We make the brands and documents that ask for money, so you can change lives.
Fundraising documents always wind up in front of someone who controls a budget.
An investor. A donor. A board. Whoever they are, they have only so much time in a day. With multiple asks, they're not going to read everything. They form an opinion in the first forty seconds, and then decide whether the rest is worth their energy.
That's what we design for.
We're good at the high-stakes, complex creative. The annual report. The pitch deck that has to survive a partner meeting. The case for support a gift officer carries into someone's living room. Long documents where one idea has to stay intact from the cover all the way to the ask. It's harder than it sounds, and is where most of them come apart.
What
we craft
We start with the strategy and get to the slides later, which sounds obvious, but almost never happens. What are you asking for, why does it have to be now, and what's the objection that someone might raise? That last one gets dealt with on the page, so it doesn't have to get dealt with in the room.
We have worked with $5B Venture Capital firms, non-profits with a dream, and everyone in between.
You have to report back – there's no getting around it. How do you engage while communicating complex information? We have 23 years of experience in communications design for regulated, audited markets. Annual reports aren't going anywhere. Digital or in print, they're often fifty-odd pages a board will skim and a donor will judge you on. Most annual reports open with a letter nobody finishes and bury the actual result in a chart on page thirty-one.
We'll tell the story up front and hold it the whole way through. We also build systems so that next year's takes a fraction of the effort, because you're going to be doing this again in twelve months and you know it.
From capital campaigns to legacy giving, the document your development teams hand to someone who could write a very large cheque is so important. It has one job, which is to make saying yes feel like the obvious thing to do.
We've sat on the both sides of the table, so we know what a gift officer actually wants in their hand, versus what gets left in the car. We have worked with international and domestic NGOs and charities to communicate exactly who they are, in ways that open hearts (and chequebooks).
All of the materials can be perfect, but the thing everyone checks before they take you seriously is the website and the brand. Consistency matters – before a pitch, during due diligence, after an elevator pitch or a meeting that went well.
We build brands as beautiful, intuitive, and accessible systems with rules attached, so the next person who adds a page doesn't quietly undo the argument. Six months from now, that matters more than the launch did.
Who we work with.
A lot of our work is with startups and non-profits — the ones with boots on the ground, telling their story and asking for money every quarter. Donor fatigue is real and a GP sees a thousand decks a year. In the midst of all of this noise, we work to keep people excited.
Sometimes we work with large public companies. It gives us perspective.
The work we love to do is with companies and organizations the market underestimates. Women's health, disability advocacy, mental health, food security, elder care. We also work with underestimated founders, small businesses, and charities with huge missions and small budgets.
We can't change industry headwinds or donor giving patterns, but what we can do is make sure your materials aren't handing anyone an easy excuse to say no, and every reason to say yes.
Brands we've worked with
23 years of partnerships, one new name.
Who we're not right for.
We're pragmatic about who we choose to work with. Our best work is done over entire systems and strategies, and we love working with startup founders. Ad hoc work isn't our thing, and social ads, quick banners, one-off logos and production overages just aren't for us. We prefer challenges we can have a direct impact on.
None of that is a judgement — it's just not what we're built for, and you'd be paying us to be mediocre at it. If that's what you need, we'll say so in the first email so you can go find someone who does it well. We might even recommend someone.
Every project starts the same way.
We begin with a strategic eye. We work out what you're for, what the single argument is, and where your current material is losing people.
After that it's either a strategic push across the documents that matter to you, or the whole brand. Our starting prices are published on the site, because you shouldn't have to sit through a call to find out whether you can afford us.
Contact
Tell us what you're trying to say, and who has to believe it.
We answer everything.