SPIN Founder Robert Bray with Strategist Kevin Cartwright and SPIN client Sangita Nayak.

Founded in 1997 by veteran public relations expert Robert Bray, the SPIN Project was formed as a part of the Independent Media Institute to empower nonprofit social justice organizations, small and large, to communicate effectively for themselves. When it was founded, the SPIN Project was just two staffers supporting a handful of clients. Today, the SPIN Project has trained well over 1,000 organizations and more than 5,000 individuals across the United States.

In 1999, SPIN held its first SPIN Academy, an advanced communications training retreat, where activists and advocates representing social justice organizations delved into intensive communications workshops. The Academy offers social justice leaders the unique opportunity to learn about strategic communications, discuss the communications needs of the social justice movement, and socialize with a diverse network of peers from around the country. Today, the SPIN Academy has become the foremost strategic communications conference for social justice advocates in the country.

In 2000, the SPIN Project published SPIN WORKS!, a comprehensive media guidebook that has sold more than 6,000 copies. In 2002, The SPIN Project expanded to five staff members, providing hundreds of workshops and trainings, and began to implement our current model of following trainings with ongoing support through extensive strategic consultation and coaching. 2004 saw the expansion of the SPIN Academy model through the introduction of tailored communications conferences, as well as the publication of our second book, Loud and Clear in an Election Year, which has sold some 5,000 copies.

Today, the SPIN Project has carried our signature SPIN Academy to a broader cross section of the social change community, and created several new and innovative projects and collaborations to better serve our clients. In addition to the trainings and strategy development SPIN has provided since our inception, we now provide tailored communications conferences and in-depth consultations that can include communications audits, campaign support and other communications tools unique to the needs of each social justice organization with whom we work. For more information on our work with clients, please view our Overview of Services.