Introducing… On Media

Last year, I went out on a limb and launched philanthropy unfiltered, a newsletter that confronts and critically examines the nonprofit industrial complex and how it undermines liberation.

I began doing this after enough experience in the sector revealed the flaws hidden behind the glossy mission statements – how power and privilege influence who is heard, whose work is deemed worthy of funding, and whose isn’t. For nearly a decade, I worked in nonprofit communications, writing impact reports and success stories that demonstrate to funders the effectiveness of their investments. I have also worked in the world of philanthropy-serving organizations, including national networks that connect funder associations and the infrastructure that supports institutional giving.

This column, On Media, stems from all of these backgrounds. At its core is a question about who gets to shape the stories philanthropy tells about itself. I aim to explore how philanthropy and nonprofit work are represented – by funders, journalists, and grassroots organizations themselves – and how those narratives shape what ultimately gets funded.

Who controls the narrative?

There are several players shaping the stories we tell about philanthropy and nonprofit work, and they don’t all have the same power.

It starts with funders themselves. Over the past several decades – especially with the rise of strategic philanthropy – foundations have become increasingly sophisticated in defining what effective philanthropy looks like. They conduct research, develop frameworks, set priorities, and invest heavily in communications about their work. In doing so, they help establish the language and narratives through which the sector understands what work is valuable, credible and effective.

Then there are the journalists and publications that cover the sector. Over the past decade or two, an ecosystem of philanthropy-focused media has emerged, representing a wide range of perspectives on the field. These outlets variously reinforce and reshape philanthropy’s prevailing narratives. Many are themselves funded by philanthropy, creating a complicated relationship with the sector they cover.

Finally, there are the nonprofits and grassroots organizations themselves. They often operate downstream from both systems, responding to the priorities and language established by funders while also trying to attract attention to their work.

I've seen firsthand how this plays out in nonprofit communications. The same basic story appears again and again: identify a problem, introduce a promising solution, show measurable results, and end on an optimistic note. The roles are familiar, too: the organization as the visionary, the funder as the one making the work possible, and the community as the beneficiary. I’ve written versions of this story myself.

Together, these forces shape what becomes visible – and what doesn’t. Funding influences which organizations have the resources to tell their stories; media influences which of those stories reach a wider audience; and visibility can, in turn, influence where funding flows. Work that sits outside this system can remain largely invisible, regardless of how many people it reaches.

Questions I’ll be asking

Over the next few months, I’ll devote attention to questions that don’t have easy answers but speak to the inconsistencies and sometimes harmful patterns in media coverage of philanthropy. For instance:

• Why is a mutual aid network serving 28,000 people classified as human interest, while donating to a more nationally recognized food bank is seen as an investment?
• Why does so much philanthropic reporting rely on paperwork, tax filings, and grant reports to cut the cost of producing a story, and what’s lost when deep, on-the-ground, investigative reporting gets skipped? 
• How do organizers’ language shift when references to racial justice fade from a funder’s priorities, and are altered into something considered safe and more fundable?
• How should philanthropy media cover the movements and organizations that are increasingly rejecting philanthropic dollars to retain their autonomy?
• How is it that media outlets covering the same sector come to vastly different conclusions about what deserves coverage, whose interests should be protected, and what responsible journalism requires?

I also plan to turn the question on this column itself. The column is published in partnership between my newsletter and a philanthropy-related media platform. An editor deemed it newsworthy, and the platform lent it credibility. Its primary audience is the sector itself, not the communities it references. I am writing about the cost of visibility in a space that grants it, and I plan to highlight this very tension.

I don’t have a one-size-fits-all solution. However, I will keep returning to the key difference between being seen and being heard. Visibility is determined by what the media ecosystem chooses to show and is constrained by what the funding system recognizes. Voice belongs to the people on the ground who lead movements through their own ways of organizing and are accountable to their communities.

Visibility is granted on the philanthropic media ecosystem’s terms. Until this misconception is corrected, every time you read a story, I want you to ask: who edited the story, and what was left out in the process?