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Nina Sachdev , Deputy Director of External Affairs

Nina Sachdev

Nina Sachdev brings more than 20 years of experience in journalism, news editing, and marketing to her role as Deputy Director of External Affairs at Media Impact Funders (MIF). Since joining MIF in 2016 as the organization’s first full-time Director of Communications, Nina has been leading efforts to showcase the power of media, journalism, and storytelling to the philanthropic community. Through strategic communications, member engagement, research initiatives, and high-profile speaking events, Nina works to educate and inspire funders to make more strategic decisions about their media funding. In 2026, Nina was promoted to Deputy Director of External Affairs. 

Nina’s experience as a senior leader in a philanthropy-serving organization (PSO)—combined with her unique perspective as a grantseeker and grantmaker—enables her to effectively advocate for MIF’s mission and vision and build strong relationships with donors and key stakeholders in media philanthropy. Nina also brings from her journalism days a special focus on sexual assault and reproductive health. She is a tireless advocate for the importance of quality, impactful storytelling, and journalism on these topics.

Nina cut her teeth in journalism at The Dallas Morning News, where—as an intern on the copy desk—she was tasked with editing the obituaries of famous people who hadn’t yet died. Since then, Nina has worked at The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, The Philadelphia Daily News, and The Philadelphia Weekly in almost every editorial capacity imaginable, including senior editor, A1 editor (when that used to be a thing), and slot (does anyone remember that being a thing?).

Nina is the creator and editor of the award-winning The Survivors Project: Telling the Truth About Life After Sexual Abuse, which exposes the reality of healing from the effects of sexual abuse. Nina holds an M.A. in journalism from Temple University. She lives in Philadelphia with her family.

Featured Articles

New From Pop Culture Collaborative: How to Partner With Creators

I am still thinking about Hank Green’s keynote at last month’s Media Impact Forum. He made the case that “authenticity is cheap, but credibility is expensive,” and then offered a useful reframing grantmakers grappling with funding creators and creator infrastructure. It’s not solely about how fund creators, Hank said, but about how to build an ecosystem that includes them. Pop Culture Collaborative’s recent Digital Waves series on digital creators, offers a great starting place for funding that new ecosystem. Written in partnership with Dot Connector, the four-part series is aptly titled “Imagine the Pluralist Narrative Power We Will Build: A Primer for Investing in Digital Creator Infrastructure”: Part 1 makes the case for why funders need to rethink creator partnerships (digital creators now shape how tens of millions of people get and make sense of the news) Part 2 names 10 structural barriers driving creator burnout, from one-person-agency overload to competition from AI-generated content Part 3 lays out partnership models, mapped to what funders want (narrative reach) and what creators need (sustainability) Part 4 turns to infrastructure and names models such as creator incubators, fellowships, peer networks, etc., with three filters… Read More
June 23, 2026  –
  • Nina Sachdev
New From Pop Culture Collaborative: How to Partner With Creators

Scenes from MIF’s first media grantmaking 101 workshop

Last week at the Grantmakers In Health conference in Baltimore, I brought something to life that I’ve been thinking about for nearly a decade: Media Impact Funders’ first-ever Media Grantmaking 101 workshop. For years, we’ve made the case that strong public-interest media is essential to achieving philanthropic goals. You know the refrain by now: Whatever your first issue is, media should be your second. But what happened in this room felt different. The 50+ health funders who joined us weren’t asking whether media belongs in their strategies. They were asking how. That shift feels significant. To help kick off the workshop, I asked two experienced media funders—Kate Shatzkin at Annie E. Casey Foundation and Taryn Fort (she/her) at The Colorado Health Foundation— to share their “why media funding” journeys, what the internal conversations looked like at their respective organizations, and the advice they’d give to a peer who was just starting out. Then, Marisol Bello from Housing Narrative Lab brought the practitioner perspective, talking about the impact philanthropic support can have on narrative storytelling. Participants worked through a hands-on exercise that took them from identifying a health challenge and the information gap making it worse, to choosing… Read More
June 15, 2026  –
  • Nina Sachdev
Scenes from MIF’s first media grantmaking 101 workshop

When journalism fundraising falls short, it’s often because you’re answering the wrong questions

Journalists and funders are often talking past each other. It shows up most clearly when fundraising falls short. The three of us came together at ONA in March to lead a session for news leaders on fundraising and philanthropy and answer some of the questions we hear over and over again: How do we get grant support? What are funders actually looking for? Why does this process feel so opaque? The answer, we think, is this: It’s not just that journalists and funders are speaking different languages; they’re often working from different mental models. And it’s that difference in approach that accounts for a lot of the frustration from newsrooms. It’s easy to assume that philanthropy is just one more revenue stream—another way to pay for the work you’re already doing. But philanthropic dollars tend to support the very kinds of journalism that the market alone won’t sustain and that earned revenue won’t justify. That context matters because it changes how you show up in these conversations. Here are seven tips we’ve found helpful in closing the gap. Don’t start with a pitch A lot of news organizations approach philanthropy like a transaction: You have an idea, you pitch it,… Read More
May 14, 2026  –
  • Nina Sachdev ,
  • Megan Griffith-Greene ,
  • Jake Hylton
When journalism fundraising falls short, it’s often because you’re answering the wrong questions
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