A reflection on 16 years of learning which projects are worth our days — and the mission-driven organizations we're building alongside right now.

The Work That Doesn't Feel Like Work | Black Sheep Agency

What it takes to build a story strong enough to carry a mission forward.

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So much needs fixing. Where do we even start?

Finding Focus in a Noisy World: Our Social Impact Areas

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H.R. 9495 is a dangerous bill that threatens nonprofit organizations and core democratic freedoms. Learn how this bill could silence civil society and what actions you can take to help stop it.

Defend Nonprofits, Defend Democracy: Take Action Against H.R. 9495

Why This Dangerous Bill Threatens Free Speech and Civil Society—and How You Can Help Stop It

The 5 Ds model provides a structured, pragmatic approach for those who wish to help in instances of harassment.

Bystander Intervention: The 5 Ds as Tools for Social Justice

Fostering allyship and community in the midst of chaos

Knowing Thy Neighbor

What is food insecurity and what can we do about it?

The most foundational language for guiding your impact

Your Vision and Mission statements deserve more attention

Sometimes, social media feels like a horror show. Can we defeat the monster and save the day?

Escaping our Social Media Spirals

Picking up the pieces and finding our voice.

We are all we've got.

Sometimes sharing our deepest thoughts is enough to give someone else the courage to move ahead.

Robert Bullard 2020 Champion of the Earth - Lifetime Achievement

How to support environmental justice for Black neighborhoods.

The Segregation of Pollution

Black motherhood is targeted by racist systems. Midwives can make all the difference.

Honoring The Black Midwife

Soul Fire Farm: Uprooting racism in the U.S. food system with agriculture | More in Common

Haus of Hoodoo: Jessyka Winston Wants To Teach The Truth About Vodou

WGTA PODCAST- EP. 9 PART 2: OUR LITTLE RED ONE SHOP

The Healing Power of Plant Based Living with Afya Ibomu | Koya Webb

How Black herbalism became a hashtag, and the true history behind it.

The Cultural Theft of Medicine

How Black herbalism became a hashtag and the true history behind it.

Balancing mourning with collective ritual and celebration

Acknowledging the violent history behind the Thanksgiving celebration we've come to know and expect is critical, and in an age where preserving tiem for family and friends is increasingly important, it might be time to incorporate new traditions to your Thanksgiving repertoire. Here are a few things you can explore this year to embrace the preservation and memory of the indigenous people affected by imperialism in the history of the United States.

Now is a great time to incorporate new traditions to your Thanksgiving celebration.

What the heck does it mean to be a ‘B Corp’?

People over profits: the B Corp Series

Or, “What the heck does it mean to be a ‘B Corp’?”

Care loudly and often, especially when others don’t want you to. Dissecting the extremes of American activists, and why you don't need to fit an exaggerated role to make a difference.

Activism is for Everyone

Care loudly and often, especially when others don’t want you to.

Help Out With Hurricane Ida Recovery Efforts

We are actively collecting resources for rebuilding in the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Ida.

Help Out in Hurricane Ida Recovery Efforts

Resources for rebuilding in the Gulf Coast

Here’s to Book Lovers and their Libraries

Libraries have long given us a feeling of wonder and excitement, and they're so important to us still today. Join us in celebrating the magic that libraries provide our young, adult and aging minds. Protect your public libraries!

Join our celebration of books and the public spaces that support them 

Hear from the Emancipation Park Conservancy, in coversation with The Black Sheep Agency, about the historical significance of Juneteenth and how this celebration continues into present day.

A Juneteenth Story and Celebration

How Emancipation Park Conservancy is making its mark on the community

Allyship comes with an ongoing commitment to addressing communities authentically.

Here's to All Women

Women’s History Month might be coming to a close, but we’ll be celebrating women all year long.

Lifting as we climb: Shining a light on a woman who helped shaped the Houston we all love

Christia Adair's lifelong commitment to expanding equity and access for her community is an inspiration. Adair championed women's rights and equality for African Americans.

Christia Adair had an immeasurable impact on Houston.

An invitation in these strange times.

There are times when you just have to get something—anything—down on paper to figure it out. When you need to have a moment to just take all of the chaos and think through it as clearly as possible, line by line.

There’s a particular kind of project that doesn’t feel like a project.

It feels like something else entirely. Over Black Sheep’s 16 years, we’ve learned to recognize these engagements — the ones where the stakes are real, where the mission is load-bearing, where getting the story right genuinely changes what’s possible for the people an organization serves. We’ve also learned that these are the projects we want to fill our days with.

Right now, our roster is full of them. I want to talk about that — not as a highlight reel, but as a reflection of what we believe this work is for. And if you’re leading one of these organizations right now and it feels heavy or uncertain or like your story isn’t keeping pace with your mission, this is for you too.


Some projects aren’t a single scope — they’re a relationship, built over time, through the kind of trust that only comes from doing hard things together.

Houston Arts Alliance is in one of the most pivotal moments in its history. A new CEO — the first woman and person of color to lead the organization — has stepped into a role that carries both enormous expectation and extraordinary possibility. We are building alongside them from the ground up: immediate messaging and leadership transition tools, a mission and vision refresh, a public education campaign, a community engagement process and a full brand foundation. Long, layered, listening-first work. Some of our favorite kind.

Houston Parks Board is marking its 50th anniversary at the start of an exciting new chapter — bold new leadership, a visionary strategic plan and a future that has been a century in the making. We’re evolving their brand to match the scale of that moment. Being trusted when the foundation is strong and the future is wide open is its own kind of honor.

Good Reason Houston is an organization we know well — we built their original brand in 2018, and they’ve called on us at several points of strategic inflection since. This is one of those moments. The world these leaders are navigating looks almost nothing like it did seven years ago, and our work together right now is about finding language that tells their story with clarity and confidence for where things are today.

Civic Builders designs, finances and builds educational facilities in underserved communities across the country. We completed a full messaging and positioning strategy with them, and we’re now deep into their visual identity system — in genuine collaboration with their extraordinary internal team. This partnership is the kind we aspire to: the work belongs to all of us.

The Greater Houston Partnership is building an AI-powered tool to connect educators, employers and community partners in ways that expand workforce opportunity. We’re building the brand that makes it accessible and credible from day one.

Fervo Energy is redefining what clean energy looks like. We are their strategic design partner — giving visual and creative form to the complexity of what they’re building, because a breakthrough technology deserves a story told with equal craft.

The University of Nevada, Reno trusted us to direct a digital campaign for their Black Youth Mental Health Initiative — designed to reach young people at the right moment, in the right channels and keep them connected to support that can change the trajectory of their lives. This follows our branding and strategy work for their CDC-sponsored Safer Nights opioid overdose prevention campaign last year.

The Center for Civic and Tech Life is now publishing a magazine for local election officials — the people who make democracy function at the ground level. We named and developed the publication’s visual identity, because this community deserves tools that reflect the seriousness of their work.

In collaboration with January Advisors, we’re working with the League of Women Voters Houston on a set of core values and a strategic plan built for what comes next. The League has been doing this work longer than most organizations have existed. Helping them articulate where they’re headed is not something we take lightly.

Much of this work is happening in Houston — the city where Black Sheep was founded, where many of us live and where we feel the stakes of these institutions personally. When you’re a Houstonian working on Houston, it stops being a client list and starts being something else.

It takes something to make this call. The leaders we work with aren’t doing it because things are easy — they’re doing it because they’ve decided that a story that can’t carry the mission is a liability they can’t afford. That takes clarity about what’s actually at stake. It takes a willingness to look honestly at the gap between where you are and how you’re being perceived. And it takes the kind of courage that doesn’t always get named as courage — the quiet decision to invest in something foundational when there are a hundred urgent things competing for the same resources.

But the thread running through all of it — local and national — is the same: find the organizations doing the most necessary work, and make sure their story is strong enough to carry their mission forward.

If your organization is in a moment that demands more clarity, more confidence or a story that finally matches where you’re headed — we’d love to be in that room with you.

A reflection on the partnerships filling our roster right now — and what it takes for mission-driven organizations to build a story strong enough to carry their work forward.

The Black Sheep blog is turning up the volume on community engagement, social media strategy, Houston happenings and what it means to lead a purpose-driven life.

The Black Sheep Agency | Social impact and nonprofit blog

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The Work That Doesn’t Feel Like Work