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Writer's pictureShaady Salehi

What Is a Social Impact Strategist?

Updated: Dec 29, 2020

My job -- and passion -- is helping visionary social change agents achieve their biggest goals. The bigger the goal the better. You want to shift the culture of your sector? I'm in. Do you want to change the way people talk about your issue? Sign me up. Have you come up with a cool organizing model that can be replicated nationwide? Let's make it happen.


But what does it take to actually make that kind of change come about?


Some of my biggest lessons in catalyzing social change came out of my experience at Active Voice. From 2004-2015, I worked closely with the founder -- my mentor -- Ellen Schneider in using powerful films to catalyze change across a range of issues. Among the many things that stuck with me, was the role of storytelling as part of an ecosystem of change.


In honor of Active Voice's 20th anniversary, I was recently interviewed as part of a blog series featuring former staff. The interview, conducted by Arij Mikati of Pillars Fund, is one of the best articulations of how I understand social change and how I've applied that to my work with the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project. A truncated version of that interview is below. You can read the full interview here.


Arij: I know that you were with Active Voice for quite a long time. Now you run a social impact consultancy [and] you’re also the director of the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project. How are these all connected?


Shaady: Yes, my work has evolved into a hybrid of strategy and communications support for visionary organizations, with a growing emphasis on alleviating the power imbalances in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. Much of my passion for this work comes from my experience as an executive director, where I had to juggle the responsibilities of making sure we stuck to our values and our mission, leading a team, collaborating with the founder, and of course cultivating and maintaining relationships with funders. While I probably couldn’t necessarily name it at the time — because I was in so deep — my years as executive director helped me see the many challenges that are in play in the nonprofit sector — and that they are further exacerbated when you factor in race, gender, and age. Since then I’ve been doing a lot of work helping nonprofits and foundations think about how they’re telling their story, how they can use strategy to achieve their goals.


Even though the work at Active Voice was very focused on using film, my time there really helped me hone and cultivate the understanding of what a strategy is and how it can be leveraged to advance social change. How do you get from point A to point B? What is the current dominant narrative, and how can we collectively get behind a new narrative that better serves our goals?


[In 2017] I started consulting with The Whitman Institute to help them think about their legacy-building strategy as a spend-out foundation. They had coined this concept of trust-based philanthropy and wanted to use their remaining time as a spend-out foundation to work toward making trust-based philanthropy the norm. And story is so central to this, because it adds a human dimension to these theoretical concepts, and helps others see the possibility of a different way of doing things


Arij: How do you think about making sure that you’re finding stories from voices we don’t often hear? Or making sure that the stories of those that aren’t often told do serve your ultimate goal?


Shaady: One of the key communication goals for the TBP Project is to demonstrate that trust-based philanthropy can be embraced by any funder — regardless of size, history, issue area, etc. So I seek out stories from funders that fundamentally get the underlying values of a trust-based approach and that have taken steps toward making changes at their own organizations. I also make it a priority to seek out stories from BIPOC leaders in philanthropy — because the sector is still overwhelmingly white — and the majority of these leaders have had to confront their own power imbalances in one way or another. [Then,] how can we lift up different stories that will resonate with the range of audiences that exist in the philanthropic space so that they can see themselves in the story? How can we activate that and hand them a tool that helps them take a few next steps?


Arij: I know there are a couple of tools in particular that you feel you’ve carried specifically from Active Voice into your current work. Can you tell us a little bit about the braintrust model and how you’ve applied that to creating change as part of the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project?


Shaady: I would say the braintrust model, which was designed by Ellen at POV, has become such a standard for how social impact film strategy works now. Fundamentally, if you’re trying to influence change in a particular sector, you have to work with the people who you think would want to incorporate the story into their work. So before designing any film campaign, we would bring together a group of hand-picked stakeholders to watch the film together and have a detailed conversation about strategy: how could this story help people understand the issues you work on, or not? What audiences might connect to one protagonist or another?


So I knew that before we launched [the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project], we needed both foundation and nonprofit leaders to weigh in and have some space, reflection, and insight to support this and inform the strategy. So even though I didn’t pull together a formal braintrust where we had different stakeholders around one table, we couldn’t launch it effectively without having a series of conversations with not just funders, but also philanthropy-serving organizations and nonprofit leaders. The braintrust model really emulates one of the principles of trust-based philanthropy, which is to solicit and act on feedback. There’s always expertise and lived experience that can inform your strategy to be more effective. In my consulting work today, I wouldn’t ever propose a strategy without hearing from those who would be influenced or affected by that strategy — either directly or indirectly.


Arij: What I hear from you is the importance of building trust as you do this work. What are some other ways that you do build trust in your work? And how has Active Voice helped to shape the way you do that?


Shaady: I learned very early at Active Voice that, any social change effort requires ongoing collaboration. That it’s inherently about building a relationship, which takes time. And it helped me recognize the valuable contributions of multiple players. I approach these conversations with a lens of curiosity and vulnerability. Active Voice helped me recognize that in being curious and transparent, it helps you get that back.


And similarly with trust-based philanthropy, we have the narrative of trust-based philanthropy, of sharing power. Our work is stronger when we share power with grantees and communities. That gives us a kind of narrative that we can build a relationship from.

Arij: Another tool that you talked about that you really benefited from at Active Voice is this concept of the ecosystem of change. Can you tell me a little bit about that and how that’s impacted your work?


Shaady: I remember my first assignment at Active Voice was a project about juvenile justice. My job was to identify all the different sectors and organizations in the Bay Area that are working on issues related to juvenile justice — and that was like, the most fun research project because I got to imagine the whole ecosystem surrounding “juvenile justice”. The issue isn’t just about the young people who get caught up in the system, but also schools, social workers, law enforcement, and of course families and communities. This early project helped me understand if we’re going to move the meter on this issue, we can’t just work with one sector. There’s research, there’s policy, there’s advocacy, there’s grassroots work, there’s philanthropy, there’s media makers. All of these sectors play a role in influencing — and changing — the narrative around a particular issue.


That, I would say, was an orientation to really understand the shared interests of all these different groups, even if it’s not always obvious. And in forging collaborations, my time at Active Voice taught me the importance of clarifying expectations and communicating often with partners in order to build trust and relationships. I’ve brought all of this ecosystem thinking and relationship-building into my work today.




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