Mission — News and blog

How Are You Building Loyalty?

What's your loyalty-building strategy? What platforms are you using? How are you measuring success?

These questions are a part of a process that's often spearheaded by technology. The platform creates the channel and you cultivate it. And what we’ve learned from our customers is that GroundSource isn’t a messaging provider. It’s a place to bring folks you want to build loyalty with. Both their loyalty to you but, more critically, your loyalty to them.

That's because loyalty is about supporting one another. And if your organization is really listening, you don't need to feel unsure about asking your community to support you through continued participation or financial contribution.

Newsletter, Guides, MissionSimon GalperinMarch 20, 2019Blog

22 questions that ‘complicate the narrative’, from Solution Journalism Network

Community, Guides, MissionSimon GalperinJanuary 31, 2019

What being an EMT taught me about journalism

What’s there for journalists to learn from emergency medicine? Quite a lot actually. By setting standards of care, asking the right questions, and communicating about the process, journalists can ease suffering and create a sense of safety for the communities they serve.

Mission, GuidesSimon GalperinJanuary 22, 2019Blog

Build belonging to make an impact and build a business

As organizations, building belonging is more than just doing social good. It’s the way companies from Apple to REI to Whole Foods to SoulCycle have built businesses — by making their customers feel like they’re a part of something greater than themselves. And as mission-driven organizations, you don’t have to feel like you’re faking it when you build belonging into the value you provide.

Mission, NewsletterSimon GalperinJanuary 16, 2019Blog

New marijuana verticals are new opportunities to center the underserved

Across the US and Canada, news organizations are launching marijuana verticals to cover this “new, legitimate industry.” Focused on macroeconomics trends with $999 subscriptions and behind hard paywalls, they are ignoring the cannabis communities that have been there all along, suffering imprisonment, violence, and addiction under prohibition of a drug less dangerous than alcohol.

That doesn’t mean that news organizations shouldn’t launch verticals that provide news and information to emerging businesses and markets. It just means that — as always — news organizations need to be conscious of who they have systemically ignored and move to center their reporting around those communities when the opportunity arises.

Newsletter, Guides, MissionSimon GalperinNovember 27, 2018Blog

The role media plays in creating safe spaces

Until recently, news organizations have not been overwhelmingly forced to reckon with how they reproduce existing dominant power relations, the thing that makes spaces less safe.

That includes considering the language they use (undocumented immigrant instead of illegal immigrant) or their points of reference (the view from nowhere or white heteronormative male points of view). The standard operating procedure for news organizations was to use people’s lives to produce content without any concern for the people whose lives they were touching.

A new report found that distrust of the media stems from that. What news organizations report and how they do it gives them undue and unchecked influence over the communities consuming or being featured in the news.

Newsletter, Guides, MissionSimon GalperinAugust 28, 2018Blog

Don’t be an Askhole: Toward an ethical framework for engagement, in collaboration with Hearken

Mission, Guides, CommunitySimon GalperinJuly 11, 2018

Toolkits + Guides, from The Year of Listening

Mission, Community, GuidesSimon GalperinMay 31, 2018