Stay up-to-date on the latest news, trends and perspectives in media and philanthropy.

Here at Media Impact Funders, we’ve been researching best practices in measuring media impact since 2013. In addition to curating impact-related tools, producing original analyses on impact trends, and publishing a monthly impact newsletter, we also convene funders to discuss impact, and conduct research on how funders are thinking about and assessing impact in the field. In early 2019, a full-scale website redesign allowed us to showcase these resources in a more streamlined, organized way. Read More

While the media and tech landscapes are changing rapidly—requiring nimble and adaptive business practices and new models—the larger social sector funding landscape can be stuck in model for a previous age, planning out discrete interventions and then collecting metrics to examine how many people were touched by them. And media funders—despite often being at the cutting edge of impact evaluation—still struggle with these tensions. Read More

Next week, several hundred people from national, community, and place-based foundations, as well as newsrooms and other nonprofits, will come together at the Knight Media Forum in Miami. The conference focuses on philanthropy’s role in strengthening local news and information, which is essential for healthy communities and a vibrant democracy. We believe there’s an important conversation missing from the conference schedule: a discussion of the power imbalance inherent in funder-grantee relationships, and what we can do about it. Read More

As you may have noticed, a few weeks ago we completely overhauled our website in an effort to better serve the rapidly changing fields of media and philanthropy. (Here's an overview of what you can now find.) And with our shiny new website comes shiny new impact assessment resources, which we're eager to showcase. Read More

You may have heard political commentator Charlie Sykes talk about polarization in this country. He examined it in several newspaper op-eds. He hosted a show about it in President Trump’s first 100 days in office. And he talked about it at our 2017 Media Impact Forum back in June. Read More

Editor's note: Earlier this month, Media Impact Funders brought funders together at Philanthropy New York with organizers and presenters from the first VR for Change summit to explore how immersive platforms offer new ways to engage and mobilize users around social issues. Because this is a new and quickly evolving medium, attendees had many questions. The lively conversation ranged across definitions of new technologies, ways to match funders’ goals to VR productions, emerging research on impact, and the costs of supporting such projects as platforms continue to roll out. Diana Barrett of the Fledgling Fund has thought through many of these questions in her own practice. In this post adapted from a piece published in the online publication Immerse, she shares what she’s learned about the impact of VR, and how Fledgling chooses the projects they support.  Read More

By Meghan Ventura | Community & Operations Manager, Games for Change With VR’s promise to help us see the world from someone else’s point of view, one word has become nearly synonymous with virtual reality projects on real-world issues—empathy. Read More

Since 2014, Media Impact Funders has been showcasing the work of producers dedicated to creating documentaries in the public interest through our annual Media Impact Festival. This year’s Media Impact Festival is a partnership with the AFI DOCS Film Festival in Washington, D.C., which took place from June 14-18. Our festival celebrates the following 10 media projects, which were selected to participate in AFI’s 2017 Impact Lab. See the case statements below to learn more about their outreach goals and impact. 2017 Selections ACORN and the Firestorm by Reuben Atlas and Sam Pollard (DOCUMENTARY FILM) This film documents the controversies surrounding ACORN, America’s largest grassroots community organizing group,  which became a major player in the 2008 presidential election that resulted in Barack Obama’s victory. Big businesses, Republicans and right­-wing activists took issue with the group, firing accusations of voter fraud and government waste at the left­-leaning organization. The conservative opposition found unexpected allies in a pair of amateur journalists who posed as a pimp and prostitute hoping to expose ACORN via hidden ­camera. The ensuing political drama spawned the now-omnipresent Breitbart Media, and served as a prescient foreshadowing of today’s political climate. Read the case… Read More

This post originally appeared on the Ford Foundation's Equals Change blog on Sept. 21, 2016. Not everyone knows the name Sir Tim Berners-Lee, but they certainly know his invention: the World Wide Web. And if being responsible for one of the most important innovations in human history wasn’t enough, early on Berners-Lee made the generous and vital decision to give it away for free. Read More

On July 24, the night before the opening of the Democratic National Convention here in Philadelphia, Van Jones—CNN commentator, social activist, author and president & co-founder of The Dream Corps—offered his candid thoughts on the state of our increasingly divided nation. Read More

Media Impact Funders and Foundation Center Announce New Mapping Tool for Media and Philanthropy Read More

By Games for Change Every year, the Games for Change Festival celebrates the most impactful digital games that touch on social issues and aim to inspire their audiences to action. As video game’s audience increases—with gamers in 60 percent of American homes, according to the Entertainment Software Association—so does their potential to impact even more lives. Read More