CommsCast

Keynote: 2025 Clarence B. Jones Impact Award Winner El Tímpano, a civic media organization created with and for immigrants who face systemic barriers to information, civic participation, and representation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In 2025, The Communications Network annual conference took place in Denver, Colorado. Relive the energy of ComNet25! ComNet — the annual conference of The Communications Network — is the premier global leadership gathering for foundations and nonprofit leaders committed to building a better world through the smart and deliberate use of strategic communications. Join 1,000 of your colleagues from influential and consequential organizations around the world to connect, learn, and share at ComNet26 San Diego, learn more and register here: https://www.comnet26sd.org/ See what else we're up to: https://www.comnetwork.org/

Keynote: Future Caucus and Diane Yentel, President and CEO of National Council of Nonprofit by The Communications Network

Keynote: Jonathan Capehart, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist and Author Discussion moderated by Anusha Alikhan, Wikimedia Foundation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In 2025, The Communications Network annual conference took place in Denver, Colorado. Relive the energy of ComNet25! ComNet — the annual conference of The Communications Network — is the premier global leadership gathering for foundations and nonprofit leaders committed to building a better world through the smart and deliberate use of strategic communications. Join 1,000 of your colleagues from influential and consequential organizations around the world to connect, learn, and share at ComNet26 San Diego, learn more and register here: https://www.comnet26sd.org/ See what else we're up to: https://www.comnetwork.org/

Keynote: Meeting the Moment Join us for two TED-style talks that will explore perceptions, misconceptions, and how we build shared moments in today’s seemingly divisive times. You’ll hear from Stephen Hawkins, More in Common and Ashlin Malouf, Othering & Belonging Institute Kristen Mack, MacArthur Foundation, will kick things off. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In 2025, The Communications Network annual conference took place in Denver, Colorado. Relive the energy of ComNet25! ComNet — the annual conference of The Communications Network — is the premier global leadership gathering for foundations and nonprofit leaders committed to building a better world through the smart and deliberate use of strategic communications. Join 1,000 of your colleagues from influential and consequential organizations around the world to connect, learn, and share at ComNet26 San Diego, learn more and register here: https://www.comnet26sd.org/ See what else we're up to: https://www.comnetwork.org/

Jonah Berger is a Wharton School professor and internationally bestselling author of Magic Words, Contagious, Invisible Influence, and The Catalyst. He shares the power of language to influence and engage, the brain science behind understanding, and how communications and network building can help you achieve durable change.

Ebony Reed is the Chief Strategy Officer of The Marshall Project, and coauthor of Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap. She joins us to explore the power of unexpected connections, generosity, and gratitude. Lightning Leadership Speakers: Anusha Alikhan, Wikimedia Foundation Daphne Moore, Walton Family Foundation Latia Henderson, RootED Denver Eric Brown, Brownbridge Strategies NaTika Rowles, Black Community Fund

Sree is an award-winning expert and scholar in digital communications and the CEO of Digimentors. He is the former Chief Digital Officer for New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Columbia University. He explores the importance of attention, your digital and physical footprint, and the future of comms.

The California Endowment is the 2024 Clarence B. Jones Impact Award winner. Learn from their case study keynote. Sarah Reyes and Marisol Aviña present on The California Endowment’s #Health4All campaign, which created an inclusive health system that did not discriminate or exclude Californians based on immigration status.

LaTosha Brown, visionary thought leader, cultural activist and artist, connector and co-founder of Black Voters Matter, will share the value of organizing and communicating through relationships, the power of community building, the impact of deep listening, and strategies for bringing people together to deliver change.

Whistleblower Aid has been named the sixth winner of the Clarence B. Jones Impact Award, an honor from The Communications Network that recognizes and celebrates the impact of transformative communications campaigns in the social sector. They join Truth Initiative, Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, A Step Ahead Chattanooga, United We Dream, and Innocence Project as #JonesAward recipients for their work to empower whistleblowers and shift public narratives in favor of accountability.

Judy Belk and Richard Tate, the former and current CEOs of the California Wellness Foundation, are communicators whose careers have led them to the corner office. Each will make the case for communications as a leadership task and an indispensable tool for transformation. They will offer best practices for how to follow your values, integrate communications inside your organization, and describe why we must all dedicate ourselves to developing our communications chops to grow and tap into leadership skills.

Aimee Rinehart of the Associated Press and Mikhael Simmonds, Executive Director at the Center for Community Media at CUNY will lead a discussion on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Comms4Good.

Join us for a keynote conversation focused on communications lessons learned from the US Women’s National Soccer team’s landmark effort to achieve equal pay. The team’s work made clear how plain communications can be a powerful tool to create impact by building broad alliances and reshaping culture — and consequently, policy; as well as the need for patience and persistence — because communications change work is a long game.

Join two dynamic rabble rousers as they engage in a conversation about the challenges and potential for foundations and nonprofits. They’ll talk about the role of comms when tackling today’s big issues, the value of uniting the sector, the importance of leading from the middle, and how to embrace change and challenge the status quo.

Join leading social sector CEOs as they discuss the evolving role of their work as “communicator in chief” of their organizations. They'll reflect on lessons from the last two years of disruption and the power and need for effective communications. Panelists: William C. Bell of Casey Family Programs, Carmen Rojas of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, and Caryl Stern of The Walton Family Foundation. Moderated by and produced in partnership with Stacy Palmer of The Chronicle Philanthropy.

Homelessness and lack of affordable housing are the biggest issues facing Seattle. Homelessness is a symptom of cracks in our housing, health, and economic policies, and changing the narrative to focus on systems instead of on individuals continues to be a challenge. Join prominent local government and nonprofit leaders for a dynamic conversation on the current state of homelessness, root causes, and what other cities across the country can learn from Seattle. Panelists: Marc Dones of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, Felicia Salcedo of We Are In, and Derrick Belgarde of Chief Seattle Club. Moderated by Scott Greenstone, reporter at KNKX FM.

We are thrilled to announce our Jones Award judging panel has selected Innocence Project as the 2022 The Clarence B. Jones Impact Award winner. For thirty years, the Innocence Project has worked to restore the freedom of the staggering number of people who have been wrongfully convicted and to transform the systems that allow injustice to occur. In that time, the Innocence Project has freed or exonerated 237 people who collectively have spent more than 3,000 years in prison. Innocence deployed a strategic digital campaign to build a diverse coalition of millions supporters that ultimately won the removal of Pervis Payne from death row. Learn more about Pervis’s case here.

Wednesday, October 6 at 12pm EST Bruna Sollod, Communications Director, United We Dream Bruna moved from Brazil to the United States when she was eight years old. She received her DACA protections while studying at the University of Florida. Now, Bruna serves as the Communications Director at United We Dream, where she has been a strategist for multiple immigration campaigns including Clean Dream Act Now and the Home is Here campaign, which led to immigrant youth's victory at the Supreme Court on the DACA litigation. Bruna is a growing voice in the progressive movement, and has been featured most recently in CNN, The New York Times, the Guardian and NBC Latino. "Our work is not just about politics and policy, but about empowering young, undocumented people." José Muñoz, National Communications Manager, United We Dream José Muñoz is a DACA recipient who came to the U.S. from Mexico when he was a few months old, and grew up queer and undocumented in Minneapolis. José ensures that the voice and strategy of immigrant youth and families are heard across the country through engaging the media, shaping news stories, developing narrative and message as well as training directly impacted people to express themselves through the media. He’s been a featured voice in publications such as, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Buzzfeed, Newsweek, TeenVogue, MTV News, and on Spanish language programming on both Univision and Telemundo. “Our power is our stories.” #HomeisHere Daca Video Series - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTahl_sx9fes99SC7RWKV0DsKRDoCBs7N

Wednesday, October 6 at 2pm EST Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu (she/they), Founding Director, Project LETS Stefanie is a Disability Justice cultural worker, educator, organizer, parent, somatic and ancestral healing practitioner, consultant, writer, and the Executive Director of Project LETS. Their work specializes in building peer support collectives and community mental health care structures outside of the state. “Access is a practice.” About Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu - https://www.stefaniekaufman.com/about

Friday, October 8 at 12pm EST john a. powell In Conversation with Carmen Rojas: Building Bridges and Belonging Through Comms Dr. john a. powell is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties and a wide range of issues including race, structural racism, ethnicity, housing, poverty, and democracy. He is the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute (formerly Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society), which supports research to generate specific prescriptions for changes in policy and practice that address disparities related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and socioeconomics in California and nationwide. “Bridging is the key to healing.” Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society - https://iupress.org/9780253017710/rac... Dr. Carmen Rojas, President & CEO, Marguerite Casey Foundation Dr. Carmen Rojas (she/her) is the president and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation. For more than 20 years, Carmen has worked with foundations, financial institutions, and nonprofits to improve the lives of working people across the United States. “Funders should be the nurturing soil for social change efforts to take roots.” The Problems With Philanthropy, and What We Can Do to Fix Them - https://zora.medium.com/the-problems-with-philanthropy-and-what-we-can-do-to-fix-them-c7315aaf04cd

Friday, October 8 at 2pm EST Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, Climate Scientist and Chief Scientist, The Nature Conservancy Katharine is an atmospheric scientist. She studies climate change, one of the most pressing issues we face today. “We need to make climate change personal.” Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Saving-Us/Katharine-Hayhoe/9781982143831

How do you develop your moral leadership? Dr. Carmen Rojas, President & CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, and Rickke Mananzala, Executive Director of New York Foundation, will share how they’ve developed their voice and moral leadership, the evolving public role of philanthropy and nonprofit organizations in civic life, as well as how each of us can ultimately challenge ourselves to do more and do better.

Building a Digital Movement by The Communications Network

What is Narrative Organizing? And why is it essential for communicators to understand? In this session you’ll learn about narratives: what they are, why they matter, and how to use “landscaping” and “narrative network organizing” to advance the work of your foundation or nonprofit.

This workshop will explore how design thinking can foster a deep and genuine connection with the communities and audiences you aim to serve. We will share insights and methods for enhancing your communications, messaging, and campaign strategies in order to create holistic solutions that connect the dots between product, service, business, and entire systems in an effort to tackle problems from multiple perspectives.

Join Lucas Johnson, Executive Director of Civil Conversations and Social Healing at The On Being Project, to discuss and explore how we can understand each other with greater depth, speak to each other with greater care, and create conversations that enable us to do the difficult moral wrestling that this moment demands. He'll discuss their new guide that provides a flexible roadmap you can adapt for your group and conveneings and share learnings from the more than 15 years of conversation on On Being.

With the murder of George Floyd, the movement against racial injustice, and Covid-19 highlighting health disparities in 2020, organizations across the country and world stepped up to make bold statements of solidarity and commitment to racial equity. One year later, communications teams are leaning into their power and responsibility within the equity and racial justice space and are asking themselves “So we made a statement on equity last year...now what?“.

This workshop will share insights, tools, and techniques for using communications research to craft messages with maximum motivating power. Communicators and researchers who work closely together will walk participants through the message research and development process—from using insights from the social sciences to develop meaningful messages, designing research that produces useful results, and translating research findings into messages that resonate with target audiences. We’ll cover best practices for all kinds of communications research, including low-cost options for organizations with tight budgets. Participants will try their hands at using psychographic segmentation to tailor messages for people with different mindsets. For inspiration, we’ll look at new communications research commissioned by BMe, a community of Black leaders and allies working to reach new audiences and mobilize a large-scale movement that supports Black people in achieving their highest aspirations.

Creating an Inclusive Brand for an Historic Community Foundation by The Communications Network

Home Is Here: How DACA Recipients Shaped Their Own Narrative by The Communications Network

Communications That Meet People Where They Are for Sustained Engagement by The Communications Network

Lessons in Listening: How Black and Brown Community-Led Movements Inspire Change by The Communications Network

Freedom or Death! A Slave Rebellion and the Power of Storytelling by The Communications Network

Radical Listening: Organizers & Researchers Transforming Our Work by The Communications Network

Equity in Action: Ways to Authentically Reach Diverse Audiences by The Communications Network

The “Action” Tank: Strategies for Tumultuous Times by The Communications Network

From Intentions To Actions: How Do Organizations Become Truly Inclusive? by The Communications Network

Six Steps to Changing Hearts and Minds—For Good by The Communications Network

Nonprofits Navigating the Rules that Permit them to Lobby and Advocate by The Communications Network

Operationalizing Equity: Communications + Power by The Communications Network

Strengthening Leadership for Racial Equity by The Communications Network

Propelling and Protecting Science through Storytelling by The Communications Network

#NoKidsInCages: Building a Movement Out of a Moment by The Communications Network

Creating Your First Podcast: Responsibly Telling Stories About Racial Equity, Hate, and Extremism by The Communications Network

ComNetworkV Keynote: Alexis McGill Johnson by The Communications Network

ComNetworkV In Conversation: How Communications and Journalism are Critical to Public Health by The Communications Network

ComNetworkV In Conversation: Why America’s Future Depends on The South’s by The Communications Network

ComNetworkV Keynote: Trabian Shorters by The Communications Network

ComNetworkV In Conversation: How Organizers Closed Down an Atlanta Jail by The Communications Network

ComNetworkV In Conversation: Civic Engagement and the 2020 Census: Yes, It Matters for Your Org by The Communications Network