Why Nonprofits Must Double Down on Brand Journalism

Client Type: Nonprofits, foundation and philanthropic organizations funding nonprofits for increased equity
Industry Relevance: The nonprofit sector advancing equity and justice across a wide range of issue areas, such as education, climate, health, housing, income, racial justice, immigration rights and other sectors

The Wakeman Agency helps mission-driven causes and socially responsible companies leverage the power of strategic communications in pursuit of social change.

The Scenario

For the past decade, The Wakeman Agency has been building a case for brand journalism for nonprofits. We strongly believe that Narrative Justice and the approach to strategic communication based on it require organizations to own their narratives and shape the stories that must be told. We continue to see signals from the media industry that various forms of nonprofit brand storytelling are growing in popularity. Earlier this month Axios reported on the increase of right-wing media markets. Multiple other outlets have taken note as well of the upswing in new media channels, and other recent articles and research have documented the rise of right-wing media activism and its impact on the entire media environment. In that context, novel forms of information sharing that traditionally straddle the conventional space between journalistic reporting and the logic of social media sharing have emerged as a key venue for shaping cultural narratives. We’ve spent some time reviewing this evolving and expanding ecosystem within the context of our own observations of trends in thought leadership impact and confirmed that—brand journalism is now an essential component of thought leadership for the nonprofit sector.

Brand journalism is a strategic approach to storytelling that blends journalistic techniques with brand messaging. This tactic can offer a continual focus on producing authentic, informative and compelling nonprofit narratives that are rooted in the real-world experiences of your audiences, highlighting the social issues relevant to your organization’s people and partners throughout your communities.

Today, much of the governmental sector, and many within the business arena, are directly antagonistic toward a more just future. In that context, it is increasingly urgent for nonprofits to tell their stories, more often and in more places. Nonprofits can use these new media trends to their advantage, by adopting the use of an internal newsroom model. Through this approach to external communications, your organization can more regularly illustrate the truth of what is happening daily within the communities you partner with, and center as protagonists the people who are working to build solidarity and protect their communities’ rights to flourish. Through a newsroom model producing brand journalism, nonprofit organizations can help build inroads to previously untapped audiences and expand the community of supporters for your cause.

The Newsroom Model in Action

The Wakeman Agency has worked with a variety of organizations to put this approach into action. For example, when working to create and spread awareness of the New York City Black Studies curriculum being piloted by a coalition of nonprofit community organizations, we conceptualized and implemented a brand journalism approach for the client by creating a dedicated company newsroom. This approach included:

  • Bringing in journalists and editors to uncover compelling stories, conduct in-depth interviews, and shape narratives that connect deeply with audiences. This strategy not only elevated the organization’s visibility but also activated public engagement through powerful storytelling.
  • From these interactions, stories emerged that illustrated the value and importance of the coalition’s vision, and increased an understanding among wider audiences of how they could contribute to culturally relevant education that reflects the lived experiences and histories of all of New York City’s students.
  • Brand journalism techniques deployed through the newsroom model also proved highly useful in tapping into the experiential and highly engaging museum-on-wheels Bookmobile, deployed as an event built from the ground up to showcase the Black Studies curriculum and engage with communities in their own neighborhoods. By helping to document the impact of the Bookmobile over a two-week period among NYC families across boroughs, the insights and data from the brand journalism efforts prompted a second series of scheduled events to continue introducing the Black Studies curriculum for the city’s public school children.

Brand journalism is not only an excellent tool for generating awareness. It can also be astutely used to support or guide strategic decision-making for key communications campaigns. Through the height of COVID-19, we supported a massive nonprofit effort to address vaccine resistance and hesitancy within Black communities in the US. This effort included:

  • Engagement with 120 Black churches in 13 states across the country and Washington D.C.
  • Our strategic communications vision was rooted in brand journalism for two-way communications. We needed to learn from communities to identify key narratives and important communications trends in order to reach distinct groups in particular locations.
  • Through the insights gathered in that process, we were able to leverage multiple communication channels to effectively address the contributing factors to vaccine resistance that weighed most heavily in those locales to boost vaccine uptake.
  • The multifaceted campaigns engaged more than 22.9M people in the targeted communities with a total of 32,421 people tested at 967 testing events and approximately 64,362 vaccinated at 1,185 COVID-19 vaccination events. All stakeholders agreed that the effort was a huge success.

Brand journalism is a novel and necessary strategy for amplifying urgent social issues and building trust through narrative. Our newsroom model for nonprofits provides the strategic guidance and execution needed to get organizations up and running. In our current climate, many organizations know they need to ramp up communications, but are rightfully concerned about how to continue efforts while also minimizing any risks. Consider brand journalism.

If you are interested in brand journalism for your communications, get in touch for a private consultation.