Designing Retreats That Strengthen Mission and Momentum

To stay bold, you have to pause long enough to hear yourself think.

Recently, the Black Sheep team carved out time for an in-person 'Activate the Light' retreat in beautiful Austin, Texas. We enjoyed five days of togetherness, good food, team member celebration, music, long walks and big-picture talks about where our agency is headed. 

As an agency, we gather in-person at least a couple of times a year as we believe that stepping out of the daily grind is the only way to see the work, the world and one another with the clarity our mission requires. MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab found that brief bursts of real-world, high-energy interaction measurably boost trust, creativity and cohesion in ways digital tools can’t fully replicate.

Stepping away together from the daily churn isn’t indulgent. It’s the infrastructure that keeps mission-driven work strong.

Why does it feel so hard to press pause?

Like so many in the nonprofit and social impact space, we feel the pressure of tight budgets and a spinning world with non-stop needs. Stepping away for entire days can feel counterintuitive when the work is urgent and heavy. The truth is, we wrestled with the same questions our clients ask us: Can we afford the time? Will we fall behind? Is this the right moment?

That tension matters. It signals our commitment to showing up well for the people who trust us with their missions. It also reveals a deeper truth we see across the sector: the teams doing the heaviest work often give themselves the least space to think, imagine or recover. Pressing pause isn’t stepping away from the mission. It’s how we protect the imagination, clarity and courage required to keep doing it.

Designing retreat space for better thinking

Every retreat we plan (for ourselves and our clients) is built from a series of small decisions that add up to big impact. For us, that meant choosing Austin (drive-friendly for our Houston contingent and easily accessible to all), opting for a walkable neighborhood instead of a remote rental, finding local spots where we could eat well without overspending, and carving out time for activities that felt grounding rather than performative. None of it was extravagant, but all of it was on-brand for our team and highly intentional.

Working within a tight budget made us clearer about what actually matters: sunlight, a mix of private and comfortable shared space, good coffee, long walks in nature, unhurried meals, a jazz show that sparked joy and the freedom to talk about the future without a clock running. All integral parts of our design.

We also see this with client events. The venue, the pacing, the rituals, the moments of rest, the neighborhood you sit inside — they shape the emotional temperature of the room. They influence how honest people feel they can be and how far their imaginations can stretch. 

When teams make thoughtful decisions at this level, the retreat becomes more than a meeting. It becomes a catalyst for connection and what comes next in our business.

Humanity is the heart of our IRL time together

Some of our most grounding retreat moments came from the intentional ways we centered each other. We closed one evening with an anniversary dinner to celebrate Account Director Shauna’s belated one year anniversary—a highly anticipated chance to lift up her time with us, share stories about her impact and celebrate the energy she brings to our work.

On another day, we took a hike where we paused to honor Shanita, a greatly missed team member who left a lasting impression on our team. Tears were shed, stories were shared, hugs were given. These moments serve as reminders of why we choose to work together in the first place. Rituals like these matter more than we might realize. Research on psychological safety and belonging shows that recognition builds trust faster than any strategic framework. 

When you honor one person authentically, you often end up honoring the whole — because people see themselves reflected in the care.

Our retreat activities carried the same intention. We mixed structured strategy sessions with quiet reflection, play, long walks and wide-open conversations that simply don’t happen on Zoom. We also protected unstructured time that made space for honesty and imagination. Teams need both: a strong container and the looseness to think beyond it.

One of our favorite rituals closed our time together — writing personal notes to one another. Simple, handwritten, human. These cards have become tiny touchstones in our culture. They remind us that the work is powered not just by talent or process, but by people who see and support one another.

This is the part of retreat design we love most, both for ourselves and for the organizations we support: creating conditions where humanity fuels the strategy, not the other way around.

The pause that moves the work forward - are you in?

This retreat reminded us that connection isn’t a luxury, it’s a strategy. When teams step out of the churn — even briefly — they return with sharper focus and a fuller sense of what they’re building together. That’s true for us, and it’s true for the organizations we serve.

We’ve spent years helping mission-driven teams design retreats, offsites and moments of reset that unlock clarity, courage and big-picture thinking. If your team is craving space to reconnect or move from reaction to intention, we’d be honored to help create the conditions for that shift. Reach out!