New Year, New Opportunities: ReThink Media’s 2024 Impact Report
Happy new year! We’re kickstarting 2025 by releasing our recent Impact Report. This short report is not intended to detail every ReThink accomplishment in 2024, but instead highlights powerful examples of the impact of our model. Read on for a note from our Executive Director and Board Chair.
LETTER FROM OUR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & BOARD CHAIR
For ReThink Media, 2024 was full of big transitions.
We have completed the transition to our first-ever new Executive Director, we voted in a new board chair, and we have added four new board members.The result is new energy, new ideas, and a shared determination to strengthen the work that ReThink has successfully done for 17 years.
Sadly, like many nonprofits, we were also forced to eliminate multiple positions in February due to a multi-year budget deficit that was no longer sustainable. These layoffs were a first for ReThink, and a measure we never aim to repeat; however, the financial realities brought into sharp focus the need to strengthen our model, funding, and impact. While smaller, we can become stronger. To their great credit, our colleagues share our unwavering determination to ensure that ReThink’s best work remains ahead.
During a year that has witnessed continuing war in Ukraine and genocidal violence in Gaza, this resolve has been critical. We have deepened our peacebuilding work through sustained communications leadership, resources, and support in critically underfunded and overlooked areas of advocacy, including: US military spending, arms sales, and the desperate need for a permanent ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. This has occurred in conjunction with our longstanding work in the nuclear disarmament field, where the multifaceted threats involving nuclear weapons are as present and plausible as they have been in a generation.
Domestically, our work remains grounded in supporting grassroots organizations working on judicial integrity, money and politics reform, and voting rights. The vital communications work to serve these under resourced organizations often represents the first and last line of defense in protecting our courts, elections, and rights to participate in democracy. This was true before November, and now should be deemed essential. This also rings true for our other core area of work: supporting Black, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian communities, who continue to confront bias, bigotry, and discrimination in ways that have only intensified in the wake of October 7, 2023.
Next year, we will see MAGA extremists return to power. This time, they are better prepared and less restrained. The agenda for this next administration is clear, and the impact will have dramatic and probably deadly consequences for nearly every facet of ReThink’s work.
As we all prepare for the daunting road ahead, we are proudly reflecting on the critical work we have led over the last year. We have strengthened advocacy campaigns across multiple states while providing critical media support on federal legislation. We provided seminal media, polling, and messaging analysis across multiple issue areas that helped refine (and, at times, define) tactics and strategy. We provided tailored media and communications trainings to hundreds of advocates and activists across the country and brought new digital communications capacity to our partners in the field.
This report is not intended to be a detailed overview of every ReThink achievement in 2024; rather, it’s a compilation of highlights that speak to the importance of our mission and the potential for doing more to strengthen that impact in 2025 and beyond.
While 2024 was an enormous year of transition and challenge for ReThink, make no mistake that our organization starts this year in a better place. We continue to confront a budget deficit, but it’s the smallest deficit we’ve had in years. We have critical fundraising work to do, but we are pleased to share that we have secured new funding from two new foundations to begin the year. These important steps are only the beginning of what is ahead! For the first time in our organizational history, the staff and board are working on a comprehensive multi-year strategic plan that will be completed this year. We are confident that the results of this plan will produce a ReThink Media that is a stronger partner to lead on the enormous communications challenges that lie ahead. To learn more about the future of ReThink, read New Year, New Opportunities at the end of the report.
We’d like to end by thanking the exceptional ReThink staff, who remain the heart and soul of everything we do. Their steadfast commitment to the issues we work on is combined with an unwavering understanding that, when we are at our best, we remain behind-the-scenes doing the communications work that nobody else has the skills or capacity to do. When we are successful, it’s our partners who shine! We are deeply grateful for our team’s commitment, brilliance, and stamina to do more with less; every success we had in 2024 was driven by their talent. We can’t wait to see the incredible contributions they will make moving forward.
Mark Reading- Smith, Executive Director
Tyler Lewis, Board Chair
