Start A Non-Profit Company With Disruptive Programs & Powerful Branding In 2025 (Special guest: Anika Jackson)

Thinking about starting a non-profit with a powerful purpose? In this episode, Anika Jackson, founder of a disruptive non-profit, shares how to build a company that creates real change with innovative programs and bold branding strategies.

What’s Covered in This Episode:

• How to start a non-profit that disrupts the status quo and makes a difference.
• The key to developing programs that truly impact your community.
• Anika’s approach to powerful branding that aligns with your mission.
• Overcoming the challenges of launching a non-profit in today’s world.
• Practical tips for combining social good with entrepreneurial success.

Anika Jackson is a senior communications and marketing professional with over 25 years of experience working with diverse brands and clients to build local and global interest and create meaningful, synergistic relationships between brands and consumers.

Anika produces and hosts the Your Brand Amplified® podcast, a Listen Notes top 0.5% podcast. In addition, she is a graduate level professor at USC Annenberg and co-producer and co-host of the USC MediaSCape speaker series and podcast.

To learn more about Anika's work:
https://fullcapacitymarketing.systeme.io/brandamplifier-entrepreneur

🤝 Connect with Anika Jackson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anikajackson/


📚Books mentioned
Half The Sky: How To Change The World by Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryl Wu Dunn

🌟Join the WAITLIST for The Faithful Founders Collective at https://reinventing-perspectives.kit.com/231f666d82

💛 Thank you for listening in! 😀

P.S. Don’t forget to leave a review! Much appreciated.

Transcript

Anika Jackson: [00:00:00] It's really important to be mission critical. Is this something you want to be a lasting legacy, or is this something for the short term? it's always about how do you help people in a disruptive way, but in a way that they're going to be able to take it on, that , this is something that they want to do, that they have their own livelihood, How you can best serve. Is it by starting your own nonprofit? Is it by partnering with somebody else who's doing it? 

It's time to reinvent.

Priscilla Shumba: Welcome to the lessons of entrepreneurship, the journey of reinvention. Today, I have a special guest as always, Annika Jackson. Annika has over 25 years working with different brands and. I think you're going to be interested in what she has to say today.

Please, Anika, let them know who you are and what your mission is.

Anika Jackson: My mission really comes back to [00:01:00] community and connection and amplification. I love to help people be seen for who they know that they are and pull that out of them through marketing, public relations, branding strategy, and through my podcast. It's all about helping people really align with who they are, what their mission and vision and values are, and show that light to the world.

Priscilla Shumba: for community, for connection, and really having people having their voices amplified. Anika is the host of the podcast, Transcribed by https: otter. ai Your brand amplified. So look out for that one. Attica today, I think is a special one because a lot of people either want to step into entrepreneurship in the nonprofit sector, or think about having a nonprofit side to their business.

So wanting to contribute in that way. I'm so glad you're here to speak to us about that.

If you can tell us your journey, how you [00:02:00] got to this point, 

Anika Jackson: my mother is from Thailand, on my mom's side, I'm Thai and Lao, and she came to the United States for university. When I was growing up, there weren't a lot of people who looked like me .

I grew up in Kansas in the middle of the United States, , I was always trying to find belonging and a sense of kinship with people. And I think that's where a lot of the stuff that I do stems from. I also saw her at an early age weaving, working very hard. She was a social worker with also working on weekends, helping refugee families who had come over to the United States to assimilate because things are very different from culture to culture.

Depending on what resources you have, you may or may not know how to utilize them and how to function. She would take me over and I would sit and play with the kids while she would help the parents learn. Skills just about how to do things in the home or banking, money, discipline, all of these things that can be very different from country to country and culture to [00:03:00] culture.

From a very early age that was instilled in me growing up, I didn't know if I wanted to go into business or into volunteer philanthropy, social work. I love the fact that I can use my skills in marketing and business. For nonprofits and for philanthropy. I've lived in a few other major cities around the United States and I've had a business background from working for companies. Working for magazines when Xbox first launched. I worked for the official Xbox magazine.

And then also have , a lot of my own businesses, everything from retail to social club, real estate investment, public relations firm. And at this point in my life, I am a nonprofit founder. It's something that's very dear to me. And I also am a professor at university of Southern California, teaching grad school and digital media management.

I have a podcast there. I have my own podcast. I also coach on a number of topics and do a lot of workshops on marketing brand strategy. Now AI tools is a big [00:04:00] thing. I always keep it interesting and I've had all of the pivots and twists and turns. That being an entrepreneur gives you. 

Priscilla Shumba: You got to see service and that became embedded in what you do. It's so interesting. Some of our audience are parents and you wonder how to get your children interested and you realize that they have to see it modeled.

I'm so glad to have you here and thankful to hear about your upbringing. The diversity that you bring, such a rich cultural background. 

Anika Jackson: I have a story about my daughter and how she's seen. Philanthropy and service in action and what has happened. If you don't mind me sharing, from an early age, when she was young and we realized that our kids were growing up with so much more than we had growing up.

I was very middle class. We didn't take a lot of trips. We would take a car ride to visit my grandparents for the summer. And now kids are raised where much easier to go on a flight. They have access to iPads and [00:05:00] phones and internet and so much more of the world.

My friends and I quickly realized that we didn't want our kids to grow up thinking that was the whole world. We wanted them to know more expansive view. So we started a nonprofit when I lived in Houston called Houston Children Give Back, and we would get the kids together to do volunteer work.

It was really interesting to see what questions came out of that and what each kid was interested in because some kids wanted to pack backpacks with food for children on the weekends or in the summertime when kids were not at school and didn't have food because they went to school and that was their meal source of at least breakfast and lunch.

Some kids wanted to put together Meals on Wheels for the elderly, or Anna Meals on Wheels, which are meals for the elderly's pets, Some wanted to put together blessing bags. We put together an event, we built a well in Ethiopia through charity water, with money that we raised with the kids. And we did clean water activities, so they could see how easy it could be to filter water.

But then also, what are some [00:06:00] different countries that are affected by lack of clean water? So from that, it was really great to see what sparked each child's interest. As they grew, there were other nonprofits in Houston that were doing bigger projects that we became involved with. Now my daughter is 16.

And this school year, her grade 10 is what we call it here or sophomore year of high school. She realized that the school had a lot of books that were really good, but they were going to be thrown away. So she went to the teachers for science for history, her English teacher and said, don't throw those books away.

My mom will take them and she'll find a place to donate them. She loves reading. I love reading. I think it was funny, but I love the fact that she immediately thought, wow, , even these textbooks, somebody else could use them. Let's not waste this resource just because the school is getting new books.

So three times this year, I went to school, we bought the boxes. My daughter put them all together. We put them in the car , but that really showed me that [00:07:00] she saw what mattered to me and that she took that lesson.

She was thinking about other people. And for me, that was one of the most beautiful moments that I've had in seeing her growing up. 

Priscilla Shumba: She's an amazing girl to have those kinds of thoughts at that age to think about other people. It's clear that your mission to expose them to that. Not everybody's living like this. It's become embedded in her. Wow. That's amazing. I'll lead us into our topic for today, , I know people want to serve, maybe they want to start their own nonprofit, maybe they want to, have a nonprofit side to their business where, they can channel some of their profits.

How does someone get started in a nonprofit? 

Anika Jackson: The best thing to do is first of all, see the landscape is anybody else or any other organization in your area doing what you want to do, if they are, perhaps it might be better to partner with them than to start your own nonprofit. Because a nonprofit is a business, [00:08:00] even though it says.

not for profit, you can still make money. You can still bring money in just when you give it out. It's to charity. It's for good cause, not to your pocket book, right? To go on the nice trip. I always say, make sure that's something you really want to do. Be really intentional. Find a place maybe to volunteer, to get your skill set up.

In the United States, we have an organization called Junior League. And that is where I got a lot of my training. So I was able to really go in and be trained on what questions to ask. If I was going to set up a board of directors, what kind of people do I look for to be on a board of directors?

What do I need to know how to read? What kind of financial statements, what are the responsibilities? So I really got to dig in and learn a lot of these skills and practice them in a volunteer capacity before I started a nonprofit. So that's why I think it's really important to think about where else can you serve, get the experience, maybe go on a board of another local nonprofit or a national one or a regional one, right?[00:09:00]

And cut your teeth, find out more about the whole world and the landscape. Then if you still want to start a nonprofit, there's a lot of paperwork involved. You need to make sure that even if it's through your business, that you have your own bank accounts, that you set it up as its own business. There can be some money flowing from your business. Maybe you say 10 percent or 5 percent of net profits goes into the nonprofit. And then, you can make the money go one way, but you don't want it to go back and forth. You want to have very clear bookkeeping because you want to be transparent to your donors. And to your funders and any grant, people that you might have. My nonprofit Learn Grow Lead focuses on Cape coast, Ghana. We partner with an organization that is on the ground that knows the community that is embedded in the community that has their own nonprofit status there so that we have a great partnership where it's very transparent to us donors.

Where the money's going, what it's being used for, they get the tax deduction, which they can only get if it's a U. S. nonprofit. [00:10:00] But then we also get to do the great work and help where it really needs to be utilized, right? Because it's not being fully decided by us. It's being decided by the people who are actually going to use it, going to need the money, and going to put it into the community.

Right now we have a farm, we had leased farmland for 10 years. Now we have purchased 10 acres of farmland. So that is owned by them for self sufficiency. We have an orphanage not where kids can be adopted from, but where kids can come to live and have a safe place, a safe roof over their head, be fed meals, right?

Have clothing, have a bed, go to school where they might not otherwise be able to. , think about what really draws your heartstrings. How you can best serve. Is it by starting your own nonprofit? Is it by partnering with somebody else who's doing it? And how much time do you have?

Then you have to find the right people to be on it. It's like with business, they may be your friends. They might not be right. Those might not be the best people. It's always great to have people who know more than you do or have different areas of expertise. [00:11:00] So for me, that means somebody who's better at finance and accounting and knows the CPA world.

Maybe somebody else who works at a nonprofit and knows that part of the world, somebody, from the country that you're working with. There are a lot of things to consider. It's really important to be mission critical. Then consider, is this something you want to be a lasting legacy, or is this something for the short term?

Is this something that you can go in, solve something? And then dissolve the nonprofit or look for a project in another area that has the same needs. So there's a lot of questions to ask, but I do think that if anyone wants to start, doing the research first is always the best step.

Priscilla Shumba: love where you started. I like that you said, look, this is a business. Let's be clear about that. This is a business. certain misconceptions that people have about nonprofit , sometimes it's all heartstrings and then they forget about the fact that this is actually, a business.

And I like that you mentioned partnership. being the number one thing. Who can you partner with? I think [00:12:00]that's key. I'd love to hear more about the work that you're doing. And how did you find that particular partner? And how are you certain that partnership, especially because it's, an overseas partnership, it's not something that you can, drive down the road and verify that's what's happening over there.

How you came across that

Anika Jackson: So there's a few nonprofits that I work with right now. One is still learn, grow, lead. One thing that we're very clear about with that nonprofit is that we are all volunteers. Nobody takes an income. All the money goes straight to our partners. Except for, banking fees, fiduciary responsibility that we have to pay. 

For Learn Grow Lead, that grew out of actually my work at Junior League of Los Angeles. In 2010 2011, I was president of the organization. And I thought, how am I going to use all of these skills that I have just cultivated, all of this experience to go into the community and to serve others in a different way.

At that time, we were going to the National Conference [00:13:00] there's a book called Half the Sky. I don't know if you're familiar with it. Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Cheryl. Wudun wrote the book, they're New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning journalists, they went around the world and interviewed communities and women particularly.

Half the sky comes from a Chinese proverb, women hold up half the sky. It's really about when you pour into women and communities, they uplift their communities. So a woman has money in, any developing country, she's going to win. Make sure her house is safe. She's going to make sure there's food on the table.

She's going to make sure the kids go to school. She's really going to take care of the community. Junior league of Los Angeles had the mission of women and children, health and education issues. Reading that book really crystallized for me that I was very invested in education and in making sure people had basic access to healthcare.

those two things, when you have communities with more health care, with higher education, then girls are less likely to be child [00:14:00] brides. Boys and girls are less likely to become victims of trafficking, whether it's sex trafficking or labor trafficking. Those two things are really cornerstones of safety and security that will help alleviate a lot of other issues that we see going on in the world.

Around the same time, a friend of mine from Junior League, she had gotten laid off from a job at Disney in Los Angeles, and she had enough severance package and vacation time that she decided to take six months and travel the world. She was going through with a friend, saying, okay, I'm going to go here.

And her friend said, don't go to Paris. You can go to Paris. Go somewhere you've never been, that you would never experience. So she chose Ghana and she was going through one of the slave castles there on a tour and met Stephen Donqua. He is our partner there. He has an organization called Children Helpers Foundation and he always talks to everybody about the children he was helping.

At that time, the way he was helping was taking his meager salary, just working in the castle and a few other [00:15:00]people pulling their salaries together to try to put kids into school. Some kids were living on his floor in his house. That was what he could do. So she started sending money over Western union to try to help.

They had asked me, Hey, for this holiday, do you want to help us put kids in school? I said, I'd love to, but I want to find out more. We got to talking and we saw this is a bigger opportunity because if we do start a nonprofit here, even if it's a small one, then we can get more donors, then we can get grant money.

We can get more people invested because I do really believe that it's a global community. We are in two different countries and we're able to have this conversation, which I think is amazing. Now people work with people from all over. If we can help one person, 100 people, 500 people in a community have a better chance for life, they're going to turn around and make their community better, which is where learn, grow, lead comes from.

We want everybody to have access to education and safety, healthcare, all the things that will support them in [00:16:00] just having productive lives. Then they're going to grow and hopefully be inspired come back and serve their communities be the community leaders. And inspire the next round.

That's how we chose that organization and that's how we got involved and then we saw, oh, wow, we're paying for kids to go to school, but some kids don't even have a safe place to live, they've been kicked out of their house or perhaps one parent died. The other parent had to go to the bigger city of Accra to work.

Now they're renting room from somebody's house and having to be their servant when they're not in school. We didn't really feel that was going to be conducive. To the kids feeling safe and secure. We built the orphanage so that they would have a place to live. And it's hard because there's still so much need, but that's really where my heart is.

That's one of my main nonprofits. Another one that I'm on the board is Influencers Foundation. With Influencers Foundation, it is about women of color and allies coming together in communities, but also giving micro grants to women led organizations in the United States and in other [00:17:00] countries. The founder of Influence Hers is a black woman from the United States and was over volunteering in Kenya and realized there weren't a lot of people who looked like her volunteering.

And the girl she was working with said, we don't see people with our skin color. We don't see people like you coming. And so she said, this is ridiculous. We need to have more opportunities. Now we come together and find ways to give back and to also upskill. There is a center now in Kenya where the girls and women are learning digital skills.

Learning how to write blog posts and use SEO and getting access to computer labs. So it's always about how do you help people in a disruptive way, but in a way that they're going to be able to take it on, that , this is something that they want to do, that they have their own livelihood, that they're not just dependent on somebody else. Because we saw COVID happen. We saw people's jobs change. I went through a divorce, so I didn't have as much money to give to the nonprofit. We can't have people dependent, right? You want to make [00:18:00] sure that people feel proud and can stand in self sufficiency. 

Priscilla Shumba: that's amazing work that you're doing. The heart to serve really comes forward. You mentioned , you know, them needing to feel independent. About being disruptive in the manner that you come across with how to help. I wondered if there were certain things, , maybe, common mistakes that you've seen people making when they approach non profit, or certain key things to success in non profit, either, or.

Anika Jackson: One thing that has been hard was being too reliant on a small group of volunteers and not going outside of our circles to find more donors. When I lived in Houston, Houston is probably the most philanthropic city in the United States. All people want to do there is go to galas, go to fundraisers, give money, donate.

And you have to have the event, right? But people will show up. So when I lived there, it was really easy to put together in person events. Have people donate who would never have thought about [00:19:00] donating because they would've donated to their own communities. Particularly, there's a large Asian community and Indian, Pakistani, and Indian community.

Different parts of Asia. They would not think, Oh, let's go donate to Africa. Let's look outside of our own community. So for a while, it was really easy to get donations. We were able to raise a lot of money. Then I moved back to Los Angeles and it was a little bit harder. It's much more fragmented here.

Here. We have the celebrity culture that people pay attention to instead of the philanthropy culture as much. So that is one big mistake. Another one was we really went in. Optimistic and enthusiastic. And we didn't think about culturally people do different things.

Like I said, with my mom, when she was helping families, but things that we would think are no brainers here might not be the way that things are done in Ghana. And vice versa. You have to think about that and also make sure that you have contingency. We thought, okay, , we just need to put the money together to build this orphanage or for this year of school, but we didn't think [00:20:00] about how do we keep sustaining this?

We do think about it, but it's really difficult because when you're also dealing with another country, , the inflation can go crazy. Political climate. There was a while when cable was cut. Under the water, right? That cut off internet access to five countries on the continent for a while.

And so it was really hard to get communication. The price of goods is always changing. The orphanage, we were able to get the land, but it was farther away from the school, so then you have to pay for transportation. So all these things you have to think about it more as a business and not just in our daily lives where we might do, okay, let me do this.

Let me do that. Ah, I'm too tired. You really have to plan it out and think about all of the different factors, the good and the bad that could happen so that you know what to expect and how to plan for them when they do happen, because they will happen. even with all of our different nonprofit training, that's something that we haven't been as good 

as I wish that we [00:21:00] were, and we also , we get tired, right? If it's a small group it's hard to sustain the energy. Somebody will take a little break and they'll come back in all energized again with new and fresh ideas, or I'll bring new people in. So I think it's really important to think about those perspectives.

Make sure you're not asking too much of people at any one time that you're setting realistic expectations for everybody. And that you're very upfront doing that planning.

Priscilla Shumba: That there's certain places, just a culture of philanthropy, of giving, and then there's certain places where it's just like hitting against the hard rock, people just aren't that well into that kind of thing. 

, once you have the nonprofit, it's easier for you to go for those donors or to go for those grants because you have something that is, a legal entity.

Because of your background, you probably are more well versed in how to market creatively and how to go after funding creatively. Maybe you can speak to

Anika Jackson: Just like in marketing. Maybe any industry, the cobbler wears no shoes, right? So we don't have time necessarily to do [00:22:00] all the social media that we need to be doing, but I will say one thing that was really successful, and this is before everybody was doing Facebook fundraisers.

There was one year on Facebook, I was able to raise 26, 000. I did a birthday campaign. Somebody on Facebook who I didn't know very well said they would match a certain percentage. Someone else gave a 5, 000 donation. Somebody else said, I'll match 10, 000. And that was really eye opening to realize that 

I was just reaching people, everybody in my network. I didn't know that these people had that capacity, but they did. And they were willing to give. It also probably helps that my birthday's at the end of the year, so they might have had a little more Oh, I can give a little more to get my tax deductions But that 26, 000 was enough to put all of the kids through school for the entire year you can think about what an impact you can make and how sometimes we think if I just give 10 20 It doesn't make a difference, but it can make a very big difference so I think [00:23:00] using social media, really not being afraid share what you're part of.

, we get scared of telling people because we don't want to ask because then we feel like we're a burden. You have to make the ask, but then you also want to make sure you're telling people what happened with the money, that they're able to see the kids. We've had the kids write letters, I had a client who, had a Created a song for Christmas a few years ago, and the kids for their holiday party did a choreography that they made up to the song and send the video to us.

They've sent videos, thanking all of our donors. They've made little flags with donors names. You have to think about how to also make that connection. So it's not just. People giving money and that's it, right? Because you want to make sure that they really feel that community, that sense that they're doing something that it is appreciated in there's a bigger world.

Those are probably my biggest ones making sure, okay, if people donate, they get a thank you note from the kids, , or they get a video greeting from the kids, they get something back. The other thing we're seeing is that a lot of [00:24:00]charities now maybe have a component where people can make something.

Bracelets, hats, scarves, make a good that they can sell. People also love that because then they feel they're getting a tangible item when they're giving money and they know the the money is going to a good cause. That's another model that we haven't really been able to explore much with this nonprofit at this moment in time, but that I think works really well for a lot of other nonprofits.

Priscilla Shumba: People want to give, but also that additional feeling like you're part of something or having some kind of feedback. because there's a point where it's like you're paying a bill you know and you never want to have that sense of just paying a bill and 

you don't see what it is that you're giving to because the reason you're giving is you want to be part of making impact you touched on this a little bit.

I about how to look for board members. If maybe you can speak your experience and tips for people to think about 

Anika Jackson: make sure you have a wide variety of people. It's not all people with the same skill set because you want to complement the skill sets that you don't have. And you don't want people who everybody's going to say [00:25:00] yes to the same items. You want people who are going to ask the hard questions and bring up the hard points to make sure that the plan that you have is really The plan you should follow. those are two characteristics. Now I see on LinkedIn. People will post that they're looking for board members. You could also search by keywords, right? To see. There are also, at least here in the States, websites. You can go to idealist. org, volunteer match, where you can post what you're looking for, or you can also look and see if there are people who are looking for board opportunities.

I think it's good to have people from different communities as well, because then you have a bigger base of donors, right? Whether it's geography, that can make it difficult sometimes to have meetings. But right now for learn, go lead. We have one member who lives in Spain. We have one person in Oregon.

We have one person in San Diego. I'm in Los Angeles. And then we have other people who help out, but that's the core of the board. Then we have other [00:26:00] people who help, who live in different countries and we bring them in when we have something specific, we can tell them good news to share or a specific ask.

You don't need to start with a lot of people, three to four is a good number. And then you can always expand. Another thing to do is make sure you have really good requirements. So people know what is expected of them. How many meetings will they attend? Are they expected to donate money or just to ask their friends to donate?

A lot of times I'd give, get is really good because there are people who might want to serve, they have the time and the talent, but they don't even have the financial capacity. So they could say, okay, I can give my time. I can give my talent. I might not have 2, 000 to give, but I can raise 2, 000 for my community.

And so I think it's important to be agile and let people come in who want to help, who have at least, two of those three buckets to come onto the board and then you want to make sure that you have this, it's a two year term, it's a four year term, whatever that term might be, or is there a board [00:27:00] rotation between different roles?

Would they be interested in being an officer? So there's a lot of other questions you can get into on that and how nonprofit boards work. think that covers the basics.

Priscilla Shumba: You mentioned tax benefits towards the end of the year, , is there a time in which people are looking for grants or is there a season for certain types of funding, just Top of mind, if there is any.

Anika Jackson: When it comes to grants, usually you want to start earlier in the year, but there's also, a great organization called Grant Watch where you can pull up grants from different parts of the community, different parts of the world. You can see what their requirements are. Do you meet them? And so that's a really great resource to find out when their funding cycles are because some might be on the calendar year, some might be on a completely different cycle.

And so that's something really important to learn. Usually communities have a Community foundation where they also have a lot of donors and you can go to , those organizations and find out do you have donors who donate to this topic, [00:28:00] right? And then you can become part of their database.

And that's another way to reach more donors for us. The tax benefits were really more for the individuals or their businesses at the end of the year. But yeah, for grants, . It's so cyclical and some people have a cutoff and some people will give. At all times of the year.

Priscilla Shumba: How you developed your programs. you did tell us that you saw a need for the orphanage and then you saw a need for the education. I'm thinking of the structuring of programs, if you could talk us through your experience of that. 

Anika Jackson: It's very dependent on what organization I'm part of for learn, grow, lead. It was very much, we were paying for kids to go to school. That was how I came in to helping children helpers foundation. And they came to us with a lot of ideas. They said, we would really like to open a bookstore. We have farming experience.

We have this, we have that. And so we really look to them to help model the business ideas. And come back to us with the numbers. How many people will be employed? What do we need for [00:29:00] irrigation? What kind of crops can be grown? How will we rotate the crops? Who will get the food? And so that's where for the farm, we know that 30 percent of the money will go to pay for the orphanage expenses.

The rest goes back into the farm. We know that the food, now there's school feeding program. Some food goes to the schools. Some goes to restaurants and some is taken by women to market so they can make money as well. We really looked to our partner for that. For the orphanage, we said, we're willing to come up with the money, but we need to know what the budget is, who needs to be hired, who's going to be living with the kids to keep them safe.

What do we need to buy terms of piping, irrigation, beds, all of those different things. I would say learning more and more, I would have asked them more questions probably because need to make sure that the kids have new clothes every year. We need to make sure that they have health care.

There are all these other expenses. It can be hard to think about those things. But if you think about what you would need [00:30:00] as a person, if you were going to get a job or if you have a family, what kind of things does your family need on a yearly basis? And think about those particularly when you're working with kids at organizations like that, then you can better plan what the needs might be.

And so that's how , we've done work there for influence hers. There was an organization in Kenya that was already doing some work, building a computer lab to try to help skills. Brittany has a company that does blog posts and SEO, which said, I can hire some of these women. And teenagers to do this work for me.

It's a marriage, right? You can't just unilaterally decide. You have to see what the need is, assess it with a partner. If you're working with a partner and then go from there to say, all right, this is what we know we can do. Can we meet halfway? For instance, we leased farmland.

Now we want to buy farmland. The farm is closer to the orphanage, which is fantastic, but , we wanted to buy 20 acres. We only could put together the money to buy 10 acres. But we said, at least this is a start [00:31:00] and owning the farmland. There's so much more you can do with crops.

You can plant trees. You can have other crops that you would not be able to have if you only are leasing the land. There's so many things to think about. It can be really daunting. For junior league, it was a little easier because we would talk to community partners, see what their needs were with the partner.

We would create a project, have a small budget, have the volunteers. And then within three to five years. The partner and we knew that we were turning the project back over to them. So they would need to be able to staff it. They would need to have a budget in place for it. We would do the work for the first few years.

And then we would transition over one or two years so that they could take the project over. That's really important too, to think about what is the exit plan?

Priscilla Shumba: it is a business and I just want to tie it up with branding and marketing, if you don't mind. How much of that goes into people thinking about nonprofit? 

Anika Jackson: Brand comes down to why, why are we [00:32:00] here? What are we putting into the world? What are we offering? And that is the same question you should ask, whether it's your personal brand, your professional brand, your nonprofit brand. A lot of times we're really good at showing the services we provide, but we're not showing the results.

We're not showing how we're making a change. Brand is essential to really help people understand. Who you're serving, what the message is, what the mission is, how you're showing the results and that you are actually achieving results.

something I try to be really intentional about is who you see right now is who you're going to see. If I'm teaching my students who you're going to see, if I'm talking to my friends or with my daughter or in a business meeting, I want to show up. I have the same values. Which also helped me create guidelines of what I accept or what I don't accept, right?

Yes, I will give my money to this organization. They align with my values. No, I will not take that job because I can see that this is not going to work out because we will [00:33:00] clash. It really does. I'll come back to brand. 

Priscilla Shumba: To audience, please go to fullcapacitymarketing. system. io. I'll put the link down below so that you can see how to connect with Annika. Annika, where is it where you're most active online?

Anika Jackson: I would say Instagram or LinkedIn and then of course my podcast, Your Brand Amplified. So if you go to yourbrandamplified. com, you'll find all the other things as well. 

Priscilla Shumba: I think for the people who are listening. There's a little bit of fire in the belly get serving and to get things going. Thank you Anika.

Anika Jackson: Thank you so much.