Here’s Why We Offer This Grant, And Who It’s For

We have a grant. And here’s why we are excited to tell you about it.

The Sponge is proud to be a Certified B Corp. We believe business can be a powerful vehicle to create real, positive impact in the world.

Our purpose is to help Good Businesses do more good (through awesome branding and storytelling!). That’s what we are passionate about!

Awesome Brand Storytelling Benefits Businesses And Organisations Of All Sizes.

Whether you’re a start-up, small business, growing company, corporation, a social enterprise or not for profit, we all need to keep generating more engaged customers and supporters. We call these awesome people raving fans.

Raving fans come through authentic, purposeful and values aligned branding and brand storytelling. It takes hard work, ideally a robust process (where we come in), and it definitely doesn’t happen by accident.

We want to make awesome branding and brand storytelling accessible to purposeful businesses and organisations who do not yet have the budget they wish they had.

Enter Our Double The Goodness Grant.

The purpose of our grant is to perpetuate goodness where budgets are constrained. Often that is right at the coalface, where real, positive impact happens.

Our Double the Goodness Grant is pretty simple. For every dollar you invest in your branding or marketing services through us, we double it in kind, up to a maximum of $10,000 (and limited to services). So your $1000 gets you $2000 in awesomeness. Your $10,000 gets you $20,000. And anything in between.

How It Works

You Apply!

Our application form (find it here) will help you tell us all about you and your business/organisation, how you create positive impact, and how you would like us to help you (amongst other things we need to know).

It’s a relatively simple process.

We Evaluate Your Application

Our team will review your application and will approve it if we’re a fit. It will typically require a brief phone call to get aligned.

We will be looking to understand the following:

Positive Impact: if you are to succeed, how much difference will it make?

Viability: does what you propose make financial sense? Are we confident this is an impactful use of funds?

Partnership Fit: Are we a fit to work together? Can we have a truly collaborative working relationship?

Passion: Does what you propose spark the passion of our team? Is it something we align with in purpose and/or values? Will we have fun and feel energised working on it?

Leadership Buy-in: Is there complete buy in from your leadership team? What possible objections or rejections could be raised to the work produced?

What The Grant Covers

The Sponge is a full service purposeful branding agency, with a digital tilt. We like to start with the heart of a brand, your purpose and values, then work outward from that.

That usually flows in the following sequence (it’s our brand story craft process):

• Defining your brand – Purpose, Values, Vision Statements, Messaging etc
• Getting clear on your buyers – Persona Development
• Brand Story – Connecting the dots between the two in an authentic, compelling way
• Storytelling – Implementing the brand story through your brand collateral

If you want to understand this process a little deeper, we have a webinar for that (almost ready – drop us a note to be updated).

You may have some of these nailed, and kudos to you if you do! Let us know where you feel we can provide most value and we will accommodate.

If A Particular Project Is Your Thing

Some of the project type work we can help you with are:

• Brand refresh, rebrand or design
• Marketing strategy
• Campaign creative & design
• Website design or development
• Website copywriting
• Purpose & values workshop
• Brand collateral design
• Brand or marketing strategy

Not Sure Exactly What You Need, But Know You Need Expert Help?

Talk to us about what you want to achieve. Our team’s skills & capabilities are pretty broad and cover the following:

• Strategy
• Creative Direction
• Concept Design
• Digital Design
• Brand Design
• Print Design
• Developing
• Copywriting
• Project Management
• Social Media Management

What To Expect Working With Us

Our awesome people are scattered across 4 continents. We’re united in purpose and love the freedom and connectivity that technology enables. You can expect a lot of Zoom video meetings, and as much or as little phone, Skype and email conversations as needed to deliver awesome work.

Purpose and positive impact are our Modus Operandi. We will always, always steer projects to that end. Check out our values if you haven’t already, as they are our rules of play. It’s what we use to make decisions on a daily basis.  

We love awesome design. There is no reason something should not look as good as it could. So this means, with us, you will always look awesome, underpinned with substance.

Got questions?

We love them! This is an evolutionary step of our grant. So we expect there will be more needed. Ask what you need in the comments below, or via the contact form.

P.S. Big props to the awesome photographers at Unsplash who have made the imagery in this post possible.