Come for the story. Stay for the service.

Welcome to the 17(ish) new Future Community subscribers joining since our last outing. I’m indebted to you all for taking a few moments to read, consider and talk through work happening at the intersection of great content and strong community.

Thanks again…

…and now onto business. Still have to make it through year-end, folks!

Question: Are great storytelling, compelling email copy, and engaging audio and video enough to attract, grow and retain donors, members and subscribers?

Communicators and fundraisers are constantly reminded of the need to get people’s attention. We live, after all, in a world of endless emails, TikToks, YouTube rabbit holes and political campaign texts.

All this digital communications, clicking and scrolling generates data warehouses full of 1s and 0s we can use to optimize for attention. We segment our lists and posts and ads by geography, age, interest, visit frequency, donation history, and so on.

But segmentation isn’t necessarily solving problems for our supporters. It isn’t even practical for many organizations.

Let’s say we’re storytelling wizards. We can elicit laughs or tears practically on demand. And now we can target our story at the most emotionally ready people in the proper zip code.

Is this the strategy? Is this enough? There must be more to communications, marketing and building enduring power.

For starters, many (most) organizations, even big ones, don’t have the capacity to segment, target and produce content adapted to anything but the most basic of audience segments. I’ve sat through software presentations and pitches about powerful automation and segmentation. The tools are there. And they’re kind of amazing. But much of the power is going to waste. If you’re segmenting and personalizing content you need to know what to measure, what the goals are, and how to show your work. You need a plan. And people to implement that plan (regardless of how well AI may do the legwork).

Second, organizations struggle to collect, analyze and learn from their data. And what if your data tells you that almost nobody wants to read your blog posts no matter how much time you’ve put into them or how important your communications director or board president thinks they are.

Third, most nonprofit content is created to advance the needs of the organization, not the user. This can be just as true for segmented content. If your personalization is extractive and not aimed at the needs of the reader/user you’re probably undercutting yourself. Online advertising can be highly personalized and so so awful.

Finally, you’re up against the algorithm. You may own your email, website and print distribution. But you can’t control how Meta, Google, TikTok and other companies choose to distribute your content. Shifting algorithms and business decisions have wildly upended news and nonprofit strategies more than once.

Your storytelling, email copy, messaging choices, production values and data analysis are all necessary but insufficient. They’re mostly marketing considerations. They get your content there and maybe help get it seen. But is it useful?

Communications as service, not marketing

Another way of looking at communication is as a service to supporters.

Jamie Biggar, co-founder of My Climate Plan, reminded me in a LinkedIn post of Peter Murray’s 2013 article Secret of Scale. Murray explored how and why AARP and the NRA grew so large and influential. Both are advocacy organizations, AARP lobbying for interests of Americans over 50, and NRA on behalf of gun makers and owners. Both are much more (and often something very different) than advocacy groups in the experience of their members. They offer an array of benefits and services: insurance, shopping discounts, practical advice, interesting content in magazines and digital platforms.

The range of services can be far more vast than these. The news industry has long offered a wide range of information services and practical tools to people. The Internet-driven decline of classifieds and other print ads - which have nothing to do with “news” - is often blamed for newspaper revenue problems.

Making money in news hasn’t been about news per se. The New York Times is known for their approach to paywalls and forcing people to pay for news. But there is only so much audience for news. And it’s hard to make much of that audience pay for news.

So the Times, like many newspapers before them looked to other content that could be bundled into a subscription. The formula so far includes:

• sports (The Athletic)
• recipes
• games
• product recommendations (Wirecutter)
• hiring (or creating) influential storytellers (columnists).

Alongside this content are additional distribution channels including newsletters (around 75 at last count) and podcasts.

News has become an effort to create one’s own media and services platform.

A platform of services beyond action and fundraising

Let’s say a nonprofit (or smaller media/news group) sought to create a platform with a range of services to engage and support audiences. And they didn’t want to sell insurance or get product referral kickbacks.

Diversify your content. Provide content that helps solve problems related to your mission. Work on climate? Provide explainers on everything related to practical matters of the Inflation Reduction Act.

This could seem tangential. But could also be content that doesn’t exist for which you can own the SEO. This could bring in new people with an interest in your mission if not awareness of your group.

Support, even employ, content creators/storytellers that have influence related to your niche. Don’t just share climate news stories, create a climate news desk and hire actual climate journalists to create stories that are timely, useful to readers, and explore new topics.

Similar projects could include collaborations with local media. From digital media/news organizations to radio/TV and social media influencers.

Content creators need a couple things that established organizations with lists/subscribers can provide:

• Audience. Organizations have lists and reach.
• Interesting (and reliable) information. Organizations are doing research, digging into policy, and organizing people on the ground (or at least some of these). Orgs have access to data, people and stories.
• Many organizations are also tracking social media data - their own and around certain issues in general. It’s not difficult to package this data in ways that informs content creators.

All the great storytelling in the world won’t be found by long-term supporters if it doesn’t reach people with a question to be answered, a problem to be solved or a community they can join.

This all comes back to being creative with audience identification and engagement. List building and recruitment is increasingly expensive and fraught with bad data. Why not invest in organic audience development supported by original, owned content?

Reading to fill all your spare time

Newsletter strategies to build retention, trust and revenue [Lilly Chapa / American Press Institute]

See how newsrooms are using trust-building language to ask for money [Joy Mayer / Trusting News]

Optimizing User Onboarding at Der Spiegel [Jakob Halm / Medium]

The Risk of Personalization: do people want and trust it? [Lars K Jensen / The Audiencers]

Who got time for deep community? [Fabian Pfortmüller / The Together Institute]

How community supports customer education [Chi Johnson / Intellum]

REPORT: ​Analysis of the Changing U.S. News Media Landscape and Strategies Toward Delivering Civic Value [Sophie Elliot, Arkadi Gerney, Tim Hogan, Sarah Knight, Akhil Rajan, Allison Rockey, Jonathan Smith, Elizabeth Spiers]

The Guardian sees record U.S. reader revenue [Sara Fischer / Axios]

Mythbuster: How the inconsistent definition of click-through rates affects publishers and their advertisers [Sara Gauglione / Digiday]

How 13 news publishers are using WhatsApp channels [Hanaa' Tameez / Nieman Lab]

Building a habit of tiny user studies [Laura S. Quinn]

Communicating Audience Research: Bridging the gap within and beyond your organization [Aldana Vales, Stephanie Ho, and Carla Nudel / News Product Alliance]

Climate news:

Climate change news audiences: Analysis of news use and attitudes in eight countries [Dr. Waqas Ejaz, Mitali Mukherjee, Dr. Richard Fletcher / Reuters Institute]

Trust and Climate Change [Edelman Trust Barometer]

Speaking of questionable trust building…Why an oil kingdom is hosting the COP28 climate summit and other questions answered [Maxine Joselow / Washington Post]

Now playing

Genesis Owusu provides some solid mid-winter malaise prevention.

Jobs

These are some of the most recent roles included in Future Community Jobs. There are dozens more on the full list. We’ve also added a few compilations of job lists down at the bottom. ⤵️

Journalism, media and content strategy

• Partnership and Engagement Associate : The Marshall Project [New York City / Remote in the US]
• Project Manager : News Revenue Hub [Remote]
• Director, JAMA Digital Media Production : American Medical Association [Hybrid in Chicago]
• Associate Audience Editor and Regional TV Engagement Coordinator (2 positions) : Covering Climate Now [Remote]
• Indigenous Communities Reporter / Producer : Oregon Public Broadcasting [Portland]
• Director of Product and Platforms : Cityside [East Bay area / Oakland, Berkeley, etc.]

Nonprofit organizations

See below for communications-specific roles.

• Senior User Research and Design Manager : Open Contracting Partnership [Remote]
• Botanical Content Specialist : The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens [San Marino, CA]
• Individual Giving Director : Vote Mama PAC [Remote in New York City area]
• Senior Director of Cultural Strategy : Caring Across Generations [Remote in the US]
• Senior Director, Energy and Environment Campaigns : Center for American Progress [Hybrid in Washington, DC]
• Senior CRM Database Officer : Sense [London]
• Senior Data Investigations Advisor : Global Witness [Hybrid in London]
• Technology Policy Strategist : Brennan Center for for Justice [Hybrid in New York City]
• Blended Outreach Organizer (Contract) : With Many Hands [Remote]
• International Fundraising Director : Greenpeace International [Flexible in a Greenpeace NRO country]
• Director of Marketing : National Nordic Museum [Seattle]

Communications

Mostly at nonprofits/NGOs.

• Director of Narrative Strategy : Bend the Arc [Remote]
• Communications Specialist : Washington Budget & Policy Center [Remote in Washington state]
• Vice President of Marketing and Communications : East Bay Community Foundation [Oakland]
• Communications Director : NextGen America [Remote]
• Senior Communications Manager, Partner Success Team : Vote Rev [Remote]
• Communications and Development Senior Associate : Discovering Justice [Hybrid in Boston]
• Communications Manager : Fossil Free Media [Washington, DC]
• National Press Secretary and Senior Writer : AFL-CIO [Washington, DC]
• Communications Manager : West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project [Oakland / Remote]

Foundations

• Interim Executive Director : FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund [Remote in the Global South]
• NO SALARY PROVIDED > Director of Networks and Ecosystems : WINGS [Remote / Global]
• Program Officer : Crux Alliance [San Francisco / Washington, DC / Remote]

Politics, products, projects & anything else that doesn’t fit above

• Digital Accessibility Supervisor : Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing [Remote in Colorado]
• Technical Partner Manager : Substack [San Francisco or New York City]
• Digital Strategist : Grassriots [Remote in Canada]
• Product Manager : Letterhead [Remote]

Other Job Resources

Job boards and other support.

Progressive Job Resources is a compilation of job lists, boards and groups curated and shared by Allison Ehrich Bernstein.

Ethical Tech Job Resources is a list of job lists mostly centered around progressive technology in the US and UK. It’s built by the community and maintained by me and Edward Saperia, Dean of Newspeak House in London.