Worth magazine is not, despite the name, a magazine about being rich. That surprises people who pitch it. They send profiles of founders with big exits, wealth managers with large books and executives with impressive titles, and they hear nothing back. Read a few issues and the pattern shows: Worth cares about what wealthy, influential people do with their money and influence. Impact is the currency, not net worth.
Worth Media Group publishes the magazine and runs a calendar of events and annual lists. Its list page shows the Worthy 100, published every year since at least 2021 and described as the 100 people who made “the most significant impact on the world this year,” along with the Power 100, Groundbreaking Women and a Leading Advisors list. Worth also shares a home with Techonomy, the conference and media brand focused on technology’s effect on business and society.
So the question of how to get featured in Worth magazine has a clear starting point. Show impact you can prove. Then use one of two doors: the lists, or editorial features. This guide covers both, and the file we build before pitching either.
What Worth covers now
Worth’s coverage clusters around a few themes that have stayed steady for years. Philanthropy and impact investing sit at the center: how families and founders give, what they fund, and whether it works. Wealth management sits next to it, aimed at readers who use private banks and family offices rather than robo-advisors. Then come innovation and technology, often through the Techonomy lens, plus a lifestyle layer covering travel, collecting, art and design for an affluent reader.
What ties these together is a point of view. Worth treats wealth as a tool and asks what the tool is being used for. A story about a founder who sold a company for $400 million is not, on its own, a Worth story. A story about that founder putting $40 million into a program that cut youth unemployment in her hometown by a measurable amount is.
This matters for pitching because it tells you which details to lead with. Lead with the problem being solved, the scale of the effort, and the evidence that it is working. Put the founder’s net worth, exit size or assets under management low in the pitch, if at all. Worth’s readers are already wealthy. Wealth does not impress them. Effective use of it does.
The magazine also covers the professionals who serve wealthy families: advisors, estate planners, family office leaders, philanthropic consultants. For these readers and subjects, the same rule applies with a twist. The story is not that an advisor manages a lot of money. The story is a new approach that changes outcomes for clients, such as a way of structuring a family’s giving, handling a generational transfer, or aligning a portfolio with stated values without giving up returns.
There is a practical reading habit worth building before you pitch. Get the last four issues, either print or digital, and list every feature subject. Note what each person did, not who they are. You will see the impact thread run through almost all of them, and you will see the gaps: sectors, regions or kinds of giving that Worth has not covered in recent issues. A pitch that fills one of those gaps arrives with a built-in reason to say yes.
Door one: the lists
Worth’s lists are its most visible franchise and the most sought-after placement for founders and executives. The Worthy 100 gets the most attention, but the Power 100 and Groundbreaking Women also carry weight, and each has its own editorial logic.
The lists do not run on a public application form. Worth’s list page shows the published lists, not a nomination portal. That means inclusion is editorial, driven by Worth’s editors, contributors and network. You cannot apply your way onto the Worthy 100. You get noticed.
Getting noticed has three parts. First, the impact has to be visible on the public record before list season. If your best work exists only in an internal report or a foundation’s annual letter, editors cannot find it. Coverage elsewhere, in business press, trade press or credible regional outlets, puts it where researchers look.
Second, the impact has to be measurable. Lists like the Worthy 100 need a line or two per person explaining why they made it. Editors gravitate to people whose story fits in that space with a number attached: a fund that has placed $200 million into climate startups, a program that has trained 15,000 nurses, a foundation that eradicated a specific disease in a specific region.
Third, someone has to put your name in front of the team. That can be a PR firm with a relationship, a past honoree, a Worth event where you meet editors, or a direct and modest email to the editorial team with your impact file attached and an explicit note that you are sharing it for consideration, not demanding inclusion.
A few things hurt your chances. Paid “awards” from vanity list sites can make a record look padded rather than proven, so leave them out of anything you send. Mass emails to every editor on the masthead signal desperation. And a request framed around status, such as “I would like to be considered for the Worthy 100 because I have built a successful company,” misses the entire premise of the list. Frame every request around the change you made in the world and the evidence that it happened. Editors read hundreds of names each cycle, and the ones that stick are the ones attached to a result they can describe in a sentence.
Timing matters. Lists are researched months before they publish. Reaching out the month a list comes out is too late for that year. Reach out right after it publishes, when editors are already thinking about the next one.
Door two: contributed and editorial features
The second door is the editorial side: staff-written features, interviews and contributed pieces. Worth’s site lists a contributors page, which shows that outside voices appear on a steady basis. These tend to be experts writing about their field: wealth advisors on planning issues, philanthropic advisors on giving strategy, founders on the intersection of technology and society.
For a contributed piece, the pitch should name the argument, not the topic. “Why donor-advised funds are failing small nonprofits, and the fix that three family offices are testing” is a pitch. “Thoughts on philanthropy” is not. Keep the email to a short paragraph on the argument, a line on why you are qualified to make it, and a link to two or three published pieces that show you can write.
For a staff-written feature about you or your organization, think like a reporter. What is new? Reporters at a magazine like Worth are not looking for good people doing good work in general. They are looking for a turning point: a new fund launching, a program reaching a milestone, a surprising result from a study, a controversy in philanthropy you can speak to with authority.
Your pitch for a feature should run under 200 words. Open with the turning point and a number. Follow with why it matters beyond your organization, meaning what other wealthy families, founders or advisors can learn from it. Close with what you can offer: access to the founder, data the reporter can use, site visits, beneficiaries willing to talk. Beneficiary access is underrated. A feature about impact is stronger when the people helped can speak for themselves, and offering that access early shows you understand the story.
Be careful with the line between editorial and commercial. Worth Media Group runs partnerships and events, and those have their own team and their own address. An editorial pitch that reads like a sponsorship inquiry, or that mentions buying a table at an event in the same breath, muddies the request. Keep them separate.
Build a Proof-of-Impact File before you pitch
Every Worth pitch we send rests on a document we call the Proof-of-Impact File. It is two pages, and it answers the questions an editor will ask before they ask them. Building it takes a day. Skipping it is why most pitches fail.
Page one covers the impact itself. State the problem in one sentence. State what you did in two. Then list the evidence in prose: the number of people reached, the money deployed, the outcome measured, the time period and who measured it. Independent measurement beats self-reported numbers. A university evaluation or an audited report carries far more weight than your own dashboard.
Page two covers the public record. Link every credible piece of coverage, ranked by outlet strength. Include talks, podcasts and published op-eds. Add a short bio, a high-resolution headshot and a one-line description of your role. If there is a story an editor could write today, state it in a single sentence at the top of page two.
The file serves both doors. For lists, it gives editors the line they need with the evidence behind it. For features, it gives reporters the facts and sources to check before committing. In both cases, it signals that you understand how editors work, which matters more than most people realize.
Here is what page one looks like for an invented subject. Problem: in rural counties across the Mississippi Delta, fewer than one in four high school graduates enrolls in college within a year. What she did: a founder who sold her logistics company put $12 million into a scholarship and mentoring program that pairs each student with a working professional for four years. Evidence: 1,400 students served since 2021, a college enrollment rate of 71% among participants against 23% in the same counties, and a 2025 evaluation by a state university’s education school confirming the gap held after controlling for grades and family income. One sentence of story at the top of page two: “The program is now opening in two new states, and the founder is publishing the playbook free so other families can copy it.” An editor reading that file knows in a minute whether there is a story, and what it is.
If page two looks thin, fix that first. Build the public record with coverage in business, trade and regional outlets where your impact is relevant. One credible profile is often the thing that makes a Worth editor take a second look, because it shows someone else has already vetted the story.
Start this week: open a blank document, write the problem you solve in one sentence, and list every number you can prove. That is page one of your Proof-of-Impact File, and it is the foundation for any pitch to Worth.