From Crisis to Connection

How CBF’s Save the Bay newsletter was born and endures with lasting impact today.

While CBF has long had a digital newsletter, in March 2020, it took a strange turn (as many things did, you may recall). As the COVID-19 pandemic forced the world into lockdown, organizations everywhere faced an urgent and unprecedented question: How do you stay connected when in-person work suddenly disappears? For CBF, whose mission depends heavily on fieldwork, education, and community engagement, the challenge was immediate and existential.

Our answer became one of our most effective communications tools that continues to have a powerful impact today—our Save the Bay newsletter. When on-the-ground restoration efforts came to a halt in the spring of 2020, saving the Bay could not stop. Protecting and restoring the Chesapeake Bay watershed required continued public awareness, advocacy, and financial support. Within a week of lockdown, our small, scrappy team of communicators came together to launch a weekly digital newsletter to bring the Bay to our readers through engaging videos, stories, educational lessons, and more. The goal was clear: inform, inspire, and sustain a sense of community during an uncertain and isolating time.

The early editions of Save the Bay were shaped by the emotional climate of the pandemic. We wrote with urgency—conducting interviews, filming videos in masks and at a distance, and creating graphics and illustrations—all with the intention of inspiring, connecting, and uplifting our readers. In doing so, we uplifted ourselves as well. We were parents at home with young children, trying to navigate remote learning; we were sons and daughters worried about the health of our aging parents and loved ones; we were expectant mothers confronting unexpected and frightening pregnancy complications; we were people simply trying to get through each day. But through the newsletter, we found a singular solace and purpose in the stories we created and shared with readers who, like us, were living with uncertainty and searching for hope and light.

We aimed to uplift readers while keeping them connected to the Bay and to one another. Featuring a mix of hopeful stories, educational resources for families at home, and updates from socially distanced fieldwork, the weekly newsletter quickly became a source of comfort and purpose. It reminded readers that even in crisis, progress and connection and saving the Bay were still possible.

What began as a plucky, rapid-response effort soon evolved into something more strategic and enduring. In fact, just last week, five years later, our Save the Bay newsletter won a Gold Hermes Creative Award in the Digital Advertising and Promotion category. One of the oldest and largest creative competitions in the world, Hermes received more than 6,000 submissions from across the United States, Canada, and two dozen other countries. We’re thrilled that our newsletter was among the winners and grateful to our readers and supporters who inspire us to keep telling the Bay’s stories.

To this day, the impact of Save the Bay has been significant. It reaches more than 100,000 readers with each issue and is consistently one of CBF’s most engaging emails. It has generated more than $100,000 and hundreds of advocacy actions in support of clean water each year. Readers hail from all over the country, from California to Virginia, Texas to Maryland, New York, Maine, and beyond. And their feedback has been encouraging. As one Phoenixville, Pennsylvania reader says: “We hear so much negative news in our day-to-day lives, it is inspiring to hear the good stories of how the Bay is recovering.”

Perhaps the newsletter’s greatest achievement lies in how it transformed a moment of crisis into a lasting opportunity. What started as a necessity became a cornerstone of CBF’s outreach strategy—more intentional, more audience-focused, and ultimately more effective than previous efforts. Even as life has returned to a new normal, the spirit of Save the Bay endures. It continues to embody the principles that guided its creation: meaningful storytelling, community connection, and a shared commitment to protecting one of the world’s most vital ecosystems.

If you haven’t yet, sign up to begin receiving your own copy of our Save the Bay newsletter.