Building Relationships for the Greater Good

If you follow us closely, then you’ve probably already heard about the All Good Community, but we wanted to take a sec to give you ALL the details behind this awesome, rad, badass (Are we allowed to say that?!), super important part of our work as All Good Studio.

In case ya need a refresher, the All Good Community is something we’ve recently developed in order to really live out the “support” part of our mission. It’s a community where nonprofit leaders can be known, cared for, encouraged, resourced, and challenged to be their best, and it’s been a dream of ours since we started All Good Studio. Actually, it’s part of the reason we started it in the first place!

When we said we wanted to help more people than ever before, we meant it, but we don’t just mean people directly served by our nonprofit clients. We also mean the nonprofit clients themselves—the leaders of these organizations who largely lack the support they need to make the difference they’re capable of making and often, to continue doing this work at all. Even though they’ve dedicated their lives to supporting others, these leaders rarely receive support themselves. They need people, people who know what they are going through and can provide the empathy, insight, resources, and encouragement to help them keep doing good (better than ever) and FEEL good doing it. And what better way to find that kind of support than in community?

We know what you’re thinking: Why do this when your specialty is communications? And the answer is: None of what we do makes sense without this. Think about it. What good do communications and creative services really do if the people receiving them are uninspired and unhealthy? Their nonprofits will fail anyways, so it wouldn’t be a good use of our time.

Plus, it’s personal. We’ve been in the nonprofit world for years, and while the work is worthwhile, it can also be incredibly lonely—and anything but easy. Leading a nonprofit isn’t a job most people can relate to; it doesn’t end when you clock out at 5 pm, and it doesn’t bring home a steady paycheck or necessarily one at all. Family and friends may believe in your mission or even volunteer to help, but they aren’t working for it every day, and they probably don’t carry the same weight of responsibility as you. And since the amount of work you do is directly tied to the amount of people you help, it’s easy to get stuck in a cycle of working 24/7—of staying up late thinking about all the ways you could help even more.

We get it. We’ve been there, and so have most of the nonprofit leaders we know.

The All Good Community is our way of offering an alternative. By connecting small nonprofits to each other, this community will help build the relationships nonprofit leaders never knew they needed. Once a month, they’ll come together at meetings facilitated by our Community Developer, where they’ll get to know each other and be prompted through conversation and guided workshops to delve deeper into their needs and dreams both as mission-minded leaders and real people with real-life limitations and struggles. They’ll swap resources, share information, and even help us, All Good Studio, identify and develop some of the materials most needed by nonprofits their size.

Our goal in doing this is not to launch a networking group but to create an environment where friendships can form and grow organically—so that when leaders need help, they know where to find it. So that they don’t fall into burn out, depression, or worse, give up, because they’re trying to do good alone.

But that’s just one part of our vision! We also want the Community to be a place where nonprofits can communicate the needs of the people they serve and collaborate to meet them. That way, instead of addressing one area of need individually (i.e. food), they can address multiple collectively (i.e. food, shelter, education). They’ll quite literally be able to work for the greater good together. How awesome is that?!

So, like we said, the All Good Community is an extension of our mission as a nonprofit, but it’s mainly an extension of us as human beings. It’s another way we are working for the good of those doing good—by creating the community we’ve never had and inviting them to be a part of it.

“The world doesn’t need more nonprofits. It needs BETTER nonprofits.” And we hope that with the All Good Community, we can help make that happen.