How a Non-Profit Publication Scaled their Reach to Hit 160,000+ Readers

The Challenge: A nonprofit newsroom with a big mission held back by the limits of traditional syndication

Before Stacker entered the picture, Knowable relied on a mix of national science outlets, major platforms, and a handful of syndicated partnerships. While valuable, these channels didn’t consistently reach local media, where many audiences still get the bulk of their trusted information, or give their authors the scale they 

Two core problems emerged:

1. Breaking into local media was difficult and resource-intensive.
   Knowable’s content is highly relevant to communities—health, climate, transportation, public safety—but manually pitching hundreds of local outlets was unrealistic for a small team.
2. Their impact story depended on proof of reach.
   As a nonprofit, Knowable must show donors that their journalism is widely read beyond their own site. But without a wide, reliable distribution network, the scale of their republishing footprint fluctuated.

Then, the media landscape got even tougher.

In the last year, the media landscape has faced headwinds that have impacted nearly all parts of businesses, and several of Knowable’s longtime partners had been forced to shut down or scale back. The team needed a way to maintain their reach, despite industry-wide challenges. Stacker presented that opportunity, even going above and beyond their goals, with the potential to expand reach efficiently and sustainably.

When Katie Fleeman, Audience Outreach & Strategy Manager at Knowable Magazine, discovered Stacker in an INN blog post, something clicked:

“I could not personally pitch this many stories to that many outlets. It would be completely inconceivable. Now, I know I can put things into a portal and it’s going to go to a ton of vetted, qualified media partners.” - Katie Fleeman, Audience Outreach & Strategy Manager @ Knowable Magazine

Knowable needed a distribution partner built for scale and grounded in editorial integrity. So, they took a chance on Stacker, to see just what the impact could look like.

The Solution: A strategic lever that expands Knowable's reach without expanding the team

Stacker gave Knowable something they didn’t have before: a powerful, always-on distribution engine that behaves like an extension of their syndication team.

Rather than relying on one-off partnerships, Knowable now plugs their most important journalism into a vetted network of hundreds of publishers, especially local newsrooms, where science desks have diminished most sharply.

The partnership has become a strategic lever in three crucial ways:

1. Scaling reach without scaling resources

Knowable can now achieve a footprint that would require an entire outreach team to match.

A single story can travel across hundreds of local, radio, TV, and regional outlets; something that previously would have required hundreds of individual relationships.

“One of the big KPIs for us, in addition to volume of republishing, is readership off of our platform. A huge part of how we talk about ourselves is that we double our readership through republishing, and Stacker is a big part of that story now.”- Katie Fleeman, Audience Outreach & Strategy Manager @ Knowable Magazine

2. Elevating high-priority stories when it matters most

Knowable selects one or two articles each month to distribute via Stacker, giving their team a “volume dial” they can turn up on the stories that they want to hit a wider audience, regardless of the why behind it. 

This has been particularly impactful for:

• stories at risk of getting drowned out by the news cycle
• research topics facing misinformation
• themes that align with fundraising and mission-driven campaigns
  
  

“We had a story where the timing made it harder to place with other science publishers because a big paper came out that week and everyone else was already covering it. We put it through Stacker and got huge reach for it. It was a really nice lever to be able to pull.” - Katie Fleeman, Audience Outreach & Strategy Manager @ Knowable Magazine

3. Building a stronger narrative for funders, scientists, and internal stakeholders

Stacker’s pickup data and readership tracking feed directly into Knowable’s annual impact report—an essential component of their fundraising and donor communications.

Widespread pickup has also energized scientists whose work appears in Knowable stories. Writers are receiving Google alerts showing their research appearing in local outlets they never expected

The Results: A breakthrough year for republishing, reach, and mission impact 

In less than a year, Stacker has become one of Knowable’s most efficient and expansive distribution channels.

“The fact that it just takes one form to reach like a hundred different partners is pretty marvelous" - Katie Fleeman, Audience Outreach & Strategy Manager @ Knowable Magazine

Key outcomes:

• Hundreds of pickups across Stacker’s publisher network, including strong traction in local media— an area Knowable had struggled to break into for years.
• High engagement across local outlets, especially radio and regional publications.
• A clearer, stronger case for impact, now included in Knowable’s fundraising and annual reporting.
• New visibility for writers and scientists, many of whom now see their work reach audiences far beyond typical science-focused partners.

And perhaps most importantly:

Knowable has established a reliable, scalable path for getting essential science journalism into communities nationwide.

In a media environment where misinformation spreads quickly and local science coverage faces unprecedented challenges, that reach is mission-critical.

The Impact

As a partner in distribution, Stacker did more than simply give Knowable a new distribution channel; it expanded the organization’s ability to fulfill its core mission: provide the public with accessible, trustworthy scientific reporting.

By turning Stacker into a strategic distribution lever, Knowable unlocked:

• broader reach
• deeper community impact
• stronger storytelling for donors
• and an easier, more sustainable workflow for their team

“We’re definitely going to be highlighting this partnership in our annual impact report, which is a really important part of our fundraising strategy. Being able to talk about how our content supports all these other publications is going to be key to our fundraising story.” - Katie Fleeman, Audience Outreach & Strategy Manager @ Knowable Magazine

The result is a nonprofit newsroom that punches far above its weight and makes good on its mission of getting high-quality science journalism into the hands of readers who need it most.