Focus Area
Sustainable Communities
We support communities by addressing affordable housing, environmental protection, and workplace wellness to enhance the places where we live, learn, work, and play.
WHY IT MATTERS TO US
Strong, healthy communities benefit us all, and the challenges that any community faces are almost always interrelated.
From affordable housing to environmental protection and workplace wellness, we’re committed to advancing the issues that shape and improve the places where we live, learn, work, and play.
WHAT WE BRING
Strategic planning, brand, and campaign development for funders and community organizers expanding access to housing, opportunity, and a healthy environment, often with equity, access, and inclusion at the center.
For a funder, developer, or community organization seeking to strengthen the places where people live, learn, work, and play, we can help:
Facilitate strategic planning that sets bold, long-term goals with equity and community commitments at the center of the strategy
Lead community-informed messaging, naming, and rebrands that honor a community's future as much as its past
Develop campaigns and fundraising materials that turn a key idea into momentum and a longer-term investment
Translate dense plans or research into clear graphics, pitch decks, and public-facing stories
Build coalitions and partnerships across interrelated issues: housing, environment, workforce, and well-being
Train staff and community leaders to personalize and carry key messages forward
Featured Case Study
Low Income Investment Fund
In 2020, when LIIF was preparing to launch a new strategic plan, they turned to Mission Partners to help them articulate a bold 10-year goal that they could share with the public, including addressing their desire to develop key messages that centered their deep and authentic commitment to equity across affordable housing and early care and education. We first developed a public-facing version of their strategy, supported by a coordinated digital rollout. We trained staff to personalize the new messages and helped translate a complex plan into clear, compelling graphics and refreshed materials. Through our efforts, LIIF met its goals for web traffic, social engagement, and email performance, and its strategic plan, Mobilizing Capital to Build Communities of Opportunity, Equity and Well Being, was downloaded more than 50 times during launch week and leveraged during new partner meetings.
our work in action
Additional Case Studies
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When this DC-area nonprofit wanted to introduce a new way to talk about affordable housing, we helped them coin the term "justice housing" and supported them in launching their most successful fundraising campaign ever.
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We helped this environmental nonprofit seize a pivotal moment through a more inclusive strategic plan that would advance a 3,000-mile trail network.
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We helped two long-admired organizations come together through their merger to reveal a new name and brand, and to successfully move their collective impact forward as a result.
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We led a community-informed rebrand designed to ensure that this decades-old nonprofit felt as fresh as its strategic vision for the future.
Related insights and resources from Mission Forward:
Leave It Better Than You Found It. Building a conscious culture in the small moments is a way to steward forward the places and communities we value.
The Best-Kept Secret. Why sunsetting this often-used phrase can help a community nonprofit break away from what’s been holding it back.
The Case for Staying Close with Elyse Cherry, of BlueHub Capital. Forty years of community-development finance, and why purpose stays durable through proximity to what a community needs next.
Leading Beyond Resilience with Tonia Wellons. The Greater Washington Community Foundation's ten-year bet on a fixed point on the horizon when everything else is in motion.