Amoebaworks · Communications for nonprofit campaigns
Your counsel gets the campaign right. I work on whether anyone outside the organization understands it, and on the system that has to keep running afterward.
The study gets done. The goal gets set. The case gets written. Then the organization has to tell the same story to donors, boards, staff and press for the next three years.
Capital projects bring in specialists. Communications usually lands on the team already there.
That is the seat I take. Not fundraising strategy. The story it runs on, and the system that keeps it moving.
The quiet phase is where the case gets shaped and tested. The public phase is where it has to survive the website, the inbox, the boardroom and the press. A case that works in a meeting does not always work in the wild.
of nonprofit CEOs reported a deficit in FY2025.
say foundation grants are harder to secure.
name staffing as their biggest challenge.
Dollars are up. Donor counts are down. That puts more pressure on the case, and on the team carrying it.
Basis: Center for Effective Philanthropy, State of Nonprofits 2026, 380 nonprofit CEOs. Fundraising Effectiveness Project, Q1 2026, approximately 15,700 organizations.
People do not understand why you matter.
The right people have not heard of you, or know you for the wrong thing.
They arrive, read, and do nothing.
There is no reliable way to follow up, report back or stay visible.
Most organizations fix the wrong one first. The Read finds the open problem.
What does a stranger understand? What do they miss? What do they think you are?
Identity, case materials, site, launch and campaign tools.
So staff, board and volunteers can tell it without rewriting it.
Publishing, CRM, automation and reporting that do not depend on memory.
None of these is a capital campaign. If that is what you need, it is your counsel, and they will be better at it than I would be. What I have done is the communications work that sits alongside it.
Campaign work, 2018. The rally, the classroom and the recruitment artwork ran as one argument.
A teacher recruitment campaign built around the fight the organization was already in.
Instead of hiding the tension, Kids Over Politics used it to attract the right candidates and filter out the wrong ones.
Applications rose 22%. Retention rose 15%.
Basis: client-reported campaign results.
Read the caseSeen as a home repair charity. Reframed as a housing security platform.
A messaging playbook so the framing held after the presentation, and an ADU program connecting homeowner income, housing supply and workforce development in one build.
That changed the comparison set. Housing funders saw permanence. Economic development partners saw income. Financial institutions saw asset creation.
Basis: qualitative. No revenue figure is claimed for this engagement.
Read the case
thINCubator, Utica NY, and the Uptown Theatre for Creative Arts. Both courtesy of the organizations, used with permission.
Four organizations needed brand strategy and could not afford it alone. So we taught the method as a cohort, with thINCubator, Real Useful Company and the Uptown Theatre for Creative Arts. Six weeks. Twenty-five participants. Four organizations.
The lesson was simple. People learn the case faster when they have to say it out loud.
Basis: program design and enrollment, 2019. No verified post-program performance results were recovered, so none are claimed.
Read the caseOne week. Two sessions. One written recommendation. The fee is credited against anything that follows.
$1K
The public face of the campaign and the system under it, scoped from what the Read finds.
A day with the board or staff on making the case clearly and consistently.
No percentage of contributions. No finder's fees. AFP's Code of Ethical Standards prohibits both, in either direction.
Amoebaworks
Brand and marketing strategist, twenty years in agencies and brand teams. Porsche, The New York Times, Toyota, Amazon, and plenty you have not heard of.
I read the case the way a stranger reads it, build what the campaign needs to be understood, and leave a system a small team can run.
No charge for that, and no obligation after it.
You will know quickly whether there is anything here worth fixing.