More Than Marketing: Making an Impact for Portland’s Nonprofit Community
Since 2007, AMA PDX has offered a unique pro-bono “agency” program to support the Portland-metro nonprofit community. Each year, we match groups of AMA PDX volunteers with local nonprofits to execute a 6-month project in support of those community organizations’ biggest marketing and communications needs and goals.
The agency program gives volunteers the opportunity to grow their skill set, give back to the community, and help focus our overarching efforts to serve organizations that specialize in addressing issues of racial justice.
Highlighted below are the three projects we worked on in 2024 to support these efforts:
Rooted School Vancouver
The Rooted School Vancouver (RSV) Project helped a nonprofit charter secondary school that provides STEM education for global majority students to help disrupt the poverty cycle and close the racial wealth gap. Each student graduates “with a college acceptance in one hand and a job offer in the field of tech in the other.”
RSV’s goal is to expand their recruitment reach in global majority students from 50% to 80% by 2028. After a rigorous interview phase, the AMA PDX team created a communications and recruitment strategy that the RSV team can easily scale up and deploy year over year. Also, the volunteer team created a multitude of editable and reusable collateral including a high-value promotional video for web, social, and recruitment efforts.
While it’s too early to report results, the RSV team was extremely happy with the myriad marketing materials that they plan to make good use of for the foreseeable future and beyond.
Special kudos to the local volunteer leaders who helped work on this project:
Dory Athey (account manager), Alexandra Hagel, Jacklyn Thimmavajjula, Angela Benitez, Corey Dailey, and Lisa Mok
The ELSO Project
The ELSO Project – or Experience Live Science Outside – is a Portland-based nonprofit dedicated to “cultivating generations of Black and Brown innovators and problem solvers for community and global impact to teach and frame STEAM and nature-based education through a lens that elevates the stories and lived experiences of Black and Brown communities.”
ELSO’s agency goal was to improve strategic messaging, website enhancements, and process improvements. The volunteer team worked with a brand strategist to enhance their product awareness, optimized social channels and SEO, developed brand guidelines and communication guidelines, and generally improved all internal communications processes. These new strategies are already being implemented with great success.
“This is so comprehensive and thoughtful,” said Dory Athey, who has been an AMA PDX volunteer for three years.
Special kudos to the local volunteer leaders who helped work on this project:
Sarah Thomson (account manager), Matthew Goldfine, Garrett Brown, Natalie Benjes, Nicole Willson, Liz Truong, and Catherine Huang
Outside the Frame
Outside the Frame (OTF) trains houseless and marginalized youth to be directors of their own films and lives by offering a “creative outlet, job skills, an audience, and a sense of dignity and possibility through filmmaking.”
OTF needed digital marketing enhancements, branding, event strategy and promotion, and the development of a ‘pitch-deck’ to market their educational and for-profit production services to potential partners.
"OTF's founder and CEO Nili didn't understand the value of marketing at first,” said account manager Jacob Ashley, “but our team and results have proven it is worth investing in this function. Now they are even hiring for a position."
The agency team developed brand guidelines detailing OTF’s core values, a comprehensive marketing strategy document, and the requested pitch deck designed to highlight OTFs mission, impact, and growth potential to attract donors and partners.
OTF has been thrilled with the results, but even more importantly, as a bonus bit of collateral, the agency team helped this project track how many of these at-risk youth ended up fully employed in the film industry, thanks to this program!
Special kudos to the local volunteer leaders who helped work on this project:
Jacob Ashley (account manager), Lauren Danielsen, Graham Holmes, Kevin Micalizzi, Carolyn Hamaker, Elise Leritz-Higgins, Andrew Senko, and Owen Posey-Scholl
After the presentation, Sandra Yokley, Director of Operations at Rooted School Vancouver, said, "the agency program is and will be such a beautiful part of the legacy of AMA PDX. The impact of this work in this year alone is unmeasured. Everyone involved should be extremely proud."
Below are photos from our in-person event that highlighted and celebrated the impact of the 2024 AMA PDX Agency program:
Interested in participating in the 2025 AMA PDX Agency program? If so, whether you are a volunteer in need of new skills, or a nonprofit in need of some help, please visit our AMA PDX Agency webpage to learn more about the program and apply when applications open in November 2024.