How to mobilize the huge cache of assets languishing in donor-advised funds (DAFs) — more than $251 billion at the end of 2023, according to National Philanthropic Trust’s most recent report — is an urgent question amid critical and rising needs. The most common answer is policy changes, including mandatory minimum payouts, and those could drive results. But RSF has found that when donors and DAF sponsors align to maximize impact, it’s possible to rise far above any legal floor that’s been contemplated.

RSF’s DAF community has long been an exception to the norm, granting out funds at well above the national rate for several years running. NPT pegs the aggregate grant payout rate in 2023 at 23.9%; RSF DAFs had a 58% payout rate in 2023 and a 74% payout rate in 2024.

At the same time, RSF donors have embraced field-leading approaches, such as trust-based grants and community-led funds, that challenge philanthropy’s power dynamics and get at the systemic roots of social and environmental problems. Their work validates our belief that DAFs are an important tool for innovation in philanthropy, providing a high level of flexibility and many opportunities for ad hoc collaborations.

Our donors’ active grantmaking and their engagement with new giving models are related. Both practices align with principles that guide RSF’s work in regenerative finance — particularly, act from abundance, center relationships, and empower everyone. These principles, in turn, flow from our commitment to maximizing impact, advancing new approaches, and mobilizing DAF capital to meet the moment.

Maximizing impact with 100% DAF activation

Billions of dollars in DAFs sit philanthropically idle, invested in market funds with no positive social or environmental impact — or worse, invested in industries that create harm and undermine the donor’s charitable purpose.

This stagnant pool of capital exists partly because DAF sponsors have a financial incentive to let money pile up (they typically charge fees based on assets under management), and partly because most apply a conventional finance lens that focuses narrowly on monetary returns, with no accounting for positive or negative social and environmental impacts.

RSF’s DAF program, in contrast, fully deploys DAF capital for impact. Our Double Impact DAF option allows donors to invest a portion of DAF assets in the RSF Social Investment Fund (SIF), which provides loans to nonprofit and for-profit social enterprises working in food and agriculture, climate and energy, education, and community impact. RSF publishes a list of current borrowers and regularly produces impact stories, so donors and investors know exactly who and what they are supporting.

DAF assets invested in the SIF earn interest, which can then be granted out or reinvested, so money is always circulating for impact. This pay-it-forward ethos inspired worker cooperative and former RSF borrower Equal Exchange to invest its corporate DAF funds in the SIF.

“Equal Exchange’s alternative capital model is based on worker-owner control and modest returns to investors. This means we can forward-buy coffee in volume from farmer co-ops and pay them fairly,” said Nicole Vitello, vice president at Equal Exchange. “We are happy to extend the patient capital we have received from people who believe in our work to other like-minded businesses through RSF’s Double Impact DAF program.”

DAF assets not invested in the SIF are invested in RSF’s DAF Liquidity Portfolio, which keeps funds available for granting out at any time. The portfolio prioritizes social and environmental impact investments over market-rate returns, flowing capital to community development financial institutions and other mission-driven partners, including Native American Bank, Self-Help Credit Union and Blue Forest.

RSF’s 100% DAF activation model is what attracted the Rosensteins, who use their DAF as a family giving vehicle. “I knew about RSF through someone I had met at Resource Generation, and we felt that RSF had a really high bar for how they administered their money,” said Gabe Rosenstein. “With many DAFs, the money is supposed to be bettering society, and it’s just sitting there in ways that aren’t. With RSF, I feel good about where our DAF is invested and what our administrative fees are supporting.”

Supporting innovation with flexibility and creativity

In addition to investing all funds for impact, RSF places a premium on helping donors realize their giving goals and advancing the principles of trust-based philanthropy. We aim to transcend the transactional with relationships rooted in trust, creativity, and shared values because those relationships promise to unlock our greatest potential — as some of our most innovative DAFs illustrate.

Southern Black Farmers Community-Led Fund, a grant fund held at RSF, provides critical financing, training, and other support to Black farmers and their local food economies in the Southeast. Disrupting the traditional power dynamics in philanthropy, the donor who started the fund does not decide how money is spent; instead, those decisions are made by a leadership council comprising two representatives from each of seven anchor organizations, all cooperatively led by and serving Black farmers across the American South.

In another example of community control, the Indigenous-led Pawanka Fund holds its assets in a philanthropic account at RSF, essentially using RSF as a bank.

“We share the value of reciprocity [and] common goals to advance towards justice,” said Dr. Myrna Cunningham, executive director of the Pawanka Fund, which is dedicated to promoting and protecting traditional knowledge, well-being, rights, and self-determined development. “RSF really respects our participation and really gives the guiding committee of the Pawanka Fund the ability to make decisions.”

Equal Exchange’s corporate DAF also takes a community-directed approach. The company wanted to give its network of citizen-consumers more ways to support its work with agricultural cooperatives in the Global South, so if opened up its DAF for contributions. Donations have helped Equal Exchange provide technical assistance addressing six coffee cooperatives’ self-diagnosed needs, such as leadership development and engaging young people and women in farming and community-building work.

Mobilizing more DAF capital to meet the moment

By leading with regenerative finance values, RSF attracts donors who are truly committed to impact, which accounts for our high payout rate and history of DAF innovation.

We’re now working to inspire more donors by making it easier than ever to maximize DAF impact: RSF’s new DAF Mobilization Project eliminates fees when donors open a new RSF DAF by December 1, 2025, and invest a portion of the assets in RSF’s Social Investment Fund.

RSF’s approach to DAFs aligns closely with initiatives like Jennifer Risher’s #HalfMyDAF. Risher co-founded #HalfMyDAF in 2020 in response to the COVID crisis and it took hold as a way to promote more active DAF use. The initiative asks DAF holders to disburse at least half of the money in their DAF every year by the end of September — and incentivizes them by offering dollar-for-dollar matching grants.

Initiatives like these, along with RSF donors’ history of active giving, illustrate a crucial point: When we invite more people to participate in an economy that values all people and nature, capital circulates rather than accumulates, flowing to where it’s needed most. Any one of us can be an agent of opportunity, creating a more balanced, inclusive and resilient economy that benefits the whole instead of just a few. And DAF holders can have an outsize impact if they use the tool in their hands to its fullest potential. As a values-driven DAF sponsor, RSF is committed to helping them do just that.

Are you a wealth advisor seeking to align your clients’ money with their values? An emerging philanthropist who wants to take your giving to the next level? An experienced philanthropist looking for ways to deepen your practice? Learn more about opening a DAF at RSF.

The rise of regenerative DAFs was originally published in Reimagine Money on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

The phrase — a line from a 1980 June Jordan poem that became the title of a 2006 Alice Walker book and then a rallying cry of the 2008 Obama campaign — feels more relevant than ever.

In her introduction, Walker writes about happiness that radiates from solidarity relationships. “It comes from the simple belief and understanding that what one is feeling and doing is right. That it is right to protect rather than terrorize others; right to feed people rather than withhold food and medicine; right to want the freedom and joyful existence of all humankind.”

Her words speak directly to what motivates B Corps and other purpose-driven companies — and why now is the time to joyfully deepen our relationships. Many impact businesses worry about being targeted by the current regime as it opposes the shared prosperity we’re working toward. And clearly no one is coming to save us. But we don’t need them to. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

What does this mean practically? In conversations with other purpose-driven leaders about how we can create a thriving ecosystem for businesses dedicated to social and environmental progress, three priorities have emerged: forging high-impact supply chains, creating our own support systems, and building strength through partnerships.

Amplifying impact and value throughout our supply chains

Buying from each other is the most direct action we can take to strengthen the sustainable business movement in the face of reactionary backlash.

Filling out a roster of mission-aligned suppliers — including service providers, which don’t receive as much scrutiny as goods providers — is both an act of solidarity and a business booster. It increases your enterprise’s positive effects, reduces negative effects, and gives you access to a deep well of impact expertise in every facet of your operations.

HigherRing illustrates this potential beautifully. A Certified B Corp and 1% for the Planet member, the company provides fully managed operations support — on a fractional, full-time or team basis — for purpose-driven businesses and nonprofits.

“The number one advantage is that we are bought into their impact,” says founder and CEO Michelle Hirons. “Everyone on our team is mission-aligned, and we are not paying people minimum wage in a low-wage country. We are here to make sure our talented professionals, clients, and communities thrive. We make referrals to other experts when we see that a client has, say, no cybersecurity. And we have an ongoing project of seamlessly shifting our clients to the most sustainable business applications and financial institutions, so they’re no longer funding the worst corporate actors.”

At Thinkshift Communications, also a B Corp and 1% for the Planet member, we similarly use our wide-ranging knowledge of sustainable business sectors to develop PR strategies that support healthy brand growth through genuine differentiating factors and generous thought leadership. We also steer clients away from communications tactics with potentially brand-tarnishing downsides that conventional agencies don’t recognize.

Just about every business buys some services whose full impact they haven’t considered. But for B Corps and other purpose-driven businesses, shining a light on those potential closets of shame is essential to mission and market growth. If we won’t prioritize impact in our buying decisions, why should we expect our customers to?

Creating the support systems we need

We have all the resources and skills we need within the sustainable business community to address long-simmering as well as new challenges — and new initiatives are moving forward with a sense of urgency.

WeTheChange, an organization serving women and nonbinary leaders of purpose-driven businesses, is working to fill the capital gap for small and midsized women-owned businesses by creating a loan fund for its members.

“Women-owned businesses continue to be underserved by everyone from venture capital to SBA loans, and options are particularly slim for service businesses,” says Director of Strategic Partnerships Lindsay LaShell, noting that data shows women-led businesses are more stable and profitable. “Plus, there are no investment vehicles taking advantage of the opportunity to recognize B Corp certification for what it is: a valuable asset that reflects commitment and resilience.”

LaShell, who is leading development of the Signatory Investment Fund, conducted a business needs survey and found significant and immediate demand for financing just within the existing WeTheChange network. She is currently raising money and seeking advisors for the pilot fund.

Other efforts address of-the-moment needs. The Social Venture Network is forming a Mutual Aid Circle to help members deal with fallout from radical federal policy changes. The teams comprise marketing, fundraising, legal corporate finance, and human resources experts who are available for free one-hour consultations.

“It’s about being a community of leaders that are really there for each other,” says board member Rose Penelope Yee.

Building strength through partnerships

Yee’s company, Green Retirement, is a founding B Corp and a model of values-based partnership. Working with Social(k) and fellow B Corps Nia Impact Capital and Trillium Capital Management to offer mission-aligned investment options, the company designs and manages 401(k) plans that allow employees to choose socially and environmentally responsible, fossil-free investments.

“The beauty of this is it creates a virtuous circle of business among fellow B Corps,” Yee says. “We’re working together to enable our clients and employees to use their savings to shape the future they want to retire to.”

Values-based partnerships also allow purpose-driven businesses to expand services and markets quickly while limiting the risk of culture clash. That’s the goal for Brand Box, a new collaboration between Climate Social, Ecodeo and Thinkshift Communications designed to accelerate climate tech startups, impact-driven companies and growth-oriented social enterprises. Brand Box combines the firms’ strengths to deliver integrated PR, video and social media packages that give growing companies the benefits of working with experts — without the hassles of sourcing and coordinating multiple contractors.

Collective action has always been central to the B Corp movement’s goal of creating an economy that benefits everyone, and it’s essential now to ensure that purpose-driven businesses continue to proliferate and prove that business can be a force for good.

Purpose-driven businesses unite! A thriving ecosystem is in our hands was originally published in B The Change on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“Movements don’t happen because of just one organization,” says Maria Schell Hassid, executive director of the David Brower Center. “They happen when groups are coming together and working toward a shared goal. And co-location is really critical.”

Conceived as “a home for the environmental movement,” the Brower Center was purpose-built to play this vital convening role. It unites art, activism, and environmental care in a LEED Platinum building in downtown Berkeley, California, where it hosts over 300 events a year and houses 26 nonprofits and mission-aligned businesses.

“The people who come to work in this building are fighting very, very difficult battles,” says Hassid. “To be able to do that every day, day after day, you need to be in a place where you feel a sense of safety, community, and that you are valued. And that’s what I want all people to experience when they come to the Center.

“To me it’s larger than environmental organizations,” she adds. “It’s the whole nonprofit community. To get the sort of societal change that we need at this particular moment, we really have to do more working together.”

Honoring a trailblazer with a place to make change

The vision for the David Brower Center emerged in the early 2000s when founder and board president Peter K. Buckley was seeking a way to honor David Brower, a Berkeley native widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement.

At the same time, he and a group of fellow environmental donors saw that the organizations they funded were experiencing significant instability — in large part because the dotcom boom had driven up demand and prices for office space. That meant nonprofits were losing their leases and getting shunted into shabby quarters. The group set out to create a home for these organizations that would be an asset to the entire environmental movement.

In order to qualify for government grants and tax credits, the Center’s founders incorporated low-income housing and an underground city garage into the building’s design. But the complexity of the project scared away other potential investors, creating a financing gap that threatened to scuttle the project.

With just months to go before the required groundbreaking date, RSF stepped in to fill the gap with a $3.2 million loan. This financing enabled the David Brower Center to open in 2009, and it has served as a home for the region’s environmental movement ever since.

Integrating environmental and social innovation

The Brower Center earned the U.S. Green Building Council’s highest sustainability rating (LEED Platinum) and is recognized as a model by the Center for the Built Environment. It incorporates recycled building materials, solar panels and energy-saving technologies that make the Center about 40% more efficient than a standard office building.

Its programming is equally innovative. “Too often in the nonprofit space, organizations are not encouraged to collaborate,” says Hassid. “So we do a lot of work on community building and bringing different groups together that might not know about each other or have worked together before. That kind of collaboration is really important to the larger environmental movement.”

The Brower Center also organizes monthly coffee meetups and resource-sharing groups, enabling organizations to learn from one another about successful approaches to strategic planning, human resources issues, and other challenges. “The HR director at one of our organizations is starting an HR support group. That speaks to one of the wonderful things about being here together — the sense of community and support and also shared resources,” says Hassid.

Another aspect of the Center’s holistic approach is the Hazel Wolf Gallery, which hosts three public art exhibitions each year: a local show, a youth show, and an award show focusing on a nationally or internationally known artist. The fall/winter 2024 exhibit, for example, features local artists inspired by the work of Planting Justice, a nonprofit that restores land and creates jobs for people coming out of the justice system — one of its projects is an organic fruit nursery beneath a freeway in East Oakland.

“Part of David Brower’s ethos and approach was that you can’t inspire people to action from a place of fear and anxiety,” Hassid notes. “And the climate crisis induces a lot of fear and anxiety — legitimately so. Our inclination as humans, when we feel that sense of overwhelm, is to shut down. We want to remind people that the Earth is a place worth protecting, and provide beauty and inspiration to go out and fight the hard fights.”

Rising up from pandemic challenges

After providing initial financing for the building, RSF continued to support the Brower Center by refinancing the original loan in 2014 and 2024. The partnership again proved pivotal when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, creating financial challenges for both the Center and its resident organizations.

“I’m very proud to say, though, that we’ve never had vacancies at the Brower Center — even amid the pandemic,” Hassid says. “Unlike a standard landlord, we really worked with our organizations to make concessions and figure out how to get us all through the crisis. RSF saw us the same way we saw our resident organizations — as partners — and was able to help us work through the pandemic. That’s the kind of partnership that you don’t get at a standard bank.”

Plus, she adds, “We charge what we feel is a reasonable and fair rent that allows us to provide services and maintain the building, but we’re not looking to make money, and that’s not so appealing to a standard bank lender. Having a lender that has social mission alignment with us is really important.”

That perfect fit was manifest at RSF’s 40th anniversary celebration, which the Center hosted. It was a natural choice for RSF given the organizations’ long relationship and the values the David Brower Center embodies. “We’re really proud that we can be an exemplar of what RSF is able to accomplish as a social impact investor,” says Hassid.

Bringing citizens, artists, and activists together

Over the past 15 years the Brower Center has welcomed over half a million people through its doors; hosted 42 exhibitions featuring artists including Maya Lin, Edward Burtynsky, Richard Misrach, and Joel Sartore; provided space — at below market rates to nonprofits — for over 3,000 screenings, lectures, conferences, workshops, performances, and receptions; and been home to 40 nonprofits and mission-aligned business.

Looking ahead, Hassid hopes to make the building a new kind of model: “We’re moving from being a bright, shiny new thing that was cutting-edge 15 years ago to showing how you can continue to improve systems in an existing building to stay at the forefront of the highest environmental standards.” That effort may mean upgrading the entire building’s lighting, heating and cooling systems to incorporate newer technologies.

Hassid also wants to expand the Center’s public programming and collaborative opportunities.

“We really have to learn how to coalesce and engage with each other,” she says. “This has been a challenging and contentious time. My hope is that the Center can exist as an example of how lots of different organizations coming at the same problem from a lot of different perspectives can collaborate and help strengthen the movement.”

RSF Funding Supports a Home for the Environmental Movement was originally published in Reimagine Money on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

These tips will help you develop a brand story that will help you drive adoption, expand awareness, make key hires and raise capital.

Are a groundbreaking technology or model, a compelling market opportunity and whip-smart leaders enough to build a company that has real impact? You might think so, but no. The missing piece is a brand story that helps you drive adoption, expand awareness, make key hires and raise capital.

A good brand story can do that because it paints a vivid picture of what you’re trying to achieve, why you’re the ones to do it, how it can work and why it matters. Yet brand story-and communications in general-may be the most overlooked aspect of getting a startup off the ground. I say that not just because Thinkshift has a hammer and we’re looking for nails, but because our own media experience proves it and we’ve heard it from everyone we’ve ever met who works with startups.

“Standing out is the gold standard-to be able to tell the story of why and how you’re different,” one incubator director told us years ago. “Companies that understand they need a good communications strategy will do better than those that don’t. Sometimes it’s the story that makes it.”

Just recently, the Emerson Collective, which invests in purpose-driven entrepreneurs and other innovators, underscored the point by hosting a daylong “Building a Consequential Climate Company” event devoted entirely to various aspects of brand storytelling. (See the presentations here.)

We’ve found that regardless of channel, form or sector, stories that make a difference to customers, media, talent and investors follow these three guidelines.

1. Lead with people, support with numbers

Yes, investors want to see a lot of numbers before they write a check. They want to know if your growth projections are realistic, what the size of your market is, and if you have a moat around your intellectual property. But investors put money into companies they love, and love doesn’t spring from spreadsheets.

What insight inspired you to take on the freakin’ hard slog of building this company? What keeps you going every day? What are your customers’ lives like, and how are you making them better? Framing your story around the answers to questions like these helps investors understand the stakes and the opportunity-and whether you are the person to pull this off.

The same is true for media. Reporters lead with people because they know that’s what attracts readers, listeners and viewers. And they can’t tell your story if you can’t.

Many founders resist this, but, as Molly Wood, a former New York Times editor and current venture investor, said at the Emerson Collective event, “You’re the story. You have an origin story, a staff who’s working for you because they care about what you do; your customers are part of your story. Do not hide the personal below the tech; it makes you more interesting.”

2. Clearly state what you do and what you hope to achieve

Every enterprise should be able to fill in the blanks in these two sentences: [Company name] is a [blank] that does [blank] for [blank]. We do it by [blank].

That sounds basic, but companies often get so focused on articulating the need they’re filling that they neglect to say exactly what they do and what they are selling. That’s something investors, journalists, and customers need to know, and it should be clear whether you’re telling your story in person, in a deck or on your website. If it’s not, you’ll raise doubts about your enterprise.

3. Articulate an inspiring-but plausible-vision

Unquestionably, a big vision is more exciting than incremental improvement. But before you put it out in the world, make sure you can plot a plausible path to achieving it. An ambitious vision you can support with reasonable analysis will be taken more seriously than one that assumes a world-historical level of change based on hand-wavy assumptions.

And again, put it in people terms. If you’re on the cusp of a technical breakthrough, whose lives will you make better, on what scale, and in what way? Even if you’re working in a niche B2B market, you’re selling to people, and technological superiority alone often is not enough to get them to buy. The same goes for investors and journalists.

A brand story isn’t a “set it and forget it” project-it needs to grow and change as your enterprise grows and changes. No matter what phase you’re in, though, if you build it on the guidelines above, you’ll always have a story that connects with the people you want to reach.

Originally published at https://thinkshiftcom.com on July 15, 2024.

Brand story isn’t extra — it’s essential was originally published in Thinkshifter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you’re doing everything right but you’re not growing, chances are you’re hitting at least one of these roadblocks.

You’re leading your field with a novel approach to a social or environmental problem, a breakthrough technology or a pioneering business model. Your team is top-notch. You know your market, and your offering matches their needs. But they’re not buying, and you’re not growing. What’s wrong?

Most likely you’re hitting one-or more-of three barriers to startup success that form the Wall of Frustration. And each of them is at least partly a communications challenge.

1. Status quo bias

Most of us can think of things we should be doing differently but aren’t, even though we’ve identified a good alternative. For example, do you like the way giant banks operate? There’s a good chance you don’t-and an even better chance you haven’t moved your money to a sustainable bank or community financial institution. Your prospects may be similarly stalled. The reasons boil down to this:

Change takes effort. This is especially true of big corporate buyers. If your prospect has to get multiple approvals and sell your solution up the ladder, that’s a heavy lift and a time-consuming slog.

New = unknown = scary. The ancient tech truism “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM” captures this phenomenon. It feels-and may be-safer for your target customers to buy a familiar name or stick with what they already have. They may not be achieving standout results from either option, but they know what they’re getting and they won’t be fired or blamed for continuing to get it.

Behemoth incumbents have all the advantages of behemothness. If incumbents have elephant footprints all over your market, they can box you out using tactics like offering a less-good-but-good-enough version of your solution as a cheap add-on to a big sale.

Powerful weapons against status quo bias include benefits messaging that responds to unspoken objections and high-profile customers who are willing to speak to media or collaborate on thought leadership. Case studies, the Swiss army knife in the communications toolbox, provide a particularly high return on investment: They ease sales by providing real-world use cases with customer-verified results. They can fuel media coverage, particularly in trade outlets. And they provide compelling examples for thought leadership articles.

2. Market noise

Imagine a bazaar. It’s loud, crowded, colorful and for some overwhelming. Vendors extoll the unique qualities of seemingly identical wares. Distracting shiny objects are everywhere. Your market is probably much like that bazaar: It’s harder than ever to grab attention. Competing claims confuse your customers. And it’s difficult to distinguish quality from junk.

Those factors add up to a two-part challenge: First, getting found. And second, getting past the analysis paralysis this marketplace induces. Media pitches that tie into top-of-mind issues; vetted, provable, clearly expressed impact metrics; and sharp subject matter experts who can analyze the market as whole will chip away at this barrier.

3. First-mover disadvantage

While the advantages of being first to market are top of mind for most startups, planning to deal with the many disadvantages often gets neglected. Three of these are fundamentally communications issues.

Visionaries attract skeptics. Solutions that seem “out there” get more intense critiques than widely used options-even those with enormous downsides.

The new-car smell wears off. Novelty can net publicity, but it won’t last long. Once trend-focused journalists and influencers move on, it takes savvy ongoing media outreach-with ever more impressive proof points-to stay in the conversation.

The market needs education. Some of the most ground-breaking solutions address problems people don’t know they have or drive progress they don’t think is possible.

Thought leadership is an essential strategy for addressing this barrier. Writing articles, speaking, and serving as an expert source enhances your credibility, educates prospects, enables you to define new standards and maintains your presence between news events.

A smart communications strategy tailored to your situation won’t completely knock down these barriers to startup success, but it will create cracks in the wall. And those cracks may be all you need to slip through and rise to your next level.

Originally published at https://thinkshiftcom.com on March 15, 2024.

3 big barriers to startup success-and how to leap over them — Thinkshift Communications was originally published in Thinkshifter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

PR is a powerful brand-building strategy, but the media relations aspect can be a roller coaster: a deluge of coverage followed by drought, big news for your enterprise that goes nowhere while a minor novelty gets major attention, a string of interviews with top-tier reporters but no quotes in their stories. Even the best-run program will take a dive now and then.

But if you’ve been on a long flat stretch and you’re not getting the PR results you expect, it’s time to inspect your foundation. Answers to the following questions can show you how to regain traction.

Are you aiming at the right target?

Some enterprises fixate on scoring coverage in top-tier national outlets, and direct all their PR resources at that target. It’s worth a shot, but that’s a high-risk strategy — the likely result is a lot of time and money spent with little or no result. Getting a look requires a big market, big customers and big impact numbers; the timing has to be exactly right; and the competition is fierce. Everyone else is also pitching The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, et al; journalists at top-tier outlets often get more than 100 pitches a day.

Ask yourself (and your agency) what your real potential is for PR results and what you can do to maximize it. Be honest about your assets and how your story story fits into current media trends. Beware of skewing expectations through apples-to-oranges comparisons with other enterprises. And consider the business goals you most want PR to support. If you’re trying to reach potential buyers for a B2B product or service, for instance, seeking consistent trade coverage is probably a more valuable use of resources than going all out for a mention in a prestigious general-interest outlet.

Are you offering the right stories?

If you’re doing work with significant impact, you have a story to tell. Sometimes that story is hard to see: The expert insider perspective is often at odds with the media’s perspective on which stories are worth telling. If you’re ahead of the curve, you need to find a way to make your work relevant now. Often that means putting a face on it: people-centered stories always garner a wider audience. Or you may need to bring in someone with a fresh perspective to uncover overlooked stories.

Do you have the goods?

In addition to a relevant, compelling story, it’s essential to have data and other backup for your claims, prepared spokespeople, a fact sheet that answers all the basic questions reporters are likely to have, and examples to illustrate your points. If you don’t have these elements lined up, it’s hard to bring home the coverage-even if a great pitch gets you interest or interviews.

Is your strategy up to date?

If it’s been a while since you’ve reviewed your strategy, now is the time. You may need to rethink the outlets and mix of media you’re targeting, your balance of pitching stories versus writing bylined articles, how you’re using social media and partner channels, and how all the pieces fit together to amplify your efforts. Also consider whether you have the commitment needed from your expert sources and a budget that’s ample enough to execute your strategy.

Finally, keep in mind that a new program takes time to produce PR results — often six months or more. You may just need to wait a bit longer for the thrilling part of the ride.

Originally published at https://thinkshiftcom.com on July 18, 2023.

If your PR strategy isn’t yielding results, ask these questions was originally published in Thinkshifter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Story generation is the engine that makes media relations programs run. When you don’t have news — which for most enterprises is most of the time — you have to develop compelling story pitches to earn the attention of writers, editors and producers.

This requires more than a bit of brainstorming. Story ideas with legs are meaty enough for a journalist to explore and broadly appealing enough so that they don’t smack of pure self-interest. The best stand on four pillars: three-dimensional relevance; clarity and focus; a hook, line and sinker; and a cast of characters.

1. Relevance

Achieving relevance is like dressing for unpredictable weather: you need layers. The first layer is relevance to your ultimate audience. What’s eating up most of their brain space? What motivates them? Will this story give them useful insights?

The second is the outlets you want to pitch. If you’ve developed a trade story and you want to be in trade outlets, you’re already half dressed. If you’re trying to reach people through general news media, you need a different idea or a bigger picture take. Broadcast and podcast media also require specialized story elements.

The third layer is relevance to the journalists you’re pitching. Ideally your story can be told from multiple angles. Even trade reporters have particular interests, and the most effective story pitches are tailored to journalists’ coverage areas rather than blasted out indiscriminately.

2. Clarity and focus

For a quick read on whether the idea will be resonate with, or even make sense to, people outside your enterprise, try the cocktail party test. Would you tell this story to someone you just met-or even someone you know-at a social gathering? How about a professional gathering? If not, the story is too complicated and needs to be distilled to its essence, or it’s inside baseball that isn’t going to play for a crowd.

Focus is essential to achieving this level of approachability. Story ideas that audiences find hard to follow often are trying to pack too many nuances and related but nonessential threads into the pitch.

3. A hook, line and sinker

If you were speaking about the idea at a conference, how likely is it that people would be surreptitiously checking their phones and tuning you out? If your honest assessment (not taking into account your enormous personal charisma, of course) is “pretty likely,” the story needs an attention-grabbling hook and compelling plot points, anchored by a meaningful theme.

Key questions to consider are: Do you have a dramatic result or surprising analysis that will grab attention? How broadly can you extend the topic’s significance? Can you share enough details to contribute to a substantive story? Why is this topic important right now? Newsworthiness can be tricky. For true believers working to solve social and environmental problems or create a model for others to follow, every step forward is important and worthy of coverage. But that’s not necessarily how the wider world will see it, and ultimately news is what the media believes it is.

4. A cast of characters

Those of us with a fondness for abstract analysis have to face facts: most people would rather eat bugs than endure a story without characters. The best story pitches are built on people: compelling sources (extra credit if they can speak from a personal story), examples involving people the audience will relate to, and a description of who will benefit.

There’s no guarantee any story pitch will result in coverage, but ideas that hit all these marks have the best possible chance of coming to life.

Originally published at https://thinkshiftcom.com on January 17, 2023.

Story ideas with legs stand on these four pillars was originally published in Thinkshifter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You probably know someone who’s an amazing storyteller. You can happily listen to them tell the same story over and over again. But eventually you want a fresh take, or you hear the storyteller spin the tale to a new audience and it doesn’t land the way it did before.

Messaging is the same — no matter how good it is, it won’t last forever. A real raconteur knows when to make a shift, but with business messaging it’s not always obvious when you need an update. Here are three of the most common situations that should spark a messaging reassessment.

Your messaging describes the enterprise you used to be

If your business has grown substantially, shifted its market strategy or undergone other substantive changes, your messaging is past its sell-by date. It not only lacks freshness, it also isn’t giving you the benefits it should. If it doesn’t downright stink, though, you might not even notice it’s gone off. Two signs that it has: Your spokespeople are making on-the-fly edits to messaging because it just doesn’t feel right anymore, or you find yourself having to explain, “This isn’t exactly what we do these days.”

Out-of-date messaging probably won’t kill you — but if you let it ride, it could seriously hinder your communications effectiveness. And there’s no need to be leery of a messaging refresh. The process can be quick and concise, focusing on the problem areas.

A fresh story can deliver significant benefits: following a business strategy shift for a cleantech startup, our messaging refresh helped get core teams working toward the same end and enabled the CEO, product marketing leader and other key staff to communicate clearly about the company’s technology, value and vision.

You want to reach a new market

You know that tapping into new markets requires new messaging — but how much? It’s not a good idea to say completely different things to new audiences (that could make you sound like a pandering politician and cause a loss of trust), but you do need to speak to different interests and experiences. Sometimes all you need is a few new secondary messages; sometimes you need to broaden or even rethink your core messaging.

You can make a quick assessment of how much messaging work you need to do by considering how far you’re trying to stretch:

• Light: a few secondary messages Light work should do the job if your new market is similar to existing ones in terms of concerns and values but is less technical, has a highly specific need you can address, or has a new demographic or geographic characteristic you need to speak to.
• Medium: a full set of secondary messages Plan for a medium messaging refresh if your new market is looking for different benefits or differs in fundamental ways from your current audience.
• Heavy: full messaging development If you’re doing something new for someone new, you’ll need major messaging work, most likely including revisions to your core messaging.

A real-world example of a light approach to a fresh story: RSF Social Finance needed to extend its reach beyond dedicated supporters to audiences who shared RSF’s values but weren’t necessarily knowledgeable about social enterprise finance. We supplemented RSF’s messaging and then made it real to the expanded audience through a storytelling program.

Competition is heating up

When you cut a fresh path or stake out your own niche, you typically need messaging that explains what you do and why people should want it. But when competitors start to crowd your space, you’ll need messages that make you distinctive in order to stay out front. Simply saying “we do it better” or “we were first” won’t cut it. Those claims are worth making, but neither is enough to maintain a strong brand.

The competitive messaging challenge in developing a fresh story may require a new creative approach, market research, greater attention to the ways your company (not just your products or services) is different, or all of those things. We helped one B2B services client stand out against rising competition by extending a distinctive brand voice into a full messaging platform, then playing it through with thought leadership pieces, web copy and content marketing that sounded like no one else in the field.

Even if your messaging is on the level of a pop song earworm — people can’t forget it — sooner or later your enterprise is going to go through some kind of change that requires a fresh story. Timely messaging adjustments will help you benefit from growth and change, ensure that new initiatives succeed and keep you in control.

Originally published at https://thinkshiftcom.com on November 16, 2022.

Is your messaging past its sell-by date? was originally published in Thinkshifter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As boundary-pushing enterprises know, there’s nothing easy about remaking systems, changing behavior or creating the imaginative space that allows new ideas to flourish. It’s not just resistance that stalls progress, but also the human tendency toward status quo bias. That tendency is so powerful that impact-focused businesses themselves often get mired in status quo bias when it comes to their own operations: Many are missing out on the benefits of a supply chain stocked with impact service providers.

Building a roster of mission-aligned finance, marketing and other professional firms is well worth the effort. It increases your enterprise’s positive impact, reduces contributions to negative impacts, and ensures you have advisers who get your mission in a deep way and can help you achieve it.

Improve sustainability and ESG metrics

Impact service providers help you infuse environmental and social sustainability throughout your supply chain and beyond. For example, All Good sought out a capital provider that’s funding an ecosystem of impact enterprises, so the company’s loan payments help support fellow sustainable businesses. Others are hiring professional firms led by women and people of color to build on internal diversity and inclusion initiatives as well as increase resilience.

Avoid undermining your mission

Some companies find the money they’re spending in their service supply chain is undermining their positive actions. Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert wrote in Fortune earlier this year about an “aha moment” when “we came to terms with the notion that if we give 1% of our sales away to environmental groups while banking with financial partners who finance extractive industries, we’re counterproductive hypocrites.”

Patagonia is now reallocating some of its business to institutions that are 100% fossil fuel-free, certified Benefit Corporations, and members of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values. For example, the company is working with CNote, a women-led B Corp that deploys corporate cash to mission-driven finance institutions serving low-income communities, entrepreneurs of color and others who need better access to capital.

Get a faster ramp-up and savvier advice

When you hire service providers that understand your mission and position in the impact sector, you’ll get savvier advice and spend significantly less time bringing partners up to speed. Legal, benefits, marketing and PR are among the areas where impact service providers have an edge. Enterprises often come to Thinkshift, for example, after working with PR firms that didn’t get their goals or market and struggled to position them effectively. Clients benefit in multiple ways from our knowledge of the impact landscape: It enables us to refine their messaging and get their voice into trending sector-wide topics. It also allows us to deftly handle delicate, potentially brand-tarnishing communications.

How to shift to impact service providers

Evaluate your current roster. Review the providers you’re working with and determine which ones are already meeting your standards. If you can’t tell, ask what they’re doing in areas that are important to you and how they measure it. If they fall short of your standards, tell them it’s important to you and let them know what they can do to improve. Nudges from you can spur change-providers that haven’t thought much about sustainability pay more attention when they know their clients value it.

Find committed impact partners. When you decide to make changes or have new needs, make mission fit a key factor in your vetting process. There are a couple of shortcuts you can take:

Search the B Corp directory by industry, inclusion factors or impact scores-these companies have all passed a rigorous assessment of their environmental, social and governance performance.

If you’re looking for a PR or ad agency, find out if they’ve signed the Clean Creatives pledge to decline any future contracts with fossil fuel companies, trade associations, or front groups. That will keep you clear of negative associations. And if you sign the pledge not to hire “agencies that do dirty work,” you’ll show agencies you care about how they make their money.

Update your service provider procurement policy. Make impact service providers the preferred choice in your procurement policy — if people in your organization have to look for them, they’re more likely to find them. Specify desired standards in line with your goals, such as promoting diversity, equity and inclusion; reducing climate emissions in your value chain; and supporting industry leaders.

Like all sustainability initiatives, seeding your supply chain with impact service providers requires getting off autopilot. That can feel like a heavy lift. The load gets much lighter, though, as you fill out your roster and start reaping the rewards.

Originally published at https://thinkshiftcom.com on August 8, 2022.

Impact brands need impact service providers—here’s why was originally published in Thinkshifter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When we committed Thinkshift Communications to working only with sustainable businesses, cleantech companies and social enterprises, some people (our attorney, for one), thought we were nuts.

A decade ago, companies in our potential client universe were definitely not on the unicorn track. B Corps and prioritizing anything above profit were mysterious concepts. Impact investing was a nascent field. But we had a mission — driving adoption of creative solutions to social and environmental problems — and the obstinacy of true believers.

Our doubters weren’t entirely wrong. Building any business is challenging, and our determination to work only with mission-aligned clients created an extra degree of difficulty. But it allowed us to attract enterprises that are addressing urgent problems and share our belief that social and economic justice, accountability and sustainable resource use should be business as usual. (Many of them come to us after working with PR firms that didn’t get their goals and market.)

Over the past 10 years we’ve tried all kinds of PR strategies for impact clients, distilled what works and what doesn’t, and built a suite of proven approaches. From those lessons I’ve drawn the following four maxims.

1. Thought leadership is essential: make the case for overturning the status quo

Enterprises working on solutions to systemic problems typically are demonstrating new models or complex technologies, and new approaches need explanation. Sometimes key decision makers need to be convinced that the thing being fixed is a bug, not a feature. Potential customers, partners and influencers need to know what problem new approaches are solving, why those approaches work, who will benefit and what it will take to deliver meaningful impact.

For all these reasons, thought leadership is an essential strategy for mission-first enterprises.

It works because it’s rooted in original expert thinking that aims to advance entire fields by challenging outmoded dogma, inspiring action, sparking new ideas and spurring others forward. When done right, thought leadership is a powerful tool for advancing truly visionary ideas. It keeps enterprises that don’t generate frequent headlines in the conversation. It positions authors and speakers as expert sources. And it contributes to the credibility needed to generate reported stories.

We’ve put thought leadership to work helping the impact investment platform CNote persuade corporate finance teams to step outside standard practice and deposit some of their massive cash holdings in community financial institutions. We employ it to spread Multiplier’s models and ideas for increasing the social sector’s strengths and effectiveness. We used it to position an Australian maker of fast electric vehicle chargers as an innovator in the U.S., despite three big challenges: near-zero prior U.S. media exposure or market visibility, a white-labeled product, and the fact that journalists didn’t see the EV equivalent of a gas pump as exciting.

2. Novelty is not enough: big numbers and big partners drive coverage

We’re convinced our clients can make a meaningful dent in tough problems. So when we started our impact focus, we imagined we’d barely break a sweat getting coverage for new technologies, business models and approaches that clearly beat the status quo. We soon realized we were in for a real workout.

Novelty wears off quickly: genuine innovation and measurable impact are the price of entry, not a ticket to the main stage. Journalists, especially those at top-tier outlets, won’t get excited until they see big money, big customers and big impact numbers. This is particularly true in the finance media, which is skeptical of challenges to received wisdom and tends to yawn at numbers below a billion.

When there’s not a lot of money involved, high-profile customers or partners can earn impact enterprises a look — if they’re willing to participate in case studies or talk to reporters. These companies often reflexively say no to partner publicity, though, and it’s challenging to navigate their bureaucracy. (One cleantech client worked fruitlessly for more than a year to get a Fortune 50 customer to consent to even being named.) We counsel clients to improve their odds by bringing up PR as soon as the deal is done and asking a high-level leader to get the corporate communications team onboard.

A potentially huge customer base can earn attention as well, but the appeal needs to be obvious and relevant to a broad audience.

3. Your ecosystem is a launch pad: big fish in small ponds get noticed

Leaders often fixate on scoring coverage in top-tier national outlets. It’s worth a shot, but it’s risky as a primary PR play: the bigness factors above dictate opportunities, the timing has to be exactly right (which requires both attentiveness and luck), and the competition is fierce (everyone else is also pitching the Wall Street Journal, et al; journalists at premier outlets often get 100 or more pitches a day).

A better core strategy for mission-first enterprises is to work on becoming recognized, credible experts in their field and impact area. Success brings enormous business value: it puts your enterprise directly in front of potential buyers, partners, employees and other supporters on a regular basis. And it’s achievable if you have the goods.

We did it for Optimum Energy with a trade-focused program that took the energy efficiency tech company from no media presence to a big share of voice in conversations about the future of building energy use, smart buildings, zero net energy and other topics relevant to its market segments and the broader sustainability sector. (Our trade PR whisperer reveals some of her secrets here.)

Engaging partners with shared goals in PR initiatives is another powerful ecosystem strategy that mission-first enterprises are particularly well positioned to execute: the opportunity to amplify social and environmental impact is a draw for all kinds of allied organizations.

Our first year with Fish 2.0 illustrates the potential of working with partners. The sustainable seafood business network and competition wanted to significantly boost participation and awareness among entrepreneurs and investors. We designed a multipronged strategy, and involving business and NGO partners in PR played a significant role in its success: competition participation more than doubled compared with Fish 2.0’s launch year, and we achieved a 300% increase in media coverage.

4. Relatability opens doors: reduce complexity and put a face on it

If you’re seeking solutions to systemic problems, you have to get comfortable with complexity. But if you want media coverage for your solutions, you have to get comfortable with simplicity.

This can be hard to accept. Some people insist that conveying every nuance of their approach is crucial. We understand: it’s almost impossible to become an expert without falling prey to the curse of knowledge. Truly, though, the surest way to get people excited about a new way of doing things is to make it immediately graspable.

That’s why the best initial communications investment for any impact enterprise is a well-developed messaging platform that meets the cocktail party test: the language is simple and resonant enough that a stranger with a drink in their hand would get it immediately and stick around to learn more. That messaging then forms the foundation for the stories and messages required to make every pitch and piece of thought leadership compelling.

Even the most brilliantly crystallized messaging gets you only partway there, though. To engage people emotionally, you need to put a face on whatever you’re doing. That starts with leaders who have a personal connection to the work, can speak with passion and depth about it, and are able to illuminate abstract ideas by providing concrete, clear examples (media training can help here). But nothing illustrates impact better than the people experiencing it. Impact stories — like the ones we’ve created for LavaMaeX and RSF Social Finance — enable team members and media to show solutions alive in the world.

Ultimately, there’s nothing easy about changing systems and the way people behave or creating the imaginative space that allows new ideas to flourish. Every personal, political, social and economic barrier is threaded through with status quo bias, and that’s a high hurdle to leap — the devil we know is an irritating but still comfortable companion. The fundamental lesson from our past 10 years of immersion in impact PR is this: targeting status quo bias with a sustained campaign from multiple angles is the key to success for change-making enterprises.

Lessons from 10 years of impact PR was originally published in Thinkshifter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.