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 a funding pathway, identifying partners and envisioning early indicators of success.

What the workshop confirmed is that funders are hungry for practical guidance. They want tools, frameworks and a community that can help them move from understanding the media ecosystem to making their first media grant responsibly.

I’m excited to share that the workshop is just the beginning of something bigger.

At MIF, we’re building a new body of work that will help funders move from understanding the role of media to confidently funding it. That means creating practical learning experiences, tools and spaces for collaboration that make media philanthropy more accessible, actionable and responsible.

In this moment of profound disruption in our information ecosystem, the question is no longer whether media belongs in a philanthropic strategy. It’s how funders can engage effectively, responsibly and with greater collective impact.

I also want to give a big shoutout to our Executive Director Abby Rapoport, who flew from Austin to Baltimore to support me (a true act of love and/or professional dedication!) The next day, Abby hosted a coffee to announce the launch of our new science and health funders network, a dedicated space for funders interested in learning how media investments can improve health and science outcomes. Many, many thanks to RWJF for their support in bringing this work to life. Please email Abby if you’re interested in learning more about this network: abby@mediafunders.org.

If you were in the room and want to keep the conversation going, please reach out. And if you weren’t, we’re bringing this to more audiences soon, so stay tuned. We’re just getting started!