Planning for What Comes Next: How Public Media Is Building for Change

Periods of dramatic change give organizations an opportunity to reconsider how they serve, grow, and prepare for the future.

That opportunity is particularly consequential for the nonprofit sector. American civic life depends on organizations across government, business, philanthropy, and civil society, and nonprofits carry responsibility for work that communities rely upon every day: journalism, education, health, culture, human services, the environment, and much more. A worthy mission requires a strong organization behind it.

Public media offers a timely case in point.

In July 2025, the federal government eliminated funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), removing approximately $600 million in annual support from the public media system. CPB funding represented 16 percent of system revenue, and its elimination threatened more than 100 local stations, with particularly significant implications for rural and underserved communities.

The scale of what was at stake extended well beyond individual stations. Over six decades, the country had built a public media network of 544 local organizations operating more than 1,600 stations and reaching 99 percent of the country. Together, they employed 18,000 people, including more than 4,000 local journalists, and had developed a base of 6.5 million individual donors.

The immediate response focused on continuity. Public Media Company launched the Public Media Bridge Fund, a pooled philanthropic initiative intended to protect local public media service and help organizations navigate a future without CPB funding. In its first year, a coalition of more than 1,500 funders committed $86 million; $26 million in stabilization grants went to 74 organizations operating 186 stations and reaching more than 30 million people.

The funding was intended to do more than preserve existing operations. It gave stations time to consider what sustainability would require in a changed environment.

Public Media Company describes the progression as stabilize, sustain, adapt: protect service and create a window for change; develop collaborations and efficiencies; and prepare local public media to thrive in a transformed media landscape.

In 2026, PlanPerfect and Public Media Company, through its Local News Catalyst initiative, brought together 30 small and mid-sized public media organizations for a year-long strategic planning cohort. The stations stretch from Alaska to the Gulf Coast and from Appalachia to the Pacific. They include tribal and community radio, PBS stations, university licensees, and organizations serving rural, Indigenous, Latino, and other distinct communities.

[Explore the participating stations] 

Some have one or two employees and others have dozens. Some have been broadcasting for more than half a century. Their circumstances are remarkably different, but the questions they are asking have much in common: Where should we focus? How do we strengthen revenue? What does our community need from us now? How should our board be involved? Where should we invest? What should we measure? What risks should we prepare for? And what do we want this organization to become?

Those questions are the work of strategic planning. They are also the work of building strong organizations.

Planning Amid Change

The cohort was conceived by PlanPerfect and Public Media Company to give station leaders a structured planning process, practical tools, individual support, and the opportunity to learn alongside peers working through many of the same questions.

The timing is important. Federal funding had provided an important part of the financial structure on which local public media had been built. Its removal required stations to make immediate financial decisions, while also prompting broader consideration of their revenue models, community roles, governance, staffing, infrastructure, partnerships, priorities, and ambitions.

WNMU-TV in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula offers one example. The station serves a large rural region where public media remains an important source of local information and educational programming. Bridge Fund support helped provide stability following the loss of federal funding, while station leaders were also making longer-term investments in the organization. WNMU is replacing infrastructure on a 51-year-old tower and, after more than 16 years without a staff member dedicated to development, is now sharing the cost of a development professional with the university foundation. That position has already generated multiyear donor commitments.

The rescission brought financial questions to the forefront, along with larger questions about how stations operate, serve their communities, and prepare for the future.

“The funding changes have required stations to make consequential decisions about their futures. Strategic planning gives leaders and boards a structured way to consider their priorities, resources, community needs, and opportunities together, and to make those decisions with a longer view.”

Stephen Holmes, Managing Director, Public Media Company

The participating organizations are developing clear priorities and realistic goals, aligning mission with operations and finances, and identifying practical steps they can implement within their existing capacity. The process includes stakeholder engagement, organizational assessment, plan development and review, metrics, and implementation.

The emphasis on implementation is critical. A strategic plan only has real value when it helps an organization make decisions, allocate resources, engage its board and staff, pursue funding, understand risk, measure progress, and adapt as circumstances change.

That is happening across the cohort.

At KRSU-TV in Claremore, Oklahoma, station leaders are considering an expansion into local news as the region’s news landscape changes. County officials have approached the station about providing coverage, and station leadership sees an opportunity to serve rural communities seeking more local information. At the same time, KRSU-TV has invested in a virtual production studio that it plans to rent as a source of earned revenue. Its strategic planning process brings journalism, community service, technology, and revenue into one organizational framework.

In Whitesburg, Kentucky, WMMT is building toward a multimedia newsroom, developing new community programming, expanding its connection to Appalachian music, strengthening its role as a source of emergency information, and preparing to take its mobile “Possum Den” studio into the community for live broadcasts. Some ideas in its plan have already evolved in response to what staff members and community members are doing.

The plans are already evolving as stations learn more about what their communities need and what their organizations can accomplish.

Putting the Plans to Work

For some stations, the planning process is already influencing governance.

KGNU in Boulder, Colorado, recently opened a new Community Media & Cultural Center while navigating leadership and board transitions. After a board retreat focused on the station’s strategic plan, board members proposed keeping the plan in front of them at every monthly meeting.

Interim General Manager Tim Russo welcomed the idea because it would help keep the board focused on the organization’s larger priorities. “Somebody suggested we should have this strategic plan in front of us every month because it’s really helpful to keep us focused,” he told the cohort.

Reviewing the plan monthly also makes it part of the board’s regular governance and accountability work.

At KWMR in Point Reyes Station, California, Executive Director Amanda Eichstaedt brought a draft plan developed with a board subcommittee to the full board with a clear expectation: the group was there to consider the substance and move the organization forward rather than spend the meeting wordsmithing. The board approved the goals and objectives. Eichstaedt is now developing metrics and plans to make progress against the strategic plan a standing board agenda item.

The planning process also prompted a useful reconsideration of one of KWMR’s assumptions. The station had initially identified recruiting more volunteers as a goal. With more than 100 volunteers already participating, Eichstaedt recognized that the more important strategic question was how effectively the organization could manage and support the volunteers it already had. Planning helped sharpen the goal itself.

For KCCU, a university-licensed public radio station in Oklahoma, the connection between planning and action became even more concrete.

General Manager Mike Leal was preparing grant applications to help fund the relocation of a transmitter to a new site. Because the station had already developed its goals, tactics, and timeframe in PlanPerfect, Leal was able to use that information with the PlanPerfect Advisor as he worked through the grant questions. KCCU subsequently received a $75,000 grant for the project.

“It’s paid for itself, just from that one project,” Leal told the cohort.

KCCU had already defined what it wanted to accomplish, why the investment mattered, and how the project fit into its larger strategy. When the funding opportunity arose, much of the underlying work was already done.

Different Stations, Different Priorities

One of the most instructive aspects of the cohort is the range of what organizational strength looks like.

At WLCH Radio Centro in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, it means expanding digital reach while strengthening service to Latino and multicultural communities, developing talent, deepening community relationships, and diversifying revenue.

At KWSO in Warm Springs, Oregon, planning is taking place alongside the daily realities of serving the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. Station Manager Sue Matters described wildfires interrupting her planning work even as the station was looking ahead to a new video studio, stronger journalism, its 40th anniversary, and what she called “the next 40 years.” The station is considering how new technology and expanded news capacity can support its role in the community while preparing for its next chapter.

At KSUT in Ignacio, Colorado, which operates both Four Corners Public Radio and Southern Ute Tribal Radio, Executive Director Tami Graham and an engaged board member are using the process to prepare for a board retreat focused substantially on strategy. Graham described PlanPerfect as a significant time-saving tool and reflected on the progress of the larger group: “It’s really amazing how far we’ve all come.”

At WCTE in Cookeville, Tennessee, a staff of approximately 13 serves 14 counties in the Upper Cumberland. President and CEO Avery Hutchins described an organization thinking simultaneously about early childhood education, local storytelling, fundraising, government relationships, partnerships, volunteers, staffing, marketing, and cost savings. The station is also undertaking a feasibility study with Nashville PBS.

Hutchins captured the relationship between continuity and adaptation particularly well. Whatever may change, she said, “who we are to this community and why we’re here” will endure.

Across the cohort, stations are deciding what they want to preserve, where they want to grow, and what resources and changes those choices will require.

Early Results and Longer-Term Questions

The cohort is still in its first year. Its longer-term outcomes will take time to assess.

What can be observed now is how stations are using the planning process. Boards are becoming more engaged in setting and reviewing priorities. Leaders are connecting strategic goals to fundraising, staffing, technology, capital projects, partnerships, and program decisions. Stakeholder input is changing assumptions and sharpening priorities. Several organizations are already moving from plan development into implementation and regular progress review.

These are early indicators rather than long-term outcomes. The more important questions will emerge over time: How do organizations use their plans once the initial planning cycle ends? How does planning discipline affect revenue diversification, governance, investment decisions, risk management, and the ability to respond as communities and operating environments change? And how does the value of the planning process develop as organizations continue to use it?

Those are questions for a longitudinal study. This first year provides an opportunity to observe the earlier stages: organizations defining priorities, involving stakeholders, bringing boards into the process, connecting strategy to resources, and beginning to use their plans in everyday decisions.

The cohort also reflects an investment in the organizations themselves, alongside investment in their programming and services.

That investment is part of a much larger philanthropic response. As of August 2026, the Bridge Fund had raised $86 million toward its work, including $15 million in program-related investments. Its longer-term fundraising goal is $145 million, with funding directed not only to grants but also to advisory and consulting services supporting sustainability plans.

The inclusion of advisory and planning support alongside direct financial assistance reflects an understanding that long-term sustainability requires both resources and the organizational capacity to use them well.

Public Media Company brings deep knowledge of the sector and the financial and operating realities facing local stations. Philanthropic support makes the work accessible to organizations of very different sizes and means. PlanPerfect provides a common strategic planning process, professional tools, and ongoing support. Station leaders and boards bring the knowledge that matters most: an understanding of their own organizations, communities, responsibilities, and ambitions.

The cohort adds another element: one another.

The calls themselves have become part of the work. Leaders compare approaches to board engagement, fundraising, staffing, collaboration, local journalism, technology, and measurement. They hear what another station has tried and recognize an idea that may apply at home.

And the conversations retain the character of the organizations themselves.

One leader describes the work as “build the plane as you’re flying it.” Another says everyone on the staff wears “six or seven hats.” Sue Matters of KWSO talks about wildfires interrupting her planning and, almost in the same breath, about a new video studio, stronger journalism, the station’s 40th anniversary, and “the next 40 years.”

These leaders are managing what is in front of them while creating the structure to think beyond it.

Beyond Public Media

Public media is the setting for this case study, but the underlying opportunity reaches well beyond it.

The rescission of federal public media funding was a discrete event. The larger conditions it exposed are relevant across the nonprofit sector. Museums, food banks, environmental organizations, universities, community health organizations, libraries, local journalism organizations, and thousands of other nonprofits are responding to significant changes in government, philanthropy, technology, workforce, and community expectations.

“Periods of dramatic change give us an opportunity to reconsider how we operate, grow, and serve. For nonprofits, this is a moment to strengthen the organizations themselves: to be clear about strategy, build strong leadership and governance, understand finances and risk, and demonstrate results. A worthy mission requires a strong organization behind it.”

Sophia Shaw, Cofounder, PlanPerfect

Periods of dramatic change create room to reconsider assumptions, clarify priorities, strengthen governance, develop new sources of revenue, understand risk, invest in people and technology, listen differently to communities, and make choices about what should endure and what should evolve.

This is where the interests of nonprofit leaders and donors converge. Strong programs and services depend upon organizations with the capacity to plan, lead, raise resources, manage risk, demonstrate progress, and adapt. Investing in that organizational strength helps sustain the missions that philanthropy and communities value.

The public media response provides an instructive example. The first philanthropic investments helped protect local service and create time. The next question was what organizations would do with that time.

Public Media Company describes the opportunity as moving beyond stabilization toward sustainability and adaptation: maintaining the values of local public media while allowing operations to evolve.

The strategic planning cohort is one part of that effort, combining the experience of station leaders, Public Media Company’s knowledge of the sector, philanthropic support, and PlanPerfect’s planning process and tools.

“I hope we are moving toward a world where nonprofit leaders have the same ability to plan for the future that we expect of leaders in every other sector. Stronger nonprofits can make better decisions, adapt as the world changes, and keep building on the work their communities depend upon.”

Adam Wolford, Cofounder, PlanPerfect

The story is still unfolding. The participating stations are at different points in their plans, and the longer-term effects of the work will become clearer over time. What is visible already is the intent with which these leaders are approaching their futures: engaging their boards and communities, establishing priorities, finding new opportunities, strengthening revenue, considering risk, and putting plans behind their ambitions.

Public media is one example of a larger challenge facing the nonprofit sector. Organizations doing essential work need the capacity to prepare for change as seriously as they prepare to deliver their missions. That means investing not only in programs, but in strategy, leadership, governance, financial strength, risk management, and the ability to measure progress.

A worthy mission requires a strong organization behind it, prepared not only to serve today but to meet what comes next.