Cultural agility and marketing in the Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the most diverse regions in the country, and its nonprofit sector reflects that quality. Serving this region as a consulting firm thus requires a high degree of cultural agility to move from the specific needs of one client to another.
Fresh from building the site for a Christian web publication, Consulting Within Reach has been contracted to produce the marketing material for the Islamic Networks Group's (ING) annual fundraising dinnner.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, ING is a Muslim founded outreach organization with affiliates and partners in 20 states, Canada and the United Kingdom. ING promotes interfaith dialogue and education about world religions and their contributions to civilization by annually delivering thousands of presentations and other educational programs. In our current divisive and tense climate, ING's mission is a critical one.
For its most important fundraising event, ING wanted a firm that could convey its Islamic nature but in a way that was accessible to a broad audience. Moreover the organization wanted to update its look with a more a contemporary and artistic appearance. CWR was chosen for this culturally nuanced task.
We at CWR believe that, even apart from the particular regional diversity of the Bay Area, marketing almost always has a cross-cultural dimension. The best marketing campaign grasps the key vision and values of an organization - its culture - and interprets that for an audience that doesn't already share that culture, doing so in a way that both sides benefit from that interaction. The character of true marketing is not that of a aggressive salesperson, but rather that of an attentive translator.
Consulting Within Reach is committed to practicing this kind of cultural agility. We enjoy learning about the traits unique to your organization and executing a plan to convey those attributes to diverse audiences. If you're interested in how we might help translate your message, please contact us.