CaseWork Sessions

Case study presentations sharing real world examples of foundation and nonprofit comms — what worked… and what didn’t.

A conversation on what COVID taught us about creativity, collaboration, and iterating throughout the pandemic

• The message: How to thoughtfully (and authentically) acknowledge, engage, and address the root causes of vaccine misconceptions in order to navigate distrust and increase vaccine acceptance

• The messengers: How to identify and build ongoing partnerships and alignment with stakeholders, influencers, and trusted messengers

• The strategy: Focus on the movable; remain flexible to the ever-changing environment; and create to inform, not to increase vaccine numbers

The First Commandment of Communications: Know Your Audience. A detailed look at how Chapin Hall used a national survey to determine human service providers' communication preferences.

For those who communicate with human service providers, they will learn how to best reach this audience. For everyone who does communications, they will learn about a specific strategy for determining the communication preferences of a targeted audience.

Expanding strategic communications capacity without increasing headcount: Engaging staff in strategy and storytelling

In an organization that covers multiple issue areas, communications teams can struggle to keep up with all the needs and opportunities. To expand the capacity of our small comms team, San Francisco Foundation engaged our subject matter experts from across the organization and empowered them to be strategic communicators for their own work. In this case study, we’ll share how and why we launched SFF’s Communications Academy for staff in programs, fundraising, and operations roles. Along with the development and reception of this new program, we’ll cover the topics that were most impactful to our cohort and plans for engaging even more staff in strategic communications.

How to think like a Video Producer: Managing Production for Impact

Dive into the mindset of a Video Producer to learn how to plan and manage elements of a video project. We'll walk through the components of a Creative Brief to help you make informed decisions, regardless of your production experience. We'll explore different video styles for creative inspiration and discuss how to measure impact.

Expand your reach by making your content accessible

• How to add captions to videos using free online tools.

• How to make social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn accessible to people with disabilities.

We created a philanthropy bootcamp for our team to learn grant making and strategic communications

The role of communications in philanthropy is evolving and expanding. When the communications team at Blue Shield of California Foundation got new responsibilities as grant makers, it was a terrific development. The only problem: we didn’t know how. We were a team of communications professionals with no experience as philanthropists. So, we organized a six-month curriculum to train up. With the help of a consultant and outside speakers, we covered foundation communications two ways – as grant makers, and as strategic communicators. In monthly sessions, we workshopped ongoing projects, asked questions, shared inspiration, and broadened our horizons. Attendees will learn what we did, how we did it, and be able to apply the idea to their own needs as communications professionals in philanthropy.

Media and Political Polarization: Responsibilities and Opportunities to Bring Citizens Together

How journalists (and the broader newsphere) view their role in the age of extreme national polarization, as well as how PRs and Communications professionals can help bridge the gap.

Eviction Prevention in Hamilton County, TN: Lessons from Crisis

As the South goes...Attendees will gain an understanding of how government affairs, media relations, and digital content work together to build and sustain a multi-partner initiative oriented around equity and systems change. We will use the Eviction Prevention Initiative, created in the early days of COVID-19 and continuing today, as a case study on how to construct and sequence both messengers and messages in order to meet community need and satisfy the competing needs of disparate but aligned partners.

Enhancing coverage of critical issues in an era of shrinking newsrooms

Learn how a private foundation brought together a diverse group of nonprofit media outlets — public television, radio and (digital) print — to create a collaborative that has increased news coverage of water issues in the Great Lakes region. This approach could be used by funders and advocacy groups to increase news coverage, raise awareness and drive change on other key issues.

Teach Us Everything: Building a Communications Strategy Around Teaching Truth

• How to design communications strategy that offer counter narratives to harmful public narratives and media discourse

• How to build coalitions and partnerships around messages to inspire action and progress

Learn about PolicyLink’s new narrative playbook designed to shift how we think and talk about equity at a national level

Today, we are in a moment of unprecedented opportunity to advance equity, but political rhetoric and narratives are increasingly divided. We’ll walk through our Racial Equity Playbook, a new tool designed for policymakers but helpful for anyone who is committed to building a nation that works for everyone. Building on messaging research and the incredible work of our peers in communications and narrative change, we’ve designed a guide that gives you simple building blocks that you can adapt to your work, whether you work in housing, health, education, or any other issue. It’s time to stop responding to attacks and defending equity and start showing what results will look like for the millions struggling to make ends meet.

How we navigated the Stop AAPI Hate movement: What it took to change the narrative around anti-AAPI racism and what lies ahead

We'll discuss how to raise awareness of an issue on a national scale through data and consistent messaging; and how to push back on problematic messages that arise once an issue is in the spotlight.

How to build a thriving in-house communications team

Come learn from communications leaders from various types and sizes of nonprofit organizations about how to build, structure, and manage growing communications teams. You'll learn how to evaluate your organization's communications needs, how to structure and plan for a growing team to deliver results for your organization, and how to make the case for new positions.

Learn how we helped pass the Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act

Attendees will learn communication strategies used to help pass legislation and influence policy with equity at the core. Attendees will also learn how to connect with communities and hear their voices, concerns, and ideas through Listen, Lead, and Share events.

Beyond the hero: How narrative can shift power around who leads and who has voice

Attendees will explore:

• How to critically evaluate their organization’s narratives about leadership, including how they might perpetuate harmful practices and mask existing strengths and assets.

• How broadening the narrative about leadership can propel shifts in internal and external practices, programs and funding.

How can respectful storytelling help us achieve greater program and organizational impact?

Many organizations are grappling with how best to tell the stories of the communities they serve. However, the lack of clear and simple answers can make it challenging to debate this properly.

This panel brings together perspectives from across the philanthropy and development sectors to discuss emerging findings from our respectful storytelling toolkit. Together, we will examine how the stories we tell don’t just influence communication effectiveness but also program impact, identify key moments of tension within the end-to-end communications process, and consider different ways to navigate these challenges. We will focus on three areas of discussion:

1. What changes when we get respectful storytelling right?

2. Which barriers are getting in the way of more respectful storytelling?

3. What are emerging practices which can move us forwards in our journey to more respectful storytelling?

Leveraging digital tools to share data and dispel misinformation

You don't have to "re-invent the wheel" to launch new communications initiatives. In this session attendees will learn how to use data in messaging to dispel misinformation, shift the conversation, and break through the noise during times of crises.

Shifting the Narrative on Immigrants in the U.S.

Attendees will learn about our narrative project on immigrant justice and the strategies we employed to find new pathways to shift conversations about immigration and immigrants. We will share the findings from our ethnographic and metaphor elicitation research, undertaken with the Butterfly Lab at Race Forward, as well as what we learned about working collaboratively with a cohort of 15 people from four states to develop a narrative strategy.

Learn how we amplified community engagement through storytelling and strategies for narrative change.

Attendees will learn how to respectfully leverage the lived experiences of engaged stakeholders while measuring the impact of their efforts to achieve desired outcomes.

How Philanthropy & Trusted Media Strengthen Stories of Impact

During this session, attendees will learn how philanthropy can help bridge the gap between the demand for robust issue-based reporting and the shortage of journalists. Speakers will also address how media collaborations can help raise public awareness and drive commitment to change.

ShowCase Posters

Poster sessions of lessons learned and key ideas from the field delivered via self-guided gallery walks and small group conversations.