Recap. Rewind. Read These.
Things you missed, forgot about or didn't even need from Future Community in 2025
🎉 Hi there Amanda, Christine, Jesse, Tom, Anisa and Sascha. And hello Camille...it's been a minute! 👋
Welcome to Future Community! I'm so glad you're here.
End Citizens United is hiring a Senior Political Director to direct political work with House, Senate and non-federal candidates and ballot initiatives. The role is based in Washington, DC, and offers a starting salary of $125,000 to $145,000.
Learn more and apply.
The year in Future Community
I don't have anything insightful or even pithy to add to the community, content, fundraising discourse today. And who needs more discourse?
So I offer you a few things you probably missed (and maybe forgot about) that I've shared here in 2025.
Don't worry, there are new jobs down there and several legit good reads in Bright Ideas just below.
- The Year End Fundraising Cookbook is a community and content-driven guide to running a successful fundraising campaign. And (checks calendar) it's still not the end of the year. Though this guide is good all year long.
- Content Strategy in a Time of AI Search Panics offers some pointers on content that works for AI search.
- I proposed a general theory of Activity Anchoring to help explain why low value recruitment often begets low value results and wastes everyone's time and money.
- Content strategy, storytelling, and "engagement" is actually about helping supporters/members build the habits that keep them involved in your work. Or so it says here in 7 Behaviors of Habit Building Organizations. See also the shorter Save Your Communications with Consistency.
- Nonprofit Newsletter Growth Strategies is what it says.
- A monthly list of things you posted this month is not really a newsletter. Nor is it interesting to anyone though I suppose if it has a pointed voice, like this here list of things we posted, it could work from time to time. Whatever. If you want newsletter ideas check out the taxonomy in 32 Types of Newsletters.
- I have an outline of a new piece about strategy. It looks at how and why Strategy work and thinking is so separate from the real work and thinking we do in organizations. Then again, I have a version of this already in The Problem with Strategy which is about why having and doing capital S strategy work often doesn't accomplish much.
- Related: Teaching Power
- Local News is Community Building celebrates the role of local news in local democracy and good government. But it's about something more and increasingly that is crafting third spaces, community events, and solidarity.
Bright Ideas
Eryk Salvaggio's What I read about AI in 2025 is the complete list of AI info you were looking for the other day.
A first-hand story about AI chat bots and model training: The emotional labor behind AI intimacy by Michael Geoffrey Asia at Data Workers Inquiry.
Caution...a lot of trigger warnings in here. And so much to be concerned about.
...what if I wasn't just training an AI companion, what if I was actually impersonating one? Maybe users thought they had already purchased an AI girlfriend or boyfriend, and I was the human pretending to be the machine pretending to be human.
The Well Watchers by Molly Taft for Mother Jones tells the story of how Hawk Dunlap and Sarah Stogner have supercharged public attention towards abandoned oil wells across Texas using Tik Tok.
Not sure if Taft would agree, but it's also about how corporations and government abuse communities, people, and the environment and how the story of that abuse mixes with bullshit narratives about political polarization created to keep Americans preoccupied with their supposed dislike for one another.
What Driving Uber Eats Taught Me About Power, Work, and Accountability by Jay Mandel. I don't know Jay but I, and probably a lot of you, can empathize with the situation and the observations about how little power workers have in this economy. We don't hear about this much because our storytelling is dominated by people with the power to live outside these kinds of margins.
Events and Trainings!
- Reset and Write Workshop [4 sessions. 10 people. Led by Andy Dehnart. Applications due Dec 20.
- Strategy Design Festival [January 20 / in person all day in London]
Future Community Jobs
This role isn’t about “marketing.” It’s about helping build a global, volunteer-powered movement that can stand against corruption and authoritarianism. If you want to be part of rewriting how civil society works, this is your call to action.
These are the latest links. Check out the full job list here.
Hiring? Consider shipping a featured job out into this amazing community. Learn more here or just reach out on email.
🗞️ Audience, content, journalism and news roles
- Senior Editor, Marketplace : American Public Media [Remote in the US]
- National Editor : States Newsroom [Remote in the US]
- Community Partnerships Manager : Nashville Banner [Nashville]
- CEO : Word in Black [Remote in the US]
- Tech Reporting Fellowship : Open Democracy + Tech Policy Press [London / UK]
🗣️ Communications
- Public Relations and Content Specialist : Openlands [Chicago]
- Communications Associate : Collaborative [Remote in the US]
- Associate Director of External Affairs : Health Care Without Harm [Remote]
- Vice President, Communications : Campaign Legal Center [Washington, DC]
- Communications Manager : Philanthropy Together [Remote in the US]
⚡ Nonprofit organizations
- 👀 Senior Political Director : End Citizens United [Washington, DC]
- Manager, Public Policy for Community Philanthropy : Council on Foundations [Washington, DC]
- Executive Director : Natural Resources Council of Maine [Augusta, ME]
- Executive Director : Marine Science Institute [Redwood City, CA]
- Executive Director : Abortion Liberation Fund of Pennsylvania [Philadelphia / Remote]
💰 Fundraising and Development
- Development Director, Lift Fund : Neighborhood Funders Group [Remote in the US]
- Chief Philanthropy Officer : Heal the Bay [Los Angeles]
- Development Director : Head Count [Remote in the US]
- Head of Revenue and Philanthropy : AI4All [Remote in the US / Eastern Time Zone preferred]
💸 Foundations and Philanthropy
- Director, Technology Platforms (Fixed-Term Contract) : Mozilla Foundation [Remote in Germany/Canada/U.K/U.S]
- Director of Impact and Learning, Lift Fund : Neighborhood Funders Group [Remote in the US]
- Vice President of Programs : Philanthropy Together [Remote in the US]
- Senior Director, Philanthropic Partnerships : Consumer Reports [Multiple US Locations]
💻 Agencies, politics, products, projects & more
- Head of Storytelling : Vanta [Remote in the U.S]
- Public Relations Director : Cloudflare [Austin, TX and San Francisco]
- Digital Strategist : Break Something [Herndon, VA / Remote]
- 👀 Campaign Director : Logos [Remote / Global]
- Mozilla Fellowship 2026 : Mozilla Foundation [Various global locations]
- Community Operations and Project Manager (Temporary) : Bellingcat [Remote]
Future Community is a product of Ted Fickes and Bright+3. Reply or visit Bright+3 to get in touch and learn more about our work. It's fabulous.
