The Foundation Voice

In this episode of Fire & Bliss , Jennifer Stapleton sits down with Zoë Stemm Calderon, Executive Director of the Raikes Foundation, to explore what it takes to stay public and principled when pressure mounts. Zoë works alongside trustees Jeff and Tricia Raikes and the rest of the foundation team to expand opportunity for the next generation in a rapidly changing world. While many foundations...

What happens when your communications strategy leads to death threats? In this episode, we unpack the real story of what happened after a democracy rating for India was downgraded and the wave of outrage, harassment, and death threats that followed from nationalist groups. Jennifer Stapleton shares how organizations can take bold public positions but only if they've done the work beforehand. Crisi...

A conversation with Fire & Bliss designers on why design decisions are communications decisions: thin lines, logo conflicts, iteration discipline. Accessible, practical, unexpectedly useful. For more information, visit www.fireandbliss.com

For years, the DEI movement had real power behind it, real research, real results, real lives changed. And then the opposition came for it. And you know what the movement had to defend itself with? Three letters. No explanation. No story. No sentence that started with "we believe" or "we do this because." Just an acronym that half the country had never once heard defined out loud. If you lead comm...

Most organizations do not have a PR problem. They have a relevance problem. Somewhere along the way, foundations and nonprofits convinced themselves that every internal milestone deserved public attention. Your anniversary. Your luncheon. Your strategic planning retreat. And then they wonder why nobody covers it. But media attention is not awarded based on how important something feels to you. It...

Silence is not a communications strategy. It is a forfeit. And right now, foundations across this country are forfeiting, one careful non-statement at a time, convinced that staying quiet keeps them out of the crosshairs. It doesn't.  What it does is hand the microphone to whoever wants to define you next. I've spent thirty years in philanthropic and political communications. I've worked in enviro...

The Foundation Voice is a podcast hosted by Jennifer Stapleton, founder of Fire & Bliss and a 30-year veteran of philanthropic communications, exploring what it actually takes for foundations to communicate with clarity, courage, and impact in today’s political environment. Through candid interviews, sharp strategy conversations, and real-world case studies, Jennifer pulls back the curtain on...