In our last Reader, we outlined best practices for conservation organizations when it comes to media engagement. Today's feature focuses on the next stage of this media engagement process - which is often the most critical - effectively pitching your story. We’re excited to share top tips on how to do this by two guest contributors and media experts - Mike Pflanz and Rachel Nuwer.

For most organizations, working with media can be intimidating. Here, we share eight tried and tested tips from years of experience of working with the media, and with input from conservation journalists themselves.

Communications can be overwhelming: from websites to social media to videos and annual reports. But just like with all your other organizational work, communications activities should be strategic, mission-driven, and focused. Over the years, our experience working with various partners has demonstrated that any conservation organization - large or small - can apply some basic guiding principles to find communications success.

As a leader, encouraging your team to get vaccinated can be a highly sensitive task that needs tact, understanding, and emotional intelligence. We spoke to two partner organizations that have successfully supported their team to get vaccinated, and here are some of their top tips on how to support your team through the vaccination process.

Internships are important opportunities for both the individual intern looking to learn and grow as well as for what are often under-resourced and over-stretched organizations in need of extra hands and minds. When done right, internships can be real win-win opportunities where both the intern and the host organization benefit.

Here we share some advice on how to make performance management less of an HR task and more of an organizational strengthening secret weapon.

Take care of yourself. Take care of your family, your friends, and your colleagues. Make your well-being and safety a priority; put it on the very top of your to-do list. Here are a few other useful reminders to help you and your team get through this difficult time.

In the past, recruitment followed a somewhat generic formula: job description → advert → application → shortlist → interview → hire. While aspects of this formula still matter, in our experience at Maliasili and in the experiences of our partners, doing recruitment differently and more creatively garners much better results.

Maliasili has new people joining our team, and so onboarding is very much on our minds. Whether it’s virtual or in-person, we’ve identified a number of useful strategies to make onboarding informative, useful, and fun. Here we share tips and advice from old and new Maliasili team members on how to effectively bring new colleagues on board.

Recently a conservation leader’s WhatsApp group was pinging with messages around team communication, coordination, and connection. The group - made up of members from the African Conservation Leadership Network - was sharing their own experiences about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to managing teams and internal communications.