The Tow Foundation and The Sister Fund are not large grantmakers.  The former distributes $7 million a year, while the latter awards just under $600,000. But both foundations have had success with their communications initiatives, described below by Emily Tow Jackson, Executive Director and Trustee of The Tow Foundation (and a former NYRAG Board Chair); Kanyere Eaton, Executive Director of The Sister Fund; and Linda Kay Klein, Director of Research and Communications at The Sister Fund.

NYRAG: Why is communications crucial, even for a small foundation?

Linda Kay Klein: The Sister Fund’s founder, Helen LaKelly Hunt, is convinced that communications are even more important for small foundations than they are for large ones. She says, “Because we have limited funds to give away, we have to leverage our other resources for our grantees. One of those resources is our ability to communicate our grantees’ greater vision to the world.”

Emily Tow Jackson: We can enhance our grant dollars by promoting our grantees and giving them a forum to tell their stories to the larger world through our foundation publications and website. I don’t see why foundations should be different from any other businesses in terms of needing to market what they do.

NYRAG: What are your respective communications strategies and staffing structures?

ETJ: We have only three full-time staff who share all responsibilities for grantmaking and administrative duties, including communications. Our communications strategy is targeted toward promoting the work of our grantees and raising awareness about the issues. We are a family foundation that tries to maximize our social impact, so I also try to promote the benefits of strategic focus, as opposed to funding pet projects, in our communications tools.

Kanyere Eaton: We came to communications very slowly. In 2004, Helen LaKelly Hunt published her book Faith and Feminism: A Holy Alliance. This was our first communications tool. As we sharpened our message, we realized there was more to communicate and it made more sense to hire a professional staffer than to spend money on consultants. This led us to hire a communications person in 2006, who is one of four total staff.

LKK: As the staffer devoted to communications, I work on research, events, reports, newsletters, our own foundation Web site, and FaithandFeminism.org, a site that connects faith-based women working on social justice issues. We’re rethinking how we talk about the work of our grantees. Because we want the work to resonate with the widest possible audience, we need to utilize varied communications vehicles in order to be more effective. Going forward, we’re discussing how to advance our communications with initiatives like monthly e-blasts, an award at an annual event, a video, a blog and a national conference.

NYRAG: How can we ensure that boards and trustees view communications as core to furthering a foundation’s mission rather than an “administrative cost” that needs to be minimized?

ETJ: I didn’t have to do much convincing with my board. We started small, with a simple brochure, because we needed something to give to people who were interested in the foundation. The board quickly understood that this was important, and have seen how it is a powerful tool to help leverage what we do.

LKK: I believe that a strong communications department is equivalent to a strong match grant. Communications multiply every dollar your foundation gives away by creating a stronger audience for your grantees and the mission of their work. This brings donors, partners and converts to the grantees’ causes.

KE: For us, communications emerged very organically, but I can’t say how long it will be a priority. Once it feels like we’ve gotten our message out, communications may not remain a permanent strategy for our board.

NYRAG: What are some successful communications tools or strategies you’ve employed?

LKK: One simple, yet effective example is our Faith and Feminism Dialogues and Brown Bag Lunches. Even if you are new to communications, you can do something like this. You just need an email invitation, a 15-minute speaker, and $50 for desserts and coffee.

ETJ: We print an annual Juvenile Justice Initiative brochure that describes in detail all of our grants and send it to an extensive mailing list that includes foundations and other funders, nonprofits, and people in government. We put out press releases periodically, and talk to reporters on a regular basis. In May, the Chronicle on Philanthropy published a cover story on juvenile justice funding that I had pitched to a reporter two years earlier. I stayed in touch with them and when they felt the time was right, they asked me for additional contacts. The Tow Foundation’s work was featured prominently in the article.

NYRAG: What are your greatest communications challenges?

LKK: We are a small foundation, so our greatest challenge is a lack of bodies to do the work. Ours is a communications department of one. We deal with this by having the rest of the foundation pitch in and help at times. At other times, I help the rest of the staff with their projects.

ETJ: You have to be willing to deal with being more well-known. Communications bring more publicity, and not everyone is prepared for that. My feeling is that to be a responsible grantmaker, this just comes with the job, especially with today’s emphasis on transparencyand accountability. If we make a substantial grant, we need to put out a press release and work to get that covered in mainstream journalism outlets. If you are small, it’s a challenge to have the capacity to be out there in the public arena. The other challenge is just being a good writer or communicator. My senior program officer is a former reporter, so I’m really fortunate. Good writing, editing and design are key to an effective communications product and are well worth the investment.

KE: We were initially interested in being quiet, because we are small and were already receiving ten times more proposals than we could fund. Getting more attention was, in this respect, unfortunate for us. We weren’t as interested in promoting our identity or our grantmaking as we were committed to helping our grantee partners get their messages out.

NYRAG: Do you provide communications assistance or funding to your grantees?

ETJ: Annually, we run an event where we invite our grantees to network with one another and where we always offer some sort of training or professional development. Last year, our session was on telling your story to promote what you do and as a fundraising strategy. We also have grants to organizations specifically for communications.

KE: We have hosted media and public speaking and writing trainings for our grantees. After the last workshop, two very promising grantees indicated their need for more specific support so we gave them scholarships to receive specialized media training. One of our grantee organizations was hosting an international conference outside of the United States so we assisted them in getting support from Jennifer Pozner of Women in Media and News. In addition, we consistently highlight our grantees in our own communications.

NYRAG: How do you measure the effectiveness of your communications?

LKK: We recently did a Mapping Study that monitored how progressive women of faith were thinking and talking about women, faith and social justice. Through the mapping study, we got to see the ways in which The Sister Fund’s messaging did and did not match the language of other progressive women of faith. This led us to host our Strategic Messaging Session, organized by Auburn Media. For this session, we invited 40 of our foundation and nonprofit peers to write, discuss and present their vision for a healed world, and describe how social justice-minded women of faith would play a role in it. We took elements of these women’s visions and incorporated them into the way that we now talk about our grantees’ work. So that’s an example of a communications measure that directly resulted in a communications shift. For our Web site, we use Google Analytics. This helps us measure how people are responding to data — and responding to how and where we post the data. Do they react better when information is in the upper righthand corner? When the current events are more “fun” and “light” — or more serious?

ETJ:  Because we don’t have a lot out there, it’s easy. We ask for feedback, and get a lot of it spontaneously on the big, main print piece we send out. I definitely feel that we are better known in the field because of our brochure and website. When I’m out in the field, people often tell me that they have read our brochure from cover to cover, which I take as the ultimate compliment. That’s totally anecdotal feedback, but when you’re small, it’s probably enough. If you’re doing a much more comprehensive communications strategy, you probably want to set up measures that document your effectiveness with real data.