Turning a list into community
Turning a list into community
Create meaning, not size, and people will support you.
People who love and support local news. 💙
We spent much of September and October working with partners at humansize to launch a membership program for Cleveland Scene, one of the country’s longest-running and most successful alt-weekly news outlets.
Membership/reader revenue work with a local news organization like Scene is a joy. There’s a deep connection between people in the community and the organization. Everyone, including readers, wants the organization to succeed. Our initial surveys and interviews surfaced a passion for Scene and the results of our campaign show that people will support local news when given the chance to do so.
Our work included research, content creation (email, social and news fundraising campaigns), massaging data and platforms (oh the joys of Stripe and CRMs and Mailchimp and Google Analytics and Meta, to name a few), and mentorship/teaching.
Membership (or reader revenue) is not an app you buy and attach to your website. It’s a practice you grow over time. You’re investing in people. You’re testing, learning and growing alongside your members and staff.
We would love to talk if you’d like to learn more about our work with Scene and other community and membership revenue projects.
Of note: The people of Cleveland (Scene readers at least) love their city! It’s fun to be part of that kind of community.
So Much Content. So Little Meaning.
Let’s talk about how people do (or don’t) connect to and find meaning your content. If you’re a community group, NGO or campaign your content should be as useful to (and valued by) your audience as any news article.
Content - all the emails, websites, articles and blog posts, social media posts, IG reels, TikToks, YouTube videos and on an on - is 90+ percent of how people find, learn about and engage in your organization.
Content should engage, of course. It should also drive fundraising and membership results. But too many organizations (and political campaigns) are churning out content but struggling with fundraising.
Chances are your comms, fundraising and digital teams will spend more time testing donation button amounts, colors and placement (should buttons be stacked or horizontal? hmm…) than it will talking to current and potential audiences about their needs.
The challenge – and its an existential one for your organization – is not simply creating content. That’s easy. The challenge is creating meaningful content that connects to individuals. That’s hard. Especially when we live and work in a context of growth and scale.
The Problem With Big
A decade ago Nicco Mele published The End of Big: How the Digital Revolution Makes David the New Goliath. Mele’s premise was that accessible and powerful communications and data tech gave individuals and small groups tools to be heard, organize, raise funds and generally catch up to or even overcome “Big” group power. We would see new entities reinventing business, politics, culture and more. “Radical connectivity” would shift power from big institutions.
Mele was right. We’ve seen new organizations grow and reshape whole sectors. Netflix and its peers didn’t just give us a new way to watch movies, they changed how movies and TV programs are written, produced and distributed. We’ve seen unknown politicians and political movements string together social and communications networks to take power from (or just take over) political parties (see Breitbart, Trump and the remaking of the GOP).
But Big didn’t end. Small groups often became big groups. And Big ones became Bigger.
Big groups could grow their email lists and social media followings at astonishing rates. You could send emails to your list weekly, daily, or multiple times per day and follow that up with Facebook and Twitter posts targeting people on your email list.
In The Great Social Media-News Collapse Charlie Warzel writes about how social media platforms grew global news consumption to great heights and then pulled back as quite nearly everyone accused (and continues to blame) Meta, Google, Twitter, TikTok and others for manipulating algorithms and news visibility.
This is a big shift, even a threat, to the news business and the public’s access to accurate information. Warzel writes:
It would be wrong to suggest that news—and especially commentary about the news— will vanish. But the future might very well look like slivers of the present, where individual influencers command large audiences, and social networking and text-based media take a back seat to video platforms with recommendation-forward algorithms, like TikTok’s. This seems likely to coincide with news organizations’ continued loss of cultural power and influence.
Buried beneath Warzel’s prediction that video beats text is the rise of individual influencers coming the cost of institutional power.
In practical terms, comms consultants will tell you to “be better on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram reels.” That’s necessary guidance, perhaps. But it isn’t sufficient for fundraising much less shifting and holding power.
Making Sense or Noise?
Charlie Warzel’s is describing the fracture of big news by big social platforms.
But the response to so much news (and noise) isn’t new. In the context of information, it’s a natural human response to noise. There is only so much auditory and visual stimulation a person can consume. There is only so much news and information the average person can make sense of (or even needs).
The intensity and scale of our information firehose has outpaced our brain’s capacity to learn and synthesize.
People need to make sense of the world to make meaning of it. More noise is more complexity. People don’t have time to synthesize complexity. So they simplify arguments, seek out simpler explanations, and trust clarity over nuance. Hence the power of a 60 second TikTok or a Trumpian sound bite.
But a retreat from complexity and noise shouldn’t find us abandoning progress in the fight against climate change or equality. And it shouldn’t hasten the seeming simplicity and security of authoritarianism.
When You Can’t Find a Tree in the Forest
At the risk of mangling a metaphor…perhaps we’re too busy building forests (all the news and info at scale) to help people see and appreciate the beauty of the trees (the discrete bits of news and context that solve problems and answer questions).
I’m in a lot of conversations (and read a lot of articles and LinkedIn posts) about using AI to create more (and more personalized) emails, optimizing donation forms and ad copy, direct response TV data, and search optimization.
These conversations have two goals: getting attention and selling something when you have attention. Or, in the case of nonprofit or political fundraising, soliciting donations.
Instead, let’s talk about the questions people have, the answers we can provide, and how we user our content and community resources (and even data and AI tools) to simplify, make sense and show the value of sensemaking and trust.
The world of TikTok and YouTube is full of sensemaking. There are countless people talking about the best places to eat and drink in [anywhere], the meaning of Taylor Swift concert song selection, and how to replace your car’s air filter or repaint your coffee table.
There are more meaningful sensemaking examples, too. Vox specializes in explainers. Instagram accounts like so.informed break down complex political and social issues. Hearken helps newsrooms and nonprofits engage their audiences by asking and answering questions. Hearken describes its approach as:
…we make it possible for people to fully participate in the organizations that serve them. We use the power of democratic practices to rectify the disconnection and disengagement that prevents systems from thriving.
Shifting to Meaning
A ideas for prioritizing connection instead of creation.
Turn your content into audio and video segments for people who spend their time listening to podcasts or watching YouTube and TikTok. Don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t “create a podcast.” Start by reading it, putting out there, letting people know and seeing if/how it gets picked up.
View newsletters (and audio and video) as tools people may use to solve their problems, not self-promote everything you do.
Ask people what they need and want to know. Have your team respond to inquiries. Show people that you’re answering questions.
Put people in your work. Name the enemy. Name the good people. Name places. Talk about their hopes and dreams the value of your work, your supporter contributions.
Talk with people as individuals, not as audiences.
View acquisition as a long-term partnership, not a way to scale or address list churn. Frankly, most supporter acquisition approaches are too costly to not see partners.
I see and feel the intense pressure to find people and raise money from them (or sell to them). And to do it now. Many organizations are struggling and nobody wants to talk about community, content and meaning when there’s a fundraising deadline. (looks at calendar…sees that there is ALWAYS a fundraising deadline)
But an organization that is not creating meaning and value for supporters, which can be measured in part by their engagement and financial contributions, may have a broken business model.
Get Reading
We asked 5,000 people across the country what they want from local news. Here’s what we learned. TL;DR…ask people what the want to know and give them more of that + help solve problems + more LOCAL! news + convene community. [Loretta Chao / American Journalism Project]
Along similar lines: Are libraries the future of news? Public libraries do far more than loan books. We exist in an information age that only works for people when they can access tools to create and consume information so libraries have evolved to help people solve a range of information problems. News organizations (and I’d say all community nonprofits) could learn form that service-oriented innovation. [Kate Harloe / Nieman Lab]
Bridge roles in practice: the models, strategies and structures for success. [Madeleine White / The Audiencers]
Reader (and member/supporter) surveys rely on email which mostly tells us what our older, whiter and wealthier folks have to say. [Sam Cholke and Allison Altshule / Nieman Lab
How Axios, The Atlantic, Financial Times, New York Times, Univision and other global news companies are using WhatsApp. Some of these WhatsApp channels have over a million readers. Some a few thousand. There’s a lot of experimentation, short stories, and fact-checking/rapid response. [Hanaa' Tameez / Nieman Lab]
Speaking of WhatsApp: a close look into how a local news outlet is driving engagement through WhatsApp. [Laura Laplana / International Journalists Network]
How we measure audience engagement at Der Spiegel. There are many ways to measure engagement: clicks, shares, time on site. Der Spiegel is going deeper to understand the connection between its reader touch points, time spent and revenue. [Alexander Held / The Audiencers]
Orienting Together: Mapping Your Narrative Landscape is a much needed guide for narrative practitioners. [Rachel Weidinger / Narrative Initiative]
Tech changes may impact email deliverability. Gmail and Yahoo are changing standards in its fight against unwanted email. Your eCRM or email service provider should be on top of this but you should be on top it, too. [Anne Paschkopić / M+R]
“The dominant frames in place around artificial intelligence discourse are all aligned with the interests of technology companies,” concludes a report by Rootcause following research into hundreds of thousands of videos, news items and conversations covering AI. The public interest, as represented by nonprofits, community groups, educators and other local leaders is, to date, left out of the AI future.
Get a New Job
What looks interesting. A full list is updated daily and available here.
Journalism, media and content strategy
Full-time English Editor for West Asia and North Africa : SMEX [Beirut or Remote]
Newsletter Editor - AJC : Cox [Atlanta / Remote]
Content Strategist : Bunsen [Remote]
Editorial Director : Civil Eats [Remote]
High Country News Fellow : High Country News [Remote in Western US]
Director, Climate : Solutions Journalism Network [Hybrid in New York City]
Editor-in-Chief and Deputy Editor : Floodlight [Remote/Hybrid]
Newsletter Editor : Boston Globe [Boston] (no salary provided 👎👎 but interesting enough)
Chief Content Officer : WAMU [Washington, DC]
Nonprofit organizations
See below for communications-specific roles.
Senior Web Manager : Earthjustice [Remote]
Managing Director of Campaigns, Director of Media and Press Relations and other roles : Corporate Accountability International [Remote]
Director, US Democracy : Freedom House [Washington, DC]
Director of Marketing, Communications and Brand : Global Citizen Year [Remote in the US]
Science Network Mobilization Manager : Union of Concerned Scientists [Remote / Hybrid near Cambridge, MA or Washington, DC]
Co-Executive Director : The Engine Room [Remote]
Director of Communications and Advocacy : IFEX [Remote]
Digital Media Coordinator : Thousand Currents [Remote]
Digital Communications Manager / Local Managing Editor : CatchLight [San Francisco]
Vice President of Movement Building and Vice President of Operations : Liberation Ventures [Remote]
North American Campaign Lead / Senior Campaigner : Social Movement Technologies [Remote in the US]
Director of Operations : Indigenous Climate Action [Remote in Canada]
Head of Creative : People Over Plastic [Remote / Prefer Washington, DC, New Orleans, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago or New York City]
Policy Analyst/Senior Policy Analyst, Technology Policy : Center for American Progress [Hybrid in Washington, DC]
Organizing Manager : Brady [Washington, DC]
Manager of Strategy and Development : Green Latinos [Remote]
Membership and Development Director : Rachel’s Network [Hybrid in Washington, DC]
Communications
Mostly at nonprofits/NGOs.
Communications Director : BEA (Building Equity & Alignment for Environmental Justice) [Remote in the US]
Communications Director : Ohio Organizing Collaborative [Remote in Ohio]
Communications Director : Alliance for the Great Lakes [Remote]
State Lead, Colorado : TRAILS [Denver area]
Communications Director, Political Affairs : Environmental Defense Fund [Hybrid in Washington DC]
Communications Associate : Justice in Aging [Washington, DC / Oakland / Los Angeles / Remote]
Director of Communications and Engagement : Indigenous Climate Action [Remote in Canada]
Director of Communications : Just Transition Fund [Remote]
Community, membership and organizing
Director of Community and Communications : California Migration Museum [San Francisco]
Foundations
Communications and Storytelling Officer : Woods Fund [Hybrid in Chicago]
Vice President for Education : Gates Family Foundation [Hybrid in Denver]
Program Associate, U.S. Democracy : William and Flora Hewlett Foundation [Menlo Park, CA]
Content Manager, Communications : MacArthur Foundation [Chicago]
Politics, products, projects & anything else that doesn’t fit above
Institutional Storytelling Associate : The Center for Cultural Power [Remote]
Lead, Sustainability Reporting : Google [Portland or Boulder]
Communications Strategy and Operations Lead, gTech : Google [Boulder / Los Angeles / Seattle]
User Interface Designer : 4Site Studios [Remote]
Lead UX/Content Strategist : Wide Eye [Remote in the US]
Look at you, hero, reading every meaningful word and making it to the end. Thanks for reading Future Community! 👍🏼 Feel free to click reply or comment to leave feedback, share a link or job post.