Bilingual Communications for Foundations & Grantmakers

Foundations whose grantees serve Spanish-speaking communities deserve communications that match the population on the ground — not English copy with a translation step glued on at the end.

What foundations get wrong about bilingual

Most foundation communications get built in English first — annual reports, grantee spotlights, RFPs, board materials — and then a translator gets handed the file two weeks before launch. The Spanish version reads like exactly what it is: a translation. Grantees notice. The communities they serve notice. The next program officer who tries to recruit a bilingual reviewer notices.

Foundations that fund work in Latin America, the US Latino population, or border-region health and education are funding bilingual programs. The communications around those programs should be bilingual in the same way the programs are: structural, not cosmetic.

What I deliver

• Bilingual annual reports and grantee spotlights. Story selection, interview, and write-through in both languages — not English copy translated late.
• RFP and program announcement copy. Drafted bilingual so the grantee field receiving them sees the foundation as a serious bilingual partner, not a translation client.
• Spanish-language media relations for foundation announcements. Univision, Telemundo, EFE, El Diario NY, regional Spanish-language press — outlets with their own editorial logic, not a translation list.
• Cultural-fluency review. When the program team doesn't speak Spanish, I read the work in both languages and flag where the Spanish copy is doing its job — and where it's reading like a translation.

Where the work shows up

Earlier work at SOS Children's Villages USA was structurally similar: a national NGO whose donors and partners were largely English-speaking but whose programs and beneficiary stories lived across Spanish-speaking communities. The integrated bilingual campaign — earned media plus paid distribution plus a HuffPost / Johnson & Johnson partnership — doubled the organization's web traffic and earned coverage in AP, NBC, CNN, Reuters, and The Atlantic. Bilingual was not a deliverable on that work. It was the architecture.

"Foundations that fund bilingual programs should communicate bilingual. Translated-after-the-fact reads like exactly what it is."

When to bring me in

Before the annual-report cycle starts, not after the English version is finalized. Before a Spanish-language media push, not the day the embargo lifts. Before a major program announcement that will be received by a bilingual grantee field. The earlier the bilingual layer enters the work, the less it costs and the better it lands.