The throughline of my work has always been a somewhat geeky fascination with infrastructure and capacity building.
My first semester of graduate school in New York City coincided with September 11. In the months that followed, I found myself supporting nonprofit organizations as they responded and began to rebuild. It was an early lesson in capacity.
What allows organizations to keep going when everything around them is unsettled? What holds, and what does not?
For the past 20 years in particular, these questions have been central to my practice—across the arts, human services, higher education, and now public media.
What allows mission-driven organizations to function well, consistently, and over time?
What enables them to adapt without losing their grounding in community?
It is in community radio that these questions have been asked and answered, and where best practices have been affirmed and deepened.
Most of our member stations are small. More than half operate on budgets at or under $100,000, many closer to $50,000. Nearly two-thirds are in rural communities. Some stations have one or two staff. Others are entirely volunteer-run. Many rely on dozens, sometimes hundreds, of volunteers to sustain operations.
And yet, you show up—consistently—for your communities.
That is not accidental. It is capacity.
What Community Radio Taught Me
Before coming to NFCB, I understood capacity building as essential to strong organizations. I had seen it across the nonprofit sector—in arts organizations, in human services, and in grassroots, community-based work.
What I have learned through community radio is not that this was wrong, but that it runs deeper than I had fully understood.
Community radio stations operate much like the grassroots organizations I have worked with throughout my career. They are embedded in their communities, often under-resourced, and sustained by relationships, trust, and a shared sense of purpose.
What I saw more clearly in this context is that capacity is not just something you build. It is something you practice.
And it is most visible under pressure.
Across stations, a pattern emerged that reinforced and sharpened what I had long believed:
The stations that navigate change most effectively are not the best resourced. They are the most adaptive.
That insight did not come from a framework. It came from watching how public media—specifically community radio stations—operate under pressure and in moments of crisis.
Adaptation, in this context, is not abstract. It looks like leadership that can sit with uncertainty without becoming paralyzed. It looks like organizations that are honest about their constraints and still move forward. It looks like decision-making that is grounded in community, even when the path forward is not clear.
And it reflects something I have seen across the strongest community-based organizations:
A willingness to keep going.
The Work Behind the Work
Over the years, NFCB has invested in capacity building in ways that are both visible and behind the scenes.
This work began with the 5×5 Model, developed by Maxie Jackson. It gave us a way to think about station sustainability as more than revenue or audience. It connected leadership, governance, community, content, and financial health into a fuller picture of what it takes to operate well over time.
From there, the Community Counts Initiative (CCI), developed by Sally Kane and NFCB staff and supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), moved that framework into practice. Stations came together in cohorts to reflect, learn from one another, and apply new approaches in real time.
What we learned through CCI reinforced what stations were already showing us:
Capacity building is time-intensive. It requires trust, reflection, and space to think differently about how organizations operate.
And for many stations, that time is hard to find.
That reality pushed us to rethink not the value of the work, but how it is delivered.
Designing for Reality: ACI and Adaptive Capacity
The Audience Counts Initiative (ACI), developed by NFCB staff and supported by CPB, was shaped directly by those lessons.
We did not move away from capacity building. We clarified what matters most.
At the center of ACI is adaptive capacity—the ability of an organization to respond to change while remaining grounded in its mission and accountable to its community.
This shift came from what we observed across stations.
In environments where resources are limited and change is constant, the ability to adapt becomes the defining capacity. It is what allows stations not just to survive, but to continue serving their communities in meaningful ways.
ACI was designed to meet that reality.
Instead of a single model, we created multiple pathways:
- A year-long cohort for deep engagement
- Short-form webinars for accessibility
- Mid-length cohorts that balance depth and feasibility
This was not about doing less. It was about doing the work in ways that stations can actually sustain.
Across all of this, one thing has become clear:
Strengthening internal capacity leads to greater adaptability. And adaptability is what allows stations to serve their communities and sustain themselves over time.
We see this most clearly in moments when everything is on the line.
During severe storms in Northern California, Redwood Community Radio (KMUD) stayed on the air when power and roads were down, providing updates when no other information source was available.
During the Maui wildfires, Manaʻo Radio (KMNO) delivered evacuation and relief information despite widespread outages.
And during the COVID-19 pandemic, stations across the country became lifelines for their communities. They shared local health information, translated guidance into multiple languages, checked in on isolated residents, supported mutual aid efforts, and created space for connection at a time of deep uncertainty.
These are not exceptions. They are examples of what community radio does.
You show up.
You show up for your communities.
And just as importantly, you show up for each other.
That is one of the best parts of this system. It is not just a network of stations. It is a network of people who care deeply about their communities and about each other.
Why This Work Matters Now
We are in a moment of real change.
With the closure of CPB, we are not only losing a critical source of funding. We are losing a partner that understood the importance of capacity building as part of the broader public media infrastructure.
At the same time, the pressures on stations are increasing.
You are navigating demographic shifts, evolving technologies, and growing expectations to serve as trusted sources of local information. Many of you are doing this with limited staff and limited resources.
The need for capacity building has not diminished. It has intensified.
This work is not a luxury.
It is what allows everything else to happen.
What Comes Next
For NFCB, this moment requires both clarity and realism.
We now hold a substantial body of curriculum developed through CCI and ACI. It is evergreen and adaptable. But delivering this work still requires time, facilitation, and sustained engagement.
We are also operating in a philanthropic environment that is both highly competitive and shifting, and not always aligned with capacity building for the types of stations that make up much of our membership.
The question is not whether this work matters; it is how we continue it—at what scale, in what form, and with what support.
NFCB is committed to continuing to find ways to bring this work to our membership and to the broader public media ecosystem. That will require new partnerships, new formats, and new ways of working.
And it will require us to continue showing up for each other.
Join Us in Chicago
This is a moment that calls for intentional connection and shared learning.
Join us in Chicago as we build adaptive capacity with partners across public media, including PMCC and Greater Public. This convening is not just a gathering. It is an example of what capacity building looks like in practice—bringing together organizations across the system to learn from one another, share what is working, and strengthen our collective ability to adapt and serve.
It is also a reflection of what makes community radio distinct.
We do not do this work alone.
We show up together.
Capacity Is the Work
If there is one thing I am certain of, it is this:
Capacity is not separate from the work. It is the work.
It is the leadership you build.
The decisions you make.
The relationships you sustain.
And the ways you continue to show up, day after day, for your communities.
Thank you for the work you do. And for the ways you show up for each other.
