Seven years ago we published It’s time to be good…, Freerange Future’s pledge to use our expertise to ‘help those doing good become great’. It quickly led to two significant questions – how do we decide what’s good, and how can we be (more) good ourselves?

The answer to the first question has been a specific set of criteria with some tweaks over the years, and occasionally as loose a definition as ‘nice people doing things for the right reasons’. The answer to the second question has been ‘B Corp’ and ’by helping those doing good’, which is kind of circular.

But it got us this far. And it’s something to be proud of. We’ve helped a lot of people doing good and many of them have become great(er). But also it feels a bit out of date. Simplistic. Self righteous.

So we recently turned some of our tools on ourselves, to check if our brand still aligns with our values and our values still align with our work; whether we’re still on the right track, seven years later. It was a valuable process, distilling clarity and focus.

From today, we’re embracing wholeheartedness.

It’s a beautiful word that’s rich with meaning. To us, wholeheartedness is a way of being, a value that transcends and unites all of our values. A single word to inform everything we do.

To be wholehearted doesn’t mean to be the best, although we can aspire to that. To be wholehearted means to try your best, to emotionally invest in your work and your community, to be sincere in all your interactions.

To work wholeheartedly is to go deep, to infuse your work with meaning and purpose and reason. To be vulnerable.

Wholehearted conversations are supportive and encouraging, truthful and frank. They’re the hard conversations as well as the happy ones.

Wholeheartedness is about listening to your heart, leading with your heart, doing what you know is right and finding other wholehearted people to walk alongside.

Wholehearted people do what they do for the right reasons – to create impact, strengthen communities, make positive change, transform lives, tread more lightly & do things better.

Wholeheartedness is not just a way of being. It’s a journey. Turns out we’ve been heading that way for a while, and it’s becoming clearer where we’re going.

If we’ve worked together in the past or we’re working together now – we’re still here for you, with renewed clarity and determination. If you’re working wholeheartedly and need good people to help you along the way, consider reaching out. No pressure, all heart.

We see you ❤️

Sector Fundraising and Marketing in a Digital World

Notes from a talk at the 2020 SACOSS Conference by Nick Crowther.

The question posed for this session is ‘what will social sector fundraising and marketing look like in ten years time?’. Not one to pass up an opportunity to speak my mind, I am going to talk about fundraising and marketing but also about corona virus.

I run a creative agency here in Adelaide called Freerange Future. We work a lot with not for profits, social enterprise and the arts.

Freerange is a certified B Corporation. It’s an ethical standard for business. I’m pretty proud that we’re a B and like to start business introductions by dropping this little fact into the conversation. In fact, one important factor for us in becoming a B Corp three years ago was a desire to prove to our non-profit clients that we were one of the good guys.

It might impress you or it might not but that’s not my reason for mentioning it this afternoon. I wanted to share the aspirational B Corp tagline and riff off it – you might nod your head if you’re into social enterprise, or you might scoff at it but it is meant with all sincerity. “Business… as a force for good”.

Something I talk about with other B Corps when I meet them is “marketing as a force for good”. B Corps typically are very good businesses – well run and ethically run. Often they have a social purpose and they’re progressive. They have money to invest into marketing / campaigning and many align with and are prominent in campaigns like marriage equality, change the date, save the bight, etc. I talk to them about how their marketing can serve two purposes – brand building and progressing a cause.

I think it needs to be recognised that business – not Facebook scale business but – real businesses run and staffed by real humans, can be agents of change and allies of the social sector.

There’s a bigger point I want to make about this – marketing and leadership, but hold that thought.

In the charity sector, the mindset I see is one of marketing as a function of fundraising. Campaigning to a lesser extent, mostly fundraising. And like all of the world, it’s neolibrified.

Future trends in fundraising – big data, behavioural economics, machine learning, multivariate testing – influencing people with tech. How is it different to what bad actors on Facebook are doing, or the Chinese government? Answer: cloud AI voodoo for good.
Of course the sector needs money. Of course you’re made to work ever harder for ever less money by government and so adopting practices and tools that improve your ability to get money from the community are going to be vital.

When you write that quarterly fundraising letter, when you set up that crowdfunding campaign or peer to peer campaign, from the inside it looks great. You’ve followed all the best practice and hopefully the results are an incremental and measurable improvement in donations.

But from the other side, a generous citizen will receive a dozen such letters when it’s tax time or spring campaign season, that all read the same. The same phrases bolded, the same things underlined. The same personal and direct message from the CEO with heart rending story. The same dollar ask increased $4 from the last time we gave.

I’m not criticising you for your campaign, your heartfelt letter. Of course they’re sincere and the money is needed and put to good use. And my agency is involved in creating these campaigns too. People like us fundraise like this. The point I want to make is that in the next decade, we need to think about marketing as a function of leadership, not of fundraising.

Marketing as a force for good.

Yanis Varoufakis mentioned Star Trek replicators in his keynote this morning. I have been in the past a tech geek and an avid reader of science fiction. I’m not either of those things so much these days but I do think a lot about the future. I used to imagine living the future and it would be the cool stuff – visiting other worlds, flying cars, teleportation, everyone free and equal, everyone dressed in lycra. I think we can say we’re living in the future now and it’s definitely something out of an SF novel but something darker – dystopian disaster – climate crisis, mass surveillance, tech overlords and now a global pandemic.

Be careful what you wish for bookish little boy.

When I think about the next decade I truly believe everything is up for grabs. A concept explored in science fiction is the singularity. Essentially there is a point in the future – after a general AI is created or people merge with machines or quantum computers become practical, that we can no longer predict the future as a logical progression from where we are today – that all bets are off and anything could happen. Could be good, could be bad, but definitely big change.

Well I suggest to you that COVID-19, the coronavirus pandemic, is a singularity. I’m not saying it’s a zombie apocalypse or total collapse of civilisation but in 2020 the systems of the world will be exposed as the house of cards, the smoke and mirrors that they really are: global trade that offshores everything, just in time supply chains, the stock market, extreme leverage and financialisation, privatised health systems, abundance, the primacy of the individual.

The terrible fires we had this summer were a wake up call for this country to face up to climate change. This virus is going to make us wake up to the fragile-by-design global systems that only just hold everything together.

Our government tried to pivot the bushfire conversation away from combatting climate change to climate adaptation and resilience. Adaptation and resilience in social systems is going to be a much more difficult conversation for them to lead with any credibility but this sector – social services – knows all about this.

When things start to settle down, things are going to change. Now is the time to think big. When people in the middle suffer, change happens, for better or worse. The world will be ready to question things. To see that the emperor has no clothes. We need strong voices with viable and rational alternatives. Our leaders need to be vocal, interpreting what all this means for our communities, ready to step up when old voices lack credibility and painting a picture of a different, equitable future. Like Yanis said, clear practical proposals.
But there is going to be a lot of noise, a lot of fear mongering, a lot of fake news and disinfo. To be heard amongst all this and to reach out broadly, we need to position marketing as a function of nonprofit leadership and embrace marketing as a force for good.

Five years ago I thought values were mostly bullshit. Just a thing politicians and pointy haired bosses use to justify their actions and tell us how to act. The nation’s values. The company’s values. Characteristics that don’t ring true or that our leaders don’t seem to follow themselves.

Around that time we worked with a client – a household name – who had an important mission and was a leading voice in their field. The more we got to know this client though, the more out of alignment we seemed to be. It’s not that they were insincere or fake, their priorities just didn’t seem right. Someone pointed out that they had different values to us.

After that experience we decided to try and define the values of our own organisation, to help us find the right kind of clients to work with. That was a powerful exercise and it soon became clear that we were most fulfilled when using our skills and experience to help good people who were doing good things.

I went from values denier to values disciple and in the last half a decade values have been central to the work we do at Freerange Future. We’ve worked with numerous organisations to help them define, shift, strengthen, share, live and love their values.

We’ve come to understand how values influence and impact self, family, community, workplace, culture and society. Most importantly we’ve learned how to use values for positive change.

Over the next 12 months I’ll be writing a regular series of blog posts here all about values. Together we’ll explore what values are and how they work. We’ll learn how to become happier and more fulfilled people. We’ll look at world history, contemporary culture and future possibilities through the lens of values. We’ll develop a values-centric theory of change for humanity to thrive in the 21st century.

Next month I’ll tell you a story of values 20 years in the making. A sad tale with a happy ending. And then we’ll get into the theory.

Until then.

These days everyone I talk to wants to know more about B Corps. Some people want to know how to become a B Corp and some are curious about the benefits we get from being a B Corp. Another question that comes up quite often is wanting to understand the difference between B Corp certification and CSR.

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Last week I performed in front of 25 of my friends – a charity piano recital to raise money for the Australian Children’s Music Foundation. The night was a tremendous success – together we raised $1,300 to support music education for underprivileged kids.

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One reason we’ve moved to this spacious new studio is so that we can engage with and support our community in fun and valuable new ways. With that intention, today we’re launching Freerange Events.

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