Three Years as MissionWired: On Brand, Identity, and Becoming

Three years ago, we took a big leap of faith as an organization and forged a new identity as MissionWired.

It was, in all honesty, a terrifying moment, one in which we feared making a mistake. So much of success is built on indicators of past performance – a name tied to a history of results, wins, and strategies. We knew then, though, that we’d outgrown our identity. Anne Lewis, our founder and CEO, was the first to come to that conclusion. To serve the kinds of nonprofits and causes we believed we could help, we needed an identity that conveyed what we’d become: an organization full of dynamic experts across a wide berth of disciplines, capable of solving any challenge a nonprofit or political campaign faced.

In the years since rebranding, I’m proud to report it was worth it – in innumerable ways – namely because we’ve become even more dynamic and capable, having joined forces with CCAH to bring a full-service direct response offering to market. MissionWired wasn’t about who we’d been but all about who we wanted to become.

That’s not to say every moment’s been easy, but I’d love to see a worthy initiative that is. There are reasons so much great art calls for doing things that are scary, for which vulnerability isn’t a bug but a feature.

MissionWired is still in the process of becoming who we can be. Since we reintroduced ourselves with a new identity, we’ve been privileged to partner with organizations like the American Red Cross, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Greenpeace, the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and The Innocence Project. Organizations we dreamed of working with have become dream partners and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to help leaders in making the world more equitable and inclusive.

With such partnerships have come some incredible opportunities for impact: We’re helping on the front lines in the fight for reproductive justice, making communities more resilient, combating climate change, and getting food, medicine, and education opportunities to women and children throughout the world.

To meet our aspiration to grow better to serve these incredible partnerships, we’re using more channels than ever: communicating in print and across the spectrum of digital channels and experimenting with emerging platforms. This year, The Digital Co-Op, long a top-performing source of digital acquisition, began running on machine learning technology that’s even more powerful than before – making it equipped to solve more growth challenges than ever.

If you do impact-based work, you do it because you support and admire the leaders bringing bold solutions to all corners of the world. We do, too – and we’ve brought everything we’ve got to our efforts to be part of that work. We’ve helped the most influential nonprofits achieve record-breaking fundraising results, tell better, more engaging, inviting stories, and grow bigger audiences. Doing this again and again requires being willing to step out on ledges, try something that’s never been tried before, and take a new pass at evolving something that’s been done 1,000 times.

It’s that spirit that’s brought The Digital Co-Op and its new list growth offering for text, MissionSMS. It’s a melding of cutting-edge innovation and decades of expertise that earned us recognition as “Direct Mail Firm of the Year.” There are more such innovations in the pipeline, and we can’t wait to share them with you once they’re ready.

We’re going to keep doing things that push us, that scare us, because that’s what nonprofits and their urgent causes deserve and, in our estimation, what they need. MissionWired intends to be that kind of partner for the long haul: one that listens, grows, pushes respectfully, and works every day to honor the vital role nonprofit and progressive causes play in helping to realize grand ambitions that change the world by uplifting the people and communities they’re committed to serving. Because their ambitions are ours, too.