ANNOUNCEMENT: SCHEDULED BREAK
Better to Speak will take a scheduled break beginning on June 26 to pivot to limited operations focused more directly on organizational development.
That's right – we’ll be officially scaling back on most of our forward-facing work (namely publishing and producing content). As we approach 6 years of Better to Speak, we’ve realized that although our roots are in storytelling, it has taken capacity away from our more strategic and long-term goals of growing our internal team, our base of potential supporters, members, and partners, as well as our ability to build up a foundation of sustainable financial resources.
This way of approaching our work with Better to Speak also doesn’t offer the space to think differently about the media we are producing and platforming, both in process and content. So we’ll be using this time to rest, reflect, and regroup, and come back reenergized to transform silence into language and action.
We’ll be offline from most external marketing and correspondence from Monday, June 26, and will be back on Monday, August 31. In the meantime, we plan to pivot to limited operations to address our immediate development needs internally. This includes onboarding our new Development Coordinator and volunteers to support the production of our outstanding content.
Here's what the next two months will look like specifically:
We are no longer accepting pitches and submissions, with the exception of the outstanding pitches and submissions that we are currently working to respond to. We will close the Pitching + Submission form for new entries until July 31 and will open it up ahead of our deadline of August 19 for stories on Pan-Africanism (to be published in September).
New Quarterly Partnerships + Services offerings will be paused indefinitely. Inquire about limited offerings here.
We will be onboarding our Development Coordinator – y'all say "Hey, Desireé!" 👋🏾
With her help, we will then work on optimizing our State of the Young Black Advocate campaign to focus on fundraising, audience and prospective member outreach, and our study of Black folks 18-30. For more context, check out our annual launch blog where we explained these goals.
We’ll be in direct communication with writers and collaborators in the next few days with more information on what this means for y’all specifically. For any urgent questions or comments that come up now or throughout our break, please reply here or email us at hi@bettertospeak.org!
To our readers, listeners, donors, and community: Please continue engaging with our existing content! We still need your support as we pivot. Here's what's new ⤵️
ABOUT BETTER TO SPEAK
Better to Speak is a Black youth-led community media platform working to transform silence into language and action.
Through content, community engagement, and communications, Better to Speak works to amplify the voices and stories of Black people and communities, equip them with the storytelling tools, and cultivate a cultural narrative of self and community actualization. Learn more at www.bettertospeak.org.
ABOUT THE STATE OF THE YOUNG BLACK ADVOCATE
Better to Speak’s State of the Young Black Advocate community outreach and narrative power-building campaign will seek out the perspectives of young Black leaders to inform peer-driven community programming in 2022 and, ultimately, build narrative power among Black youth and young adults.