Flipping the Script on Nonprofit Media Relations with Amanda Clellend

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In This Episode

For many nonprofits, earned media is a powerful way to raise awareness, build credibility, and connect with new supporters. But when stories involve lived experiences of trauma, the stakes are high. 

On this episode of When Bearing Witness, I’m joined by Amanda Clelland, Director of Communications and Advocacy at Thistle Farms in Nashville. Amanda has spent nearly 15 years in nonprofit and government communications, and today she leads the messaging, media, and advocacy work for an organization that supports women survivors.

Amanda and I talk about why nonprofit communicators must approach journalists with both strategy and care, ensuring that press opportunities do not come at the expense of the very people they aim to serve.

This episode will encourage you to think critically about your media relationships, the guidelines you set, and the culture of consent you create.

About Amanda Clelland

Amanda is the Director of Communications and Advocacy at Thistle Farms, a Nashville-based nonprofit and social enterprise that serves women survivors of human trafficking and prostitution. There, she leverages earned media and storytelling to educate and advocate for change. Amanda's passion for storytelling and creating positive change through communications has led her to work in both government and nonprofit sectors for nearly 15 years in legislative, membership, and media relations. She guides the Thistle Farms' messaging, storytelling, and media strategies as well as oversees the organization's public policy and advocacy work on the local, state, and federal levels. She is a longtime volunteer and advocate for women's health and domestic violence organizations in Nashville.

Connect with Amanda Clelland

Thistle Farms Website | Instagram | TikTok | Facebook

Connect with Maria

Speaking & Training | LinkedIn | Email 

Transcripts

Maria: Hello. Today we have Amanda Clelland with us. She's the Director of Communications and Advocacy at Thistle Farms, a Nashville-based nonprofit and social enterprise that provides housing, healing, and employment for women survivors. Amanda introduced me to this nonprofit and it is now by far one of my most favorite nonprofits, so check them out. We'll have the links for that in the show notes.

With nearly 15 years of experience in nonprofit and government communications, Amanda uses media and storytelling to advance both healing and systemic change. In this episode, we're going to explore what it means to engage with journalists and media outlets in a way that centers dignity, agency, and care, especially when stories involve traumatic lived experience.

This is such an important conversation to have because I get this question all the time. We can do all we can in our world to control the story and the narrative and what we do with that internally in our own spaces. But what happens when journalists come in and we serve as this liaison? So, Amanda, I don't know of anyone better to have this conversation with. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Amanda: Thank you for having me.

Maria: So let's start with your journey and your career. What brought you into this world of advocacy and communications and why are you now at Thistle Farms?

Amanda: I feel like I got into this role, this line of work, totally by happenstance, which I think happens to a lot of us when we're going into communications and find ourselves in that trauma-informed storytelling realm. It's kind of just noticing along the way. Oh, there's a need here. Oh, there's a gap here. Oh, maybe this could have been done better. And then just pulling all of those puzzle pieces together.

I've worked in communications now for about 15 years. Nonprofit, public, even a private firm working with a whole bunch of different clients. I think it all kind of started when I began working for the public transit agency here in Nashville.

I wasn't supposed to have a super public-facing role at first, and as an introvert I was very pleased with that. I was going to be a backup spokesperson doing marketing and communication support, trying to figure out how we get people to support public transit and multimodal transportation options.

A couple of months later I had to start stepping into that more public-facing role. I also experienced the end of a long-term abusive relationship. As I was learning how to stand in front of the camera, be mindful of my ums and ahs, and stay on point so there was never going to be a bad sound bite and we always presented the best foot forward, which for anybody who has experienced domestic violence is not unlike your normal day to day.

Maria: Mask, mask.

Amanda: It was familiar to me. As I was learning how to do all of that, I was also processing the trauma of realizing that I had been in an abusive relationship for 10 years and all of the anxiety that goes along with that. I wasn’t sharing my own story. I was speaking on behalf of an agency. I was able to compartmentalize and keep that over here and me over here and be able to do my job. But it did start giving me some insights into how that could affect you if you were in a position to share your own story so publicly.

Around that same time, I also started doing volunteer work with a couple of domestic violence organizations in town, as part of processing my own experiences. One of them decided to do a high-level media training so that if they were approached by a reporter wanting to do a story on domestic violence and they wanted someone with lived experience to provide a voice for that story, they would have a pool of people to pull from who could do that.

Then a few years later, when the opportunity arose at Thistle Farms, which is someplace that I have wanted to work since I moved to Nashville almost 24 years ago, I started having conversations with women who had graduated the program and immediately saw that there was an opportunity to build a structure that we didn't have in place.

I think a lot of nonprofits take that baptism-by-fire approach when it comes to their communications and storytelling strategy because of that old adage that all publicity is good publicity. That can be true in some situations, but not when you're talking about people's real-life experiences with trauma and exploitation. I really wanted to figure out how we could change that.

Can we put some guidelines in place? And it's gone really well. I think there have been more women who had participated in some of those public speaking opportunities in the past and had stepped away because they felt it was no longer serving them. Now they're willing to step forward more and share their experiences in a new way. We're creating a culture of consent and safety.

Maria: Yes.

Amanda: And intentionality around it.

Maria: First of all, thank you for being so deeply generous with your own personal story. Also, something about Thistle Farms that has always impressed me is that the whole concept of being trauma informed is fairly new. We first implement this and train folks who are working directly with clients and beneficiaries, and when it comes to marketing and fundraising and advocacy, that seems to come last.

Amanda: Mm-hmm.

Maria: Where I am so impressed is how your organization, and I'm sure you've played a big role in this, has said this is something that needs to be ingrained in every part of our work. So with that, what does a trauma-informed approach to media and communications mean to you? And what does that mean for your role?

Amanda: I think first and foremost, if you are approaching this work in any way that could harm the individual who is being vulnerable enough to share their story for the sake of getting a donor, a customer, a grant, or some kind of support, then you're doing it the wrong way. Especially at Thistle Farms, these are women who have experienced human trafficking, prostitution, and commercial sexual exploitation. They have been used by others for financial gain.

It's my goal to be very intentional about how we engage in storytelling so that we can do it in a way that is helpful, not harmful, and that allows them to walk away from the experience feeling proud of themselves and what they've accomplished since entering and graduating from the program, as opposed to feeling ashamed of themselves.

We run into that a lot with most well-meaning members of the media. Some not so well-meaning. Maybe they think that they're well intentioned, but that's not how it's coming off. With all of that comes a lot of education and coaching. At the end of the day, I don't think that any of us get into the lines of work that we do with ill intentions. Those who are reporting the news have a very heavy and important responsibility to share the challenges and the triumphs and the experiences of others to help expand worldviews and create an informed public. I don't think that anybody gets into that to harm other people.

But in working with members of the media over the years, the metrics of clicks and viewership and readership, the numbers, the ads, the KPIs can get in the way of being able to tell human stories. You're trying to chase the best attention-grabbing headline, and that can snowball into practices that aren't going to be as respectful to your interview subject as you originally intended.

So, with a lot of what we do, we have basic parameters around anybody outside of the organization who comes to speak to or interview a graduate. I have guidelines around that. We discuss those well before we even schedule an interview so they know what the expectations are. Some things are as simple as being able to preview the questions ahead of time so that the survivor can look at those questions and decide, based on where they are in their healing journey, what they want to talk about and what they don’t want to talk about. We discuss that beforehand so that when it comes to the interview, if they say no to a question, that is a complete sentence and I will back them up 100 percent. If they get any pushback, I will end the interview right there.

We also have parameters around not providing photos from an individual's past or mugshots. Mugshots may be public images, but we're not going to be party to that kind of re-exploitation.

If it isn't a breaking news story—and in this line of work, thankfully, it really never is a true breaking news story; it's more human interest—then we want to have some kind of preview of the piece before it is published or aired, whether that is seeing it in its entirety to review it, or getting a phone call and having them read off the quotes they're featuring and the context in which those quotes are presented. That way the person who was brave enough to share their story knows the context in which their story is being presented.

That review process also allows for fact checking. Even now, in this interview, I know afterward I might think, oh, I wish I had said this differently. When you are speaking to your own traumas and your own experiences with violence and exploitation, that component of being interviewed can be so anxiety inducing that giving the ability to review and say, hey, I meant to say that it was my daughter who supported me, not my son, results in a more accurate and powerful story. There's no reason we can't engage in that review process.

Maria: Yeah. I've heard folks say—and this is a common trauma response—that you dissociate. After the interview, you could forget completely what you said, like it was an out-of-body experience. I was talking to someone earlier today about how sometimes, in our tower—I say this lovingly and with grace—we will spend a lot of time thinking from a trauma-informed perspective: what words do we use, what words do we not use. That is important. In your work, the difference between “prostitute” and “sex work,” things like this—we can spend days debating it. But at the end of the day, the difference between “I went to my son” and “I went to my daughter” being published is actually what might trigger a total trauma response.

And you can tell me if you agree. It's not necessarily the things we think. It's the little details—getting the name wrong, getting the date wrong, getting the gender wrong—that can send people spiraling because they're vulnerably telling their story and they want it told correctly.

Amanda: Yeah. It's interesting. When we're engaging in storytelling, we don't have any current residents of the two-year residential program engage in storytelling, even internally, because we want to protect that two years. That time is meant for you to process, to rebuild, to start working on what you want your life to look like going forward when you haven't had those opportunities in the past.

So when graduates are able to start speaking, I always do a preliminary interview—just internally. It doesn't go anywhere. It's to get a sense of this person's story. I get a sense for how comfortable they are speaking about certain things and how nervous they are about others, so that I know, as opportunities arise, that even if they have a great story, a particular opportunity might not be a good fit because they will get really uncomfortable and I don't want to put them in that position.

Even internally, I will get emails or text messages a day or two later with, hey, I meant to say that this happened at my mom's house, but it actually didn't, and I just want to make sure that's right for you. I’ll say, it's not going anywhere. And they’ll say, yeah, but it's for me. I think it's about being able to reestablish and reclaim ownership over your own story and your own narrative. I feel like it's such a privilege to sit in that space and be part of that process.

Maria: I hope listeners are really digesting how important fact checking and the details are, and why it's so important, when possible, to give story owners that opportunity. It doesn't have to be a rule that the story won't go live unless they review it—maybe they don't have the capacity—but it can linger and sit with them if something is incorrect. It holds a lot of weight.

Amanda: Also, as an organization, if they know they have an advocate in you who is going to fight for that review and be able to express, hey, this isn't right, we hope you can correct this before it airs—and if it doesn't get corrected—they still have that trust in you. They may not have trust in that news outlet or that reporter anymore, but they have trust in you. That is invaluable. That trust will spread to other individuals in the communities you're serving. Your organization is walking the walk. Even if you never get a story published, or you have a year with only one PR hit, as long as I have the trust of the women who have graduated this program, that's the success metric I need.

Maria: What's coming up for me is how, when I worked in-house, being covered by the media was seen as the biggest asset in media and communications. We would spend tens of thousands of dollars on an agency to help us get out there, and then you're completely beholden to them and how they decide to portray your organization. You flipped this and said, no, we are the asset. What I love most about your process—and I don't know if you're still doing this—is that while we think of having story owners sign media release forms, you actually have journalists sign a release form. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Amanda: Yes. It's basically trauma-informed interviewing and storytelling guidelines. It outlines the guidelines I mentioned before: being able to preview the piece at the end, getting the questions beforehand, not providing certain types of visuals or media from a person's past because that is not the person sitting in front of you now.

We also have language guidelines around say this, not that, because there can be a lot of confusion around terms. For example, saying victims versus survivors. At the end of the day, if you're getting to sit down and talk to somebody about what they've experienced, you're talking to a survivor. Not every person who has experienced trauma has been able to get to the point where they can say they are a survivor and share their story. That deserves a lot of respect and weight.

I sit down and have conversations with reporters beforehand to get a feel for their story. I present the guidelines and have them sign before I schedule an interview. At the end of the day, if they can't abide by those guidelines, then they don't get to tell the story. I say it just like that. They don't get to tell the story. It's an important responsibility and privilege to hold those stories and amplify them so others can learn and expand their worldviews.

Maria: Right. You have turned down media, and you shared on LinkedIn—with grace and anonymously—a time that you declined a media request. Your response was: Hi, this is Amanda Clelland, Director of Communications and Advocacy at Thistle Farms. Our support team forwarded your voicemail to me. I appreciate you reaching out, but at this time we aren't in a position to lend any voices to your story. This is a traumatic topic that we would not ask any of the women we serve to participate in, even anonymously, without a tremendous amount of support and coaching due to the high potential for retraumatization that could occur in recounting this type of experience. Again, I appreciate you reaching out and I hope we might be able to work together in the future on other stories that highlight policies that impact survivors, but we will not be able to participate in this particular discussion.

I found that you were so clear and gracious. Feel free to share any backstory you’re comfortable sharing.

Amanda: That particular situation was a reporter reaching out because there had been a human trafficking ring sting by the TBI, and there were reports of traumatic experiences in the aftermath. It was also on a breaking-news cycle. They reached out at one in the afternoon, they were going to air at four, and they wanted to speak to a survivor who had been in a trafficking ring.

I said no. Would our voice have been helpful? Of course. Anytime you're able to elevate the voice of someone with lived experience who has made it through and come out on the other side, that is worth elevating, but not under those circumstances. We would need time not just to preview questions, but to talk through and assess what they’re comfortable sharing. If they're not comfortable sharing certain things, where can we pull in statistics and data to fill in and create a bigger picture? You can point to those numbers and essentially say you are one of those numbers without saying how you are one of those numbers.

This outlet also engages in more sensational storytelling, and I didn't feel comfortable putting any of our graduates in that position. I still don't feel bad about saying no to it.

There was another situation where another outlet approached us wanting to do a story. I had coffee with a reporter at the cafe. I typically invite reporters there so they can see one of our social enterprises. The reporter opened with, “I saw Sound of Freedom last weekend, and it's on my heart to talk about human trafficking.” For anybody who works in this space, most of us would think, okay, you need some education first on what human trafficking is and isn't.

We started going through that. She asked what kind of stories we had. I told her a graduate’s story in broad strokes. The graduate is in her late sixties. The reporter said, “Do you have anyone younger?” At that point I decided to shut it down. I knew if I told her about the guidelines, it would be over, because nothing else in the conversation suggested she would be open to them.

I told her about the guidelines. She said, “My newsroom will never allow me to do that.” I said, okay, that's fine. If your newsroom changes its mind, we’d be happy to work with you. She said she couldn’t imagine any newsroom that would allow that. I said, well, a couple of your competitor stations in town have, and we’ve created great pieces, so I hope you reconsider someday. That was that. I will never put a graduate in the position of being so vulnerable with someone who won’t show respect, even in a pre-interview with me. If I get that sense, I shut it down. They deserve better.

Maria: What an incredible role to be the gatekeeper. When you do that, your graduates trust that you will advocate for them, even if things don't end up perfectly. That builds trust. You mentioned before that at Thistle Farms you were baptized by fire in how to tell your story. I’m sure those were the roots for the Speakers Bureau you created at Thistle Farms. I’m seeing them pop up more, and I think they’re crucial for supporting story owners to work with journalists.

Amanda: The approach is a way of helping anyone who wants to share their story to learn more. We do a core training—an eight-hour day—covering your own boundaries, the importance of language, and what language resonates with you versus what might resonate with others. We work on developing elevator pitches, knowing your audience, and knowing that the way you might talk about Thistle Farms in general, or your own story, will be different depending on whether you're talking to college students, church groups, or corporate partners. They are interested in different things. They have different points of engagement.

We tailor the approach to those audiences. That doesn't mean you're being insincere. We also do public speaking training: when you get on stage or in front of a group, what do you do with your hands, how do you get over the nerves and anxiety of speaking in front of people. We do media training for being on camera—where do you look, how do facial expressions read, what happens if you look up to the side when thinking. That can translate differently on camera. And how do you feel comfortable and supported enough to ask, hey, can we take that question from the top again, I didn’t answer that correctly.

Once we get through all of that, it puts them in a position where they feel prepared, practiced, confident, and comfortable going into an interview. They can advocate for their own boundaries.

I make it a practice that anytime someone outside the organization interviews a graduate, I am there, observing. I don't interfere unless they give me a signal that they're done or want me to step in. I listen and take notes. I follow up with the reporter. I also want to be there to support the graduate and show them that if they decide they're done, or they don't want to answer a question, I am here for them. I will cheer them on. That's what the Speakers Bureau is.

If we can foster that feeling of being comfortable, coached, and supported, they will share powerful, beautiful, transformational storytelling that is all theirs. It's not talking points. It will help more than hurt. As long as they can walk away feeling proud of themselves through the preparation and coaching, that's what I’m aiming for.

Maria: Something special about your Speakers Bureau, beyond the one-on-one prep each time a journalist comes, is that you have a space where story owners know their rights. They know that just because a reporter asks a question doesn't mean they have to answer it. They can answer fully, partially, or not at all. They can change their mind, even if they came all the way to City Hall and are on the docket. That is important. Just because they said yes once doesn’t mean they don’t need ongoing consent.

Amanda: The healing journey is not linear. You might start at point A, then go up, down, backwards, spiral a little, maybe take a detour to point K and then come back. Just because you were okay sharing something two days ago, two weeks ago, two years ago, doesn't mean you always have to be okay sharing it.

Maria: Right.

Amanda: It's your story. You get to control it.

Maria: Part of this program is helping story owners be in tune with themselves in the moment they’re telling their story. Maybe you were ready yesterday. Maybe you’ll be ready tomorrow. But right now you’re dysregulated. You're not always going to know, but what are a few things to be mindful of? Dissociating, not feeling well, feeling sick or shaky—common trauma responses that come up. There’s education around that too.

Amanda: And there's education around the implications of sharing your story. You may think, this will be helpful for me, but once it's out there, we can't pull it back. If it's being told through an external source like a news outlet, we won’t be able to retract it. So once it's out there, it's out there.

Let's talk about situations like reuniting with your kids. Are there things you want to hold, even if they would be helpful for this story? Think long term. Will sharing this take away your ability to decide when and where and how to tell your children about your past, and to what extent?

We lay out all the information so they can make an informed decision on their own. And even if they make that decision and then get to the interview and decide, hey, this isn't helpful for me today—that’s great. I will applaud that every time. I will thank them for that every time, because that is agency they were denied while being trafficked. Reclaiming your life is something I want to foster and help facilitate in all areas.

Maria: I'm so impressed by how you make these tough decisions—whether you are going to get Thistle Farms media attention that could lead to funding and marketing. What grounds you? Is there a mantra or a belief we can pass on to listeners that helps in these moments?

Amanda: I keep going back to making sure you help more than you hurt. You can't create safety for everyone. Nobody can create safety for others. But you can create circumstances and foster an environment conducive to safety so that a person who has been failed by systems in the past can step into this knowing you are looking out for them as the storyteller and as the organization.

If we don't get to tell a story and it's just someone sharing their story with me, that is an honor. They got to the other side of the trauma they experienced. They are here to share with me what they’ve been through, and to feel safe enough to share it. That means the world to me. As long as I can keep creating opportunities like that so they can find healing in their process, that's what grounds me.

Maria: Amanda, how can listeners learn more about Thistle Farms? When they’re in Nashville, they can swing by, get a candle, grab some coffee.

Amanda: Thistle Farms is a nonprofit justice enterprise. You can go to thistlefarms.org to find information about our residential program, the wraparound services, and meaningful employment. You can support us with your shopping and gift-giving needs on our website, where women in the program make beautiful candles, lotions, and soaps to build financial sustainability for themselves so they can buy a car, get a place of their own, have control over their money, and take care of their families. Go to thistlefarms.org for all the information.

Maria: Wonderful, Amanda. Thank you for your wisdom and your guidance, and for coming on When Bearing Witness.

Amanda: Thank you so much for having me.