Creating A World Well Nourished
Commerce is colorful, and each year it gets more colorful. For-profit companies innovate constantly: new attitudes, new channels, new products, new messages, new aspirations. This is an imperative: to survive, brands must be as bright, sharp, and unique as the consumers they cater to. Why doesn’t this innovation-drive apply to nonprofits?
The world of nonprofits rightfully prioritizes mission over delivery, mission over product — mission over character. Conventional nonprofit wisdom might say that any attention paid to developing a brand or scrutinizing a product is attention wasted; attention that could and should have been paid to maximizing impact. Single-minded focus on reach and operational targets leaves no room for innovation, for risk-taking, for experimentation. And outdated operational models leave most nonprofits slow to act and slow to react to a rapidly-changing world. Lumbering bureaucratic machines, run on Windows ‘95, that bear no resemblance to the sleek and sharp companies that rule commerce.
This operational and creative chasm between the nonprofit world and the commercial world must be traversed. Old-world nonprofits may have global reach, but they often fail to treat their beneficiaries with the dignity, the attention, and the care that companies show their consumers. Imagine, instead, a nonprofit that does not ignore design, nor branding, nor quality, nor agility. A nonprofit that pays as much attention to the needs of its beneficiaries as companies do to the needs of their consumers. A nonprofit that recognizes that people in need are not just mouths to feed but people, consumers like the rest of us, who want to be healthy, fulfilled, and happy.
That is Cole Riley’s approach. Several years ago Cole founded a content marketing firm, Founder’s Market, to cater to NYC’s startup F&B brands. But when the pandemic hit, Cole quickly transformed Founder’s Market into Founders Give: the largest private relief effort in NYC. Leveraging his professional network, Cole forged partnerships with 305 brands and delivered 2.2 million nutritious food products to nearly every single hospital in the city — in ten weeks. Now, Cole wants to accomplish more, and he chose Early Spring to build the brand to make that happen.
Early Spring immediately picked up on Cole’s vision. We saw an opportunity to treat, rather than to triage. We left behind the old nonprofit models and looked to examples like Away, Billie, Casper, and Direct Shave Club — brands with an ambition for powerful brand equity, for contemporary aesthetics, and for strong, deeply rooted characters. And rather than define our nonprofit mission with narrow, operational goals, we adopted a broad, ambitious ideal: that a better world will arrive only when we guarantee the dignity, nourishment and are accountable to communities in need.
After months of research, planning, and design, Early Spring is proud to welcome a new non-profit: Wellfare.
Wellfare is a reimagination of the antiquated systems on which we currently rely to address the problem of food insecurity. First, we categorically reject the idea that we should feed the vulnerable with cheap, unhealthy packaged goods. Instead, we will partner with ethical, aspirational food companies to source and deliver nutritious products that do more than fill a belly. Second, we will treat people in need as individuals — as members — with unique nutritional needs and unique financial means. Accordingly, we will service our members at low-to-no cost through our Direct-To-Need model. Members who can afford to share the cost of their nutrition will be asked to contribute a small fee, far below the cost of the goods they will receive. And our donors and partners will foot the bill for members unable to invest in their own nutrition.
In support, Wellfare will produce insightful, original content to advocate for our ultimate goal: A World Well Nourished. Through thoughtful storytelling, photography and video, we will build and inspire a community of members, consumers, donors, partners, and brands devoted to that common goal.
As always, Early Spring will deliver strategically-driven creative content — -experiential, out-of-home, and digital — -and provide ongoing advisory support as Wellfare’s agency-of-record.
We could not be more excited.
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