The Foundation Voice

Women have tremendous power. Renee Ferrufino believes it is time to stop waiting for permission to use it.

The President and CEO of The Women’s Foundation of Colorado joins Jennifer Stapleton to discuss women’s leadership, wealth as a tool for collective power, and why traditional grantmaking alone cannot meet this moment. Renee shares her experience as the first Latina to lead the foundation, explains how community-led funding redistributes decision-making power, and challenges women to become bigger givers, investors, and advocates.

This is an honest conversation about belonging, courage, philanthropy, public policy, and what it takes to build systems in which all women can thrive.

Learn more:

- Fire & Bliss: www.fireandbliss.com

- The Women’s Foundation of Colorado: https://wfco.org/

- Women & Girls of Color Fund: https://wfco.org/grantmaking/women-and-girls-of-color-fund/

- Women’s Impact Investing Giving Circle: https://wfco.org/giving/join-a-community-of-giving/giving-circles/wiigc/

Season One of The Foundation Voice featured conversations with leaders in foundation communications, philanthropy, branding, and advocacy. In this season finale, Jennifer Stapleton revisits the five lessons that had the biggest impact on her thinking.

Hear Samantha Lasky explain why "a reporter is a tactic, not a strategy," Hanna Kellyman break down the difference between branding and visual identity, Zoe Stemm-Calderon challenge leaders to protect their mission, not just their institution, and Jennifer Laudano share why the best communicators anticipate where the puck is going instead of reacting to today's headlines.

Jennifer also reflects on lessons from Moms Demand Action and Bloomberg Philanthropies, exploring why silence is never a communications strategy.

Whether you're a foundation executive, nonprofit leader, communications professional, or philanthropist, this episode offers practical insights for leading with clarity, communicating with purpose, and staying focused on your mission.

Featured Guests

• Samantha Lasky

• Hanna Kellyman

• Zoe Stemm-Calderon

• Jennifer Laudano

Subscribe to The Foundation Voice for more conversations with the leaders shaping the future of philanthropy.

Learn more at www.fireandbliss.com

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Most foundations don't struggle with communications because they have the wrong agency.

They struggle because they start with tactics instead of strategy.

In this episode of The Foundation Voice, Jennifer Stapleton shares the five things every foundation leader should clarify before hiring a communications firm. Drawing from more than 30 years in the social sector, she explains why clarity around goals, audiences, budgets, leadership alignment, and expectations will determine whether your communications investment creates real impact or simply produces more content.

Whether you're preparing to launch a report, build public trust, engage policymakers, or strengthen relationships with fellow donors and grantees, this conversation will help you approach communications more strategically.

Learn more at www.fireandbliss.com

What does it really take to change public policy?

In this episode of The Foundation Voice, Jennifer Stapleton sits down with veteran communications strategist Jennifer Laudano to unpack the realities of advocacy communications. Drawing on decades of experience leading campaigns in philanthropy, healthcare, criminal justice reform, and national public policy, Jennifer shares what separates successful advocacy campaigns from those that never gain traction.

Together they explore why communications must begin long before legislation is introduced, how to build unlikely coalitions across ideological divides, why evidence alone rarely changes policy, and how foundations can better prepare for opposition in today's increasingly polarized environment.

Whether you're leading a foundation, managing advocacy campaigns, or shaping public narratives around complex issues, this conversation offers practical lessons on strategy, messaging, coalition-building, and the long game of creating meaningful change.

Learn more at fireandbliss.com

In this episode of The Foundation Voice, 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 have chosen silence in recent years, retreating from public advocacy to protect their institutions, the Raikes Foundation has done the opposite. But their boldness isn't reckless. It's built on deep preparation, internal alignment, and a clear-eyed understanding of the difference between protecting your institution and protecting your mission.

Zoë shares the inside story: how the foundation practices crisis response, builds communities of courage with peer funders, and makes deliberate choices about where and how to use its voice. You'll hear why she believes silence is complicity, how philanthropy's role is to fund risk-taking (not fill government gaps), and what she's most excited to try as we move through this moment toward the next chapter of democracy and social change.

To learn more about the Raikes Foundation, visit www.raikes.org

For more information about this podcast, visit fireandbliss.com

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. Crisis communication isn't something you build in the middle of a firestorm. It's something you prepare long before the first headline, angry email, or viral post. Learn more at fireandbliss.com

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 communications at a foundation right now, or if you're the CEO watching the political ground shift under your feet, this is the episode you need before you send one more press release, one more grant announcement, one more anything.

Because the DEI implosion wasn't just a political story. It was a communications failure. And foundations are making the exact same mistake today, with different acronyms and the same outcome waiting for them.

Today I'm going to walk through what happened, why it was always going to happen, and the rule I've carried for 30 years that would have changed the ending: say the actual words.

Every time. No exceptions. Unless you are the WNBA or UNICEF.

This is the Foundation Voice. Let's get into it.

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 is earned based on whether people outside your walls actually care.

At the same time, the communications landscape is changing faster than most organizations realize. Reporters are not the only audience anymore. AI systems are now reading, summarizing, indexing, and shaping how your organization is understood at scale. Which means the way you structure, distribute, and message information suddenly matters again in ways it didn't five years ago.

Today we're talking about what actually makes something newsworthy, why messaging should be built for audiences instead of reporters, and why tools like PR Newswire may be far more important in the AI era than many organizations think.

This is The Foundation Voice. Let's get into 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 environments where foundations were facing actual authoritarian pressure, not the threat of it, the reality of it. 

And here's what I learned: the organizations that went dark did not survive intact. The ones that communicated with clarity and courage did. If your foundation is currently in wait-and-see mode, today's episode is going to be uncomfortable.

This is The Foundation Voice. Let's get into it.