Filter by
Wicked, for Good? The Power of Narrative to Shape Public Perception
“Are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?” Glinda the Good Witch asks this in the opening scene of the latest movie-musical Wicked, perfectly capturing the show’s central question. The show on its surface is about friendship, yes; but even more so, it...
Progress Is Still Possible: 5 questions to ask while taking stock
Now is a good time to take stock. A lot has happened. We just received important lessons and insights that we need to digest and make meaning about. While few organizations are likely to change their mission to respond to the recent U.S. elections, all organizations need to take...
The 2024 Election: Where We Are, What It Means and How We Move Forward
This week’s election results came with a weight for the advocates, issues and communities we care about. We want you to know that Spitfire is here for you –– whether you’re an ally, potential or former client, or partner in the field. We often say that we live our values because...
Need some support? Check out our tools.
Communications lessons from the election season that everyone needs to learn
This election, whatever the outcome, marks a new chapter in American democracy. That’s because lies about our elections that used to be considered fringe are now mainstream, upheld by those in power and — let’s be honest — one of the wealthiest men in the world. As such...
Year five: Spitfire's Pro Bono Fund stands firm in supporting diversity, equity and inclusion
The Supreme Court’s decision to end race conscious admissions in 2023 quickly threw the racial justice field into a state of turbulence. The move was a calculated attack to pick apart and unravel decades of work to advance diversity, equity and inclusion for all identities and...
Planning for the election? Start with these 5 tips
The other day, I was advising a prospective client — a nonprofit with a staff of about 60 — and I asked if the organization had been doing any election planning. The individual immediately started talking about the post-election period — how the organization was worried about...
Authoring a Better Future, Together
This blog post was originally published as part of the Disinfo Defense League's "Narrative Takes." DDL is a distributed national network of organizers, researchers, scholars and strategists dedicated to disrupting online racialized disinformation infrastructure. Spitfire has...
Are you a communicating organization?
Communications is an invaluable resource. Organizations can use it to create and deepen relationships, set agendas, move solutions, build trust, inspire big change and so much more. To use communications to its full power, organizations need to embrace not just doing...
When the media gets it wrong, here’s how to make it right
Sometime in 2020, a member of my partner’s family kept spouting conspiracy theories: COVID-19 was a hoax; Biden stole the election; and so on. Partly out of curiosity, my partner and I “audited” her Facebook wall to see whether we could get a sense of where this was coming from...
Bye, Twitter: Knowing when it’s time to part
On Oct. 27, 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter and eventually renamed it X. Musk’s acquisition resulted in restoring the accounts of individuals spreading misinformation, racism and antisemitism as well as former President Donald Trump’s Twitter/X account. Musk also laid off...
Choose your ministry
Written by Maurice Mitchell Many of my friends and colleagues are rightfully worried about conflict as we head into a contentious election season. Conflict between organizers and voters, between residents deciding on which candidate to choose. Even between organizers about the...
Best-Case Scenario: November 6, 2024
There has been a lot of scenario planning for the U.S. elections. Almost all that I have heard about is planning for the worst. What if people storm state capitals or attack poll workers or county clerks? What if people don’t like the results and take to the streets or worse? We...