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Since August 2018, 10 reporters at 10 public radio stations across the United States have participated in the Guns & America collaborative. They report stories from their local communities and share broadcast and digital content among each other’s stations and national platforms, with the goal of bringing context, nuance and a human face to one […]

Now more than ever, we are experiencing a range of emotions based on the media we encounter. Sometimes, these emotions lead us to take action—for better or for worse.

Filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar (right) won an Oscar for “American Factory,” one of the first movies from Higher Ground, the production company founded by former President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.

Children’s early learning and brain development are subjects that I have always cared deeply about. But now, as the mother of three little ones, these subjects have taken on a much more personal significance. I marvel every day at the connections my daughter and two sons are making and all that they are absorbing from […]

Last week in Boulder, CO, we held a meeting to explore philanthropy’s role in amplifying attention to our global environmental crisis. It was 25 degrees and snowing, but thankfully we didn’t have to walk far from our hotel to eTown, our gracious host for the daylong gathering. The day before, the high temperature reached a […]

Question: Let’s say you’re at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, watching the premiere of a documentary about the power and promise of veganism. “A shocking new documentary that will change the way you look at meat,” reads one of the reviews. Immediately after exiting the film, do you:

SIMA Studios is a global curator of social impact media with multiple arms: SIMA Awards, which honor high-quality social impact media across the globe; SIMA X, a community film screening and distribution initiative; and SIMA Classroom, an educational program designed to “provide first-class visual storytelling resources to education forums worldwide.” Recently, we chatted with SIMA’s […]

“Scale”—too often this is the bane of a grantee’s or evaluator’s existence when it comes to assessing the social impact of media projects. Why are funders so stuck on this concept, and what other impact models might matter more? As we’ve been reviewing materials we’ve gathered on media impact over the past several years, these […]

Over the past five years of researching media impact, it’s become clear to me that even those of us who spend our time researching the complexities of impact assessment sometimes rely on unwritten assumptions: that change is linear, and can be easily measured; that social media is an effective organizing tool; that conventional meetings and […]

Last week, in collaboration with Philanthropy New York and the Environmental Grantmakers Association, we held a special screening and discussion of the award-winning film Sea of Shadows, a new film by National Geographic that serves as a blueprint for how a conservation effort can come together in spite of widespread institutional corruption and dangerous cartels. In […]