Courageous Institutions

By Deroy Peraza, Partner at Hyperakt

The day after Donald Trump was elected to a second term, I wrote about the gravity of the moment. I’ve spent the last two and a half months in pursuit of calm before the storm—focusing on joy with family, friends, and soccer while also processing our new reality.

The storm is here.

By Deroy Peraza, Partner at Hyperakt

“We don’t need a brand; we’d rather stay behind the scenes.”

“The work we fund speaks for itself.”

When we work with foundations, we often hear comments like these. Some of these funders prefer to remain anonymous, investing quietly to achieve their goals and vision.

By Sruthi Sadhujan, Senior Strategy Director at Hyperakt

In a nonprofit sector experiencing rapidly shifting norms and rules, it takes courage to decide to be yourself rather than to become something you are not.

As a brand strategist to nonprofits big and large, I’ve worked with many organizations facing mounting criticism. Leaders are caught in a maelstrom—to do more, to do less, to step up, to step down. To change, change, change. Under intense pressure to change radically and fast, organizations with little to no history of on-the-ground work are building out community engagement teams, wading into field organizing, and liberally using any and all terms that include the word “community.” But often, this new “proximate” posture lacks depth, commitment, and even expertise.

By Deroy Peraza, Partner and Sruthi Sadhujan, Senior Strategy Director at Hyperakt

For over 20 years, we’ve worked side-by-side with the people, organizations, and foundations who are building a more just and joyous society. And in that time, we’ve seen a gap widen between how nonprofit leaders, staff, and supporters often want change to happen—and how it actually does.

By Sruthi Sadhujan, Senior Strategy Director at Hyperakt

Philanthropies are peculiar organizations—massively wealthy, notoriously intransparent, risk-averse, slow-moving, and perhaps most important, tax-exempt. And yet, for decades, going back to the age of Rockefeller and his “Gospel of Wealth,” despite all of these challenging or negative attributes, they have occupied a favored place in our collective hearts and minds as irreproachable engines of social good.

By Sruthi Sadhujan, Senior Strategy Director at Hyperakt

We live in an era in which power is shifting from old players to new ones. From cultural institutions, to philanthropies, and grassroots advocacy movements, this is not just a changing of the guard. It is a fundamental rethinking of how we run organizations, how they bring value to the world, who gets a seat at the table, and whose voice is consulted and valued. It is also a push to question what is good, what is right, and what is necessary in the work of social change.

By Sruthi Sadhujan, Senior Strategy Director at Hyperakt

Today, a brand is no longer just a communications tool, it is a tool for narrative and systems change. While crafting a compelling mission statement and designing a unique logo are still essential, they have become table stakes. A well-executed brand can go beyond the basics to shift your audience’s values and remove obstacles standing in the way of meaningful change.