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Bright Spots exist in every community. They just need to be brought to light.
In early 2025, nonprofits faced political volatility and funding cuts. We saw that our grantees were leading important work in communities across the country, but many lacked communications support to turn their progress into compelling stories they could share with potential funders, partners and other key audiences.
Together with Lemonada Media, we set out to shine a light on their stories, strengthen our grantees' storytelling capacity and give audiences ways to engage with solutions.
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Quote from Grantee Participant
The process was excellent and modeled for us a higher level of storytelling than we've been able to do on our own.
Our Approach
Over two years, we partnered with Lemonada Media to create, Bright Spots, a miniseries on their Good Things podcast. The series gave grantees a platform to share stories of progress, innovation and community change while amplifying the voices of those doing the work. Participating in the series also helped grantees gain interview and storytelling experience, as well as lasting, high-quality communications assets they could use for fundraising and outreach.
For Schusterman, the series provided a powerful way to highlight effective grantee work across our channels and to give our internal team a clearer picture of the powerful work happening across our different portfolio areas.
The Results
By spotlighting what is working in communities across the country, Bright Spots turned grantee successes into stories that others could share, learn from and build on.
Importantly, our goal was not to reach the largest audience possible. It was to partner closely with grantees to reach specific audiences well-positioned to advance their work. In our post-project survey, grantees reported using the episodes to support fundraising, legislative outreach, storytelling and other organizational goals.
8
Episodes amplifying grantee stories
50
States reached
10,000+
Engagements with promotional content
30,400+
Listens across key audiences
TOP 5-8%
Of podcasts by industry benchmarks
Quote from Grantee Participant
We are building the episode into legislative materials. Metrics are hard to come by in this context, but we hope it moves the most important metric: votes.
The Bright Spots Playbook
1. Define the Concept and Storytelling Approach
Collaborated with Lemonada Media to create the concept for the miniseries.
- Start with a clear guiding principle. Many of our grantees have compelling stories. We used a shared definition of a, "bright spot" to decide which grantee stories to feature: A person, practice or place within a system that achieves exceptional results under the same constraints as others.
- Test different storytelling approaches. Our early episodes focused on interviews with grantee leaders. Later episodes incorporated voice memos and recordings from individuals directly doing or experiencing the work, including teachers, volunteers, advocates, parents and youth leaders.
2. Identify and Develop the Narrative
Worked with grantees to uncover strong stories and a narrative arc.
- Start with the audience and goals. Understanding how a grantee planned to use the content influenced both the story and the distribution strategy.
- Don't skip the pre-interview or creative brief. These essential steps helped our team, grantees and Lemonada agree on audiences, goals, guardrails and key messaging.
3. Produce the Episode
Collaborated with Lemonada on recording, editing and feedback.
- Set expectations early. Be upfront about the time commitment, from recording through review, and give grantees opportunities to provide feedback on both the creative brief and an early cut of the episode.
- Work with experienced production partners. Rather than build a podcast operation ourselves, we partnered with professional producers to streamline the process for grantees and ensure a polished final product.
4. Build a Content Ecosystem
Created articles, reels, social content and toolkits.
- One story supports many formats. Each podcast episode became the basis for an article, reel and social media series, creating more opportunities to reach different audiences.
- Make sharing easy for participants. Our partner toolkits included links with tracking, graphics and quote cards, social media copy, and external and internal email copy.
5. Launch and Distribute
Ran paid and organic campaigns and supported grantees as they promoted their episodes.
- Distribution matters as much as production. Releasing an episode does not guarantee that the right audiences will find it. We offered marketing support and funding to help grantees reach their target audiences.
Explore Bright Spots
Explore eight episodes of Bright Spots, a mini-series of the Good Things podcast featuring grantees from across our portfolios. From improving student literacy and mobilizing volunteers in times of crisis to eliminating millions in youth debt, their stories are both uplifting and instructive, offering practical insights into what works and how these approaches can be adapted by others.
Dig into the playbook
Amplify your own grantee voices and showcase community impact with the Bright Spots Template Library. Built specifically for funders, these nine plug-and-play templates guide you through the entire podcast journey—from initial grantee outreach and creative briefs to launching a full ecosystem of accompanying articles and social reels.