The founding team chose to step back from it earlier this year but the community is taking over and that's fantastic. Here's the Splice Beta: Fork It! info page.

Want to get your event or training out to the Future Community network? We're happy to share. Click reply and make sure we know about it.

Future Community Jobs

These are the most recent jobs. You'll find many more on the full Future Community job list.

Audience, content, journalism and news roles

• Staff Product Designer, Mobile : NPR [Remote in the US / Washington, DC]
• Lead Editor : Fuller [Remote] ⏱️ August 17
• News Director : KUNC [Greeley or Fort Collins, CO]
• Managing Editor and Government Reporter : The Tulsa Flyer [Tulsa, Oklahoma]

Communications

• Communication Specialist : Golden Gate Regional Center [San Francisco Area]
• Vice President of Communications and Narrative Strategy : Proportional Representation Hub [Remote in the US]
• Senior Director, Digital Communications : American Progress [Washington, D.C.]
• Chief Communications Officer : Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory [Berkeley, CA]
• Senior Director of Communications : For The People (FTP) [Oakland, California]
• Communications Specialist (Content Writer and Editor) : The Agroecology Fund (AEF) [Remote] ⏱️ August 31
• Director, Communications : The R Street Institute [Remote / Washington, DC preferred]
• Senior Manager, Marketing & Communications : The Moth [New York City]
• Deputy Director, Internal Leadership Communications : Gates Foundation [Seattle, WA]

Nonprofit organizations

• Director of Social Media Production : The Resonance Network [Remote in the US]
• Manager, Events and Conferences : Planned Parenthood [New York City or Washington, DC]
• Associate Director of Marketing : American Rivers [Remote in the US]
• Government Relations Director : American Rivers [Washington, D.C.]
• Program Associate : School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S) [Stanford, CA]
• Chief of Staff : Mother’s Outreach Network (MON) [Washington, DC] ⏱️ August 17
• Manager, Legislative Affairs : Common Cause [Washington, DC]
• Alaska State Director : The Wilderness Society [Alaska] ⏱️ August 9
• Senior Program Officer, Resilient Rivers : World Wildlife Fund (WWF) [Washington, DC]
• Chief of Staff : Global Citizen [New York City]
• Senior Manager, Membership & Operations : The Moth [New York City]
• Managing Director, Discovery and Insight : TED [New York City or Remote] ⏱️ August 19

Fundraising and Development

• Director, Institutional Giving : Shatterproof [Remote in the US / Washington, DC or US East Coast preferred]
• Head of Community and Comms : EarthPercent [West London] ⏱️ August 18

Foundations and Philanthropy

• Program Director, Policy and Advocacy : Rose Community Foundation [Denver]
• Vice President of Programs : Honnold Foundation [Remote in the US] ⏱️ September 14
• Foundation Director : Astra Foundation [London] ⏱️ August 28
• Program Manager, Transition Exchange and Associate Director, Local Economy Lab: Just Transition Fund [Remote in the US]

Agencies, data, politics, products & more

Dang. Nothing new here. Blame it on August. I suspect this is a category of roles that will grow in a few weeks given the way campaigns and budgets work. 🤞

Hey. Ted here. I run Bright+3 where we give changemakers the ideas, inspiration, and tools to create content that builds stronger communities.

I also write this newsletter (aka Future Community) and run the Future Community Jobs list.