Nonprofit news executives share tips on handling the tough times

Minneapolis — This month, a nonprofit news conference panel titled “Leading Organizations Through Change (And Sometimes Crisis)” drew a standing-room-only crowd.

In the panel, part of the Institute for Nonprofit News’ annual INN Days conference, executives of three prominent news nonprofits talked about their “hard-earned experiences” taking over.

Panelists Sonal Shah, outgoing CEO of The Texas Tribune; Annie Chabel, CEO of The Intercept; and Sara Shahriari, executive director of Resolve Philly, shared advice applicable to boardrooms and newsrooms alike. The panel gave some insight into how high-profile nonprofit news leaders have handled moments of controversy and transition. (Staffers, who might have different perspectives, didn’t speak on the panel.)

Here are some of their tips.

Transitioning out of founder culture

All three leaders, moderator and consultant Kate Myers noted, stepped into their roles to manage transitions out of a “high-energy founder stage.”

When Shah succeeded co-founder Evan Smith as CEO of The Texas Tribune in January 2023, almost 15 years after the news outlet launched, one challenge was that “our board was built on our founder’s vision.” The board and the staff had to shift their visions for the Tribune as part of the transition away from founder culture and toward an institutional culture.

“Relationship transfers” were a critical part of that transition. Most people “bought into the founder; they didn’t buy into the institution,” Shah said.

She recommends that founders who are on their way out shape their messaging, encouraging donors and members to think about the institution as more than any one person. (Shah often brings the Tribune’s editor-in-chief on fundraising visits so funders can learn more about the Tribune’s editorial side, strengthening their connection with the institution.)

Chabel, who joined The Intercept as its inaugural CEO in 2023, had previously consulted on the organization’s split from First Look Media. Before the spinoff, The Intercept was “personality-driven” and oriented around high-profile stars, she said.

“We had to…start talking more about us as a whole, rather than an individual person and their stories,” she said. At the same time, she added, the organization had to embrace a new culture in which it was funded by readers, not one major benefactor.

The Intercept’s founder culture, Chabel said, had been very journalist-driven, letting journalists choose their editors and stories and being “a little dismissive of the business side of the organization.”

If an organization’s business model is “get a check from a very wealthy individual every year,” she said, then it may not matter that much whether readers are engaging with stories. But “if you’re fighting for survival and you need your readers to support your work,” everyone has to care about the business side too.

Managing layoffs (and press)

All three news outlets represented on the panel have had layoffs. The Intercept and The Texas Tribune, in particular, faced national scrutiny for the financial challenges that led to those layoffs.

Chabel described The Intercept’s public leadership transition as “tough, but expected,” and said she came into it braced for scrutiny. She and the team treated everything she said, every slideshow presented, as something that “could end up public” and tried to be “thoughtful about the different constituencies…with every communication.”

The outcomes Intercept leadership cared about — people reading and donating to their work; stories having journalistic impact — were not necessarily affected by negative coverage of the outlet, she said. “Our audiences don’t necessarily read the trades. A lot of what played out on Twitter and in the press really didn’t affect or reach our audience.”

Shah had a different perspective. The Tribune’s first-ever layoffs took place less than a year into her tenure. Staffers videotaped an internal conversation and shared the recording with reporters, and Shah said she counted 37 stories published about the Tribune’s layoffs. Readers didn’t necessarily read those stories, “but the funders did,” she said. “It took us six months to rebuild all those relationships.”

If she could do things over now, she said, she would tell staff the internal meeting was confidential. Journalists should be able to report on themselves, she believes, but “in some ways, we can also burn ourselves,” especially if internal conversations are taken out of context.

Rebuilding after crisis

Shahriari joined Resolve Philly as chief programs officer last summer and was part of the leadership team that oversaw its first layoffs last fall. She stepped into the role of executive director in April. (Resolve Philly evolved from a collaborative reporting project into a nonprofit in 2018.)

She’s tried to be forthright with staff and potential hires about the financial challenges that led to the layoffs, and the organization’s strategy for preventing them from happening again.

Rethinking hiring and onboarding processes is important when you’re building “the new house next to the old house,” The Intercept’s Chabel said. It’s crucial to understand any union contract obligations for rehiring. And it should be clear from the start whether the members of a hiring committee will have decision-making power or will just be advising.

When The Intercept made layoffs, leadership emphasized “we’re not changing what The Intercept is; we’re changing how we work,” and left some time before talking more about the new strategy in depth.

“You can’t lose a huge chunk of your staff and expect people to be excited in any way,” Chabel said, “but you do want to [let them know] there’s a plan for the future and there are going to be opportunities to talk about that.”

(Relatedly, Chabel mentioned Business Insider’s simultaneous launch of its AI strategy alongside deep layoffs as an example of what not to do. “When people are feeling emotional about the change, it’s not the time to say, ‘Look at all this exciting new stuff we’re going to do,’” she said.)

Have an emergency succession plan

“Train your board to think about transition at any moment in time, not just when there’s a crisis,” Shah said. “There should always be a transition plan for an organization, because that’s just good business.” (Resolve Philly’s Shahriari pointed to models like Amy Kovac-Ashley’s Executive Transition Plan.)

Shah recommends a “risk conversation” with your board to decide which risks require immediate action and which just need monitoring. The Tribune’s board ranks risks with a red/yellow/green system.

Home in on the most important metrics

In times of crisis, focus and “get really crisp about the business outcomes that you care about,” Chabel said. For The Intercept, for instance, email signups are very important; membership revenue is the metric that they prioritize, “so if that’s not dipping, we don’t need to take immediate action.”

Social traffic, she said, doesn’t drive email signups or membership revenue at The Intercept. “You might not like it that your tweets aren’t getting as much engagement, but it’s not a crisis for us in the same way.”

Shah added that, as nonprofits, everyone is choosing to be a part of an organization out of dedication to mission — business and editorial staff alike. It’s key to remind the newsroom, “we’re not making money off of you; we’re making money for you,” she said. “Too often, I find we carry the for-profit mindset into the nonprofit space.”

Find allies

Shah recommended finding “allies,” or at least two or three people to talk to. Chabel stressed that leaders shouldn’t lean only on people on the senior team, who are already shouldering significant stress in a crisis, but should also talk with trusted people outside the organization for fresh perspectives.

Prepare staff for future change

Shah didn’t mince words about the challenges ahead. “Change is coming to us,” she said. “We can manage to it and figure out where we want to go, or we can let [it] happen to us, and it’s going to be even more painful.” With rapid AI developments, she expects the next two years to be “even more painful than the last 15.”

For over a year, the Tribune has been experimenting with AI, including using it to help pull answers from its own archive as a way to train staff on what AI can do for them. Recently, alongside coverage on special education vouchers, it featured a bot designed to answer reader questions. “What we thought the bot would do, and what it actually did, were two different things,” Shah said. It was envisioned as a service tool to help answer reader questions, but because the bot got questions not included in the original story, it had to be programmed not to answer where it lacked information. At the same time, it ended up teaching reporters about the kinds of questions readers had, functioning as an engagement tool. The experiment gave everyone a concrete example of how to use AI.

“It’s not trying to force something down anyone’s throat,” Shah said, “but showing enough people, with enough intentionality, what can be done differently.”