Written by: Ashwath Narayanan, Co-founder & CEO of Social Currant

For the last six months, I’ve been reflecting on the election and the hard work put in by a variety of folks in the creator space. In 2024, we saw the first real wave of investment into the creator economy from the political left. Even though much of that support came late in the cycle, millions of dollars went into creator networks like ours, focused on helping creators use their platforms to drive civic engagement and turn out voters. Though the space made record investments, a majority of them were in the last three months of the election cycle and paled in comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollars that the right has invested in the media ecosystem.

But the truth is: it still wasn’t enough.

Despite record spending, 70% of investments into creator partnerships came in the final three months before Election Day. Meanwhile, right-wing networks, funded by hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade, were fully built out and operating at full strength. According to Pew Research, three of the top five podcasts among young people today belong to conservative voices, and conservative content continues to be heavily amplified across platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and X. On the left, we’re only just beginning to catch up. And unless we change the way we approach creator partnerships, we’re going to stay behind.

Over the last two years, the impact creator economy has largely operated through small, agile networks. Various agencies and organizations have built networks of values-aligned creators and offered access to those networks to advocacy organizations, campaigns, and brands. These networks are growing fast. In 2024, at Social Currant alone, we worked with over 1,000 creators in 2024, generating more than 350 million impressions across various platforms.

But even with these wins, the current model has real limits. Many creators are part of multiple networks. Engagements are often short-term, tied to a campaign window, and don’t prioritize long-term relationship-building. And when the election ends, so do the investments.

 So as I think about the future of the creator economy – and Social Currant’s role in it – I keep coming back to a few big ideas:

1. 1. We need a movement network: One that doesn’t start from scratch every cycle, but carries forward the work that’s already been done. A shared infrastructure that organizers, campaigns, and movements can plug into – like Double Tap Democracy, which is building out some of this long-term connective tissue.
   2. We need an always-on network: One that isn’t just activated in October of an election year, but consistently engages creators, supports them, and invests in them year-round. (At Social Currant, we saw firsthand that creators who engaged across multiple projects throughout 2022-2024 had significantly stronger results than last-minute partnerships.)
   3. We need a transparent network: One that keeps it real about what’s working, what’s not, and where we need to do better — as a space, as organizations, and as partners to creators.

We’re seeing glimpses of this work done well. We’re trying to model movement-wide investment by opening up our network and helping organizations access creator partnerships more directly. Communities like those formed through creator events or any of the election activations are building lasting creator infrastructure around specific causes and working together. And we need much, much more.

As we think through what the future of the impact creator economy looks like, one thing is becoming very clear to me: we’re going to have many networks. We need a model where organizations have the tools to build their own creator network – one that reflects their values, voice, and mission. At Social Currant, that’s where we’re headed. We’re focused on:

1. Investing in infrastructure to help organizations build their own networks from end to end — whether that’s talking to creators, discovery, or matching their support list to a creator list. 
2. Building organizational capacity so that teams aren’t reliant on outside vendors alone, but can maintain lasting relationships with creators who share their mission.
3. Facilitating relationships between creators and organizations, helping both sides think more long-term about the impact they can have together.
4. Building community so creators have access to resources, tools, and opportunities—and can engage with organizations on their own terms.

The future of the creator economy is more relational and less transactional. It’s less about gatekeeping access to talent and more about empowering organizations to build creator communities that last. 

That’s the bet we’re making at Social Currant: that creators are a permanent part of progressive infrastructure. And we’re here to help every organization build the network they need.