Georgia Public Broadcasting has unveiled a new strategic plan focused on four areas and goals to boost its fundraising by $5 million annually.
The plan, “Uniting & Uplifting Georgia: A Roadmap to 2030,” looks to expand GPB’s service to audiences throughout the state in what it calls “mission-critical” themes: literacy and learning; health and wellness; arts and culture; and civic engagement. In releasing the strategic plan last month, GPB also introduced a new logo.
“My vision for this company is to be of service to all of Georgia,” CEO Bert Wesley Huffman told Current.
Huffman, who was promoted to CEO in 2023 from his previous job as chief revenue officer, said GPB needed a plan to fulfill that vision.
Headquartered in Atlanta, GPB operates statewide television and radio networks on an annual budget of about $43 million. To support the new strategic priorities, GPB will seek foundation grants while it works to expand its donor base by 25%, according to Huffman.
Focusing on the four priorities will strengthen GPB’s case for philanthropic support by helping the network align its services with foundations’ goals, he added.
Telling Georgia’s story
GPB already produces a robust slate of original programs — including live broadcasts of high school football games, coverage of state government and musical performances. The plan calls for a multiplatform focus for three additional local initiatives by 2030.
One of these, “Telling Georgia’s Story,” will go beyond television and radio with education initiatives, Huffman said. “It’s a much broader and larger opportunity for impact.”
“Georgia Legends,” a television series created under this initiative, premiered Monday. Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young was featured in the first episode. Other profiles include the late President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter, CNN founder Ted Turner and broadcasting executive Xernona Clayton. More episodes are in the works.
The series’ content will also be adapted for educational uses. For example, the segment on Jimmy Carter will be added to GPB’s existing list of virtual learning materials on his life and achievements.
Mission-critical areas
To identify its priorities, GPB drew on analyses of user data, market research and an “intentional study of global issues that affect Georgians every day,” according to the strategic plan.
Research showed that one in 10 adults in Georgia have low literacy skills, pointing to the need to prioritize literacy and learning. GPB will pursue opportunities to help raise literacy rates through state and community partnerships that promote reading, such as the Georgia Reads Day Campaign, produced through a partnership with the Georgia Literacy Council.
On health and wellness, the plan noted that GPB’s newsroom already covers this beat, but the network can do more to build on national programming initiatives, such as “Well Beings” from WETA in Washington, D.C. GPB will continue to produce local news coverage and community events around this multiplatform educational campaign, including working with National Alliance on Mental Illness Georgia, Huffman said.
Likewise, GPB’s statewide news coverage already supports civic engagement. The plan calls for building community connections through national properties such as NPR’s newsmagazines and high-profile PBS documentaries by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Ken Burns.
GPB’s newsroom will build on the community-engaged journalism models established through its participation in the CPB-funded initiative America Amplified, Huffman said.
“The plan does center its focus on Georgia and providing our listeners, viewers and users with accurately tailored news and information about events and developments that affect their lives every day here in Georgia,” Huffman said.
For the existing portfolio of local arts and culture programming, such as GPB Classical and the musical performance series Peach Jam, content teams will prioritize local features for radio and web coverage and digital videos for streaming platforms.
Raising $5 million annually will involve going to large scale funders such as foundations and state agencies like the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, Huffman said. GPB has partnered with the department to create programming on the opioid epidemic and suicide risk and prevention.
GPB’s education team will build on its existing partnership with the Georgia Department of Education to provide educational media and other resources for classroom use, Huffman said.
‘Reflective of the people we serve’
Huffman’s vision to serve more Georgians includes goals to cultivate gifts from more of the 11 million people who live in the state. With 87,000 individual contributors to GPB, the plan calls for adding 21,750 individual donors, or 25% of the current membership, by 2030.
GPB moved away from premium-focused membership fundraising soon after Huffman arrived in 2014 as VP of development and marketing, he said. The network has focused on cultivating donors who make a philanthropic commitment “to ensure the future of a nonprofit organization they love.” With the change, donations and the number of contributors have nearly tripled in the last decade, he said.
The strategic plan calls for capitalizing on the new brand identity and marketing campaign and attracting donors through digital fundraising and Passport subscriptions.
Huffman sees the colorful logo as a way to reintroduce GPB to potential donors across the state.
“We needed to show Georgia who we are today,” Huffman said. “We need to be reflective of the people we serve.”
The logo features the letters G, P, and B overlapping in a circle of the colors yellow, orange, red, blue, green and pink.
“It shows that GPB is on the move. We’re going somewhere. we’re doing something,” Huffman said. “I believe that we’re going to make a difference.”
‘Fiscally responsible organization’
The strategic plan and brand identity launch after a drop in GPB’s state support. In 2023, the Georgia General Assembly reduced its appropriation by more than $1 million to $13 million, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently reported.
Legislators appropriated $13.6 million in 2024, but more than $617,000 of that was one-time funding for specific requests, such as education projects. For fiscal 2025, the state provided $13.2 million, according to Huffman.
“We have no way to predict if there are any funding reductions on the horizon, but we are excited about the opportunity that we have this session to share with legislators how we have remained a fiscally responsible organization and still continued to grow and expand our contributions in public safety and education,” Huffman told Current.
The state funding cuts weren’t the primary driver for the strategic planning process, Huffman said, which was instead motivated by the desire to serve Georgians “with what they want to the best of our ability.”