Meet the People Behind Sound Partners
Sound Partners for Community Health is co-directed by Mark Sachs and Beth Mastin, two experienced consultants who have worked in public broadcasting for a number of years. In addition to working on Sound Partners, both Mark and Beth have their own separate consulting firms; Sachs's focusing on executive coaching and organizational development and Mastin's specializing in media collaborations. After four years of working together to build Sound Partners into a major grant program for community radio, they talked about the experience.
How did your partnership begin?
Mark: Almost five years ago, I was approached by representatives from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation with an idea they had for a grant program with public radio stations. They asked me to develop a proposal for the project and early on I knew that I needed someone with outreach experience to help me. Sallie Bodie, actually, suggested that I call Beth.
Beth: And from my end, I had just finished a training grant at NPR called PROVE-which worked with stations to increase their capacity using volunteers-and I was looking for a way to continue that work. I was in Washington prospecting for new projects when Sallie suggested that I talk with Mark about this new idea he was developing, but we could never find a time to actually meet. Later, he called me in Madison and we ended up working together by phone for months. We only met face-to-face a few weeks before we presented the Sound Partners concept to The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
It's not every day that you get the opportunity to create a new grant program. What did you want to be sure to include?
Mark: Well, we knew that in the end we wanted this program to create change within a community, and that meant working on the grassroots level. So outreach was very important. We also made a conscious effort to have a low, low level of bureaucracy. In fact, many people are incredulous that our grant process is so easy.
Beth: I think there were three things that we really wanted in Sound Partners. First, we felt strongly about broadcasters and community partners really collaborating and sharing ownership of the project. Next, we wanted it to be a completely local effort. And finally, we felt it was important to have conferences and training opportunities for the grantees so they had the chance to learn and grow from the experience.
Do you think you were successful in making Sound Partners different from other grant programs you've dealt with?
Mark: I think the technical assistance that we offer is unique-it's quite broad, from finding community resources, to public relations help, to how to put stories together. The other thing that Beth and I provide is a real sounding board for stations involved in the program. We don't want this to be a grant program where stations are expected to follow a set pattern or rules. We try and have a relationship with stations and partners that allows them to feel comfortable coming to us if they have a problem.
Beth: One of the stations called Sound Partners "the Un-Program," you know, like the "Un-Cola," and I think that's true. It's not a public awareness campaign or a media campaign. Sound Partners is a real collaboration up front. We give grantees five very broad health topics and first, you figure out the most important issue in your community, and second, you develop an approach that works with the broadcaster, the partner and the community. There isn't a prescribed or precise way to do this. We provide a lot of resources and then we allow the stations and partners to take the experiment from there. And there are really two bookends to the process-the two conferences that grantees attend, one at the beginning of the grant cycle and one at the end. At both of these conferences, we give them a lot of challenges. At the first one, we really urge the grantees to see how to best work with their partners and create a good collaboration. Then, at the final conference, we make them explore how it worked and what the next steps will be.
What's the most satisfying aspect of managing Sound Partners?
Mark: There are two things-on the macro level, it's seeing stations and their partners realize that they can really make a difference in their communities. And you can really sense that enthusiasm. On the micro level, it's how the project has changed people personally, changed how they approach their work. I was astounded by the number of people who said that through Sound Partners, they learned to give up control. By working with a partner, they had to give up control and let new things come their way. And they found this very energizing on a personal level.
Beth: On my business card for MasComm Associates, I have this slogan which is "making media part of the solution." I feel that with Sound Partners, I'm really watching that happen in communities around the country. You see partners and broadcasters coming up with incredibly creative ways to solve problems or spread the word about an issue that's important to them. And it's especially gratifying when you watch the working relationship between a station and its partner grow into something that is so successful, many partnerships keep going long after the grant ends.
Sound Partners is now going into its third grant round. What have you learned since you started this project?
Mark: I've learned that the station and partner know what's best for them, as opposed to us telling them what we think will work. And I've realized that people need to go where their instinct and passion lead them. Plus, organizationally it is really interesting to watch people work together who have never worked together before. It's really hard work, trying to understand each other. It's a different dynamic.
Beth: I think one of the most amazing things about Sound Partners is that in the first grant round, 29 out of 33 stations won awards for their work. That represents about 75% of the stations. And I think that reflects the quality of the storytelling that came out of these collaborations and the impact on the communities that were involved. Another thing that I have learned through this process is the ability of very small stations to do very high-quality work. A lot of our most successful projects came out of small stations that work in very isolated communities. We learned that these stations were very effective in reaching populations that are usually left behind.
In the next grant round, Sound Partners will be expanding to include public television stations. Will that change the program at all?
Beth: Our work with radio has changed our expectations for TV. Public television stations often see outreach as something like promotion. What we want stations to do is a real community collaboration that will result in meaningful local programming. So the PTV stations have to set up their outreach and local production efforts together, not in isolation, and work with community partners.
Although both of you worked extensively in public broadcasting, you have very different skills and backgrounds. Does that help in dividing the work on this project?
Mark: Yes, my strengths are really in organizational development, management and administration. I've worked at CPB and NPR, and at the local station level. So I'm very familiar with public radio and how stations work and have 20 years of knowing people in the public radio business and how they work.
Beth: And, after a number of years working in outreach for public television, my strengths are in the community collaboration and planning end of things-project management, content development and things like organizing conferences and training.
Mark: So that makes it pretty easy to divide the work. If it's a budget or administrative question, it's mine. If there's an outreach question, that's Beth.
Mark, your office is in the Washington D.C. area, and Beth, you work out of Madison, Wisconsin. How does directing a project together via long distance work for you?
Mark: With FAX, phone, email, it really doesn't make a difference. And after five years of doing this, it's what we are used to.
Beth: It suits me. I think that being at a distance, not on top of each other every day, you tendto see different things in the working relationship. And we definitely have a level of trust that makes it work. I really respect the way Mark works with stations. He has a more facilitating style and I'm more process-oriented.
Mark: Definitely, it all has to do with respect and trust of each other's abilities.
Let's end with a Barbara Walters question. If you were a tree, what kind would you be?
Beth: I'd be one of those thin little scraggly trees you see growing out of rocks on a mountainside.
Mark: And I'd be a weeping willow. . .
Beth: See how different we are!
Catherine Stifter, Production Consultant
With over 22 years of experience as a news director, on-air talent, editor and engineer, as well as a stint heading NPR's journalism training program, Catherine Stifter knows radio. As Sound Partners' consultant for technical production, Catherine is a resource for stations that need help with the programming and production aspects of their project.
In most cases, Catherine serves as "an extra ear" for producers, listening to their tapes and giving advice on how a story could be improved. Much of her work with Sound Partners grantees involves assisting station personnel new to producing radio-teens or community members-helping them sift through tapes and focus on what they are trying to say. Other times, she advises station management on their programming plan.
After working with over 30 grantees in the past three years, Catherine says she continues to be impressed by seeing how creative stations and their partners can be when faced with how to solve a problem in their community.
"I really like the fact that Sound Partners is a station-based project. This is not about making cookie-cutter programs to impress someone in D.C, it's about turning local ideas and local voices into radio."
Sallie Bodie, Content Developer
Besides having served as the matchmaker who introduced Sound Partners' co-directors Mark Sachs and Beth Mastin, Sallie Bodie has been involved in the project for four years, working with Web site development, serving as liaison with national affinity groups and writing weekly news headline information.
Sallie comes to Sound Partners with a long history of working in community relations and outreach. For 10 years she was the outreach director at NPR, where she developed a variety of campaigns, many of them focused on health care issues. Since leaving NPR, she has moved to Seattle and works with a number of clients on public relations, marketing and outreach efforts. In her current role as content developer with Sound Partners, Sallie's main responsibility is researching and writing the headline news blurbs that grantees receive each week via listserv. To do this, she maintains contact with many national organizations associated with the five topic areas, scanning their Web sites and pulling information that grantees can use in programming or outreach efforts.
"I'm always looking for good examples of outreach activities that stations and partners can use as models in their own communities," she says. "And by spreading the word about funding opportunities and award programs, I hope we can help stations and their partners make their efforts go even farther."