We recently connected with Tory Howell & Triniti Burton and have shared our conversation below.

Triniti & Tory, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

We’re not sure that Corporate America gets much right. It’s the epitome of capitalism, which undermines humanity’s ability to care for the collective. It upholds gender-based pay disparities and the racial wealth gap. And it incentivizes a toxic hustle culture that’s brought generations to the brink of burnout.

If we look at how Corporate America functions relative to the nonprofits we work with, it’s sort of twisted. Corporations funnel money into philanthropic foundations under the guise of helping fund nonprofit organizations. But there are often ulterior motives at play—usually being able to check a box on a corporate sustainability report. They tout their donations across the media and get applauded for their actions.

Then, nonprofits have to jump through hoops to try to access those funds with the hopes of keeping their life-saving programs running. The application process itself is a systemic barrier that prevents organizations most in need from accessing support.

This broken system is what drives our giving approach. It’s why we donate unrestricted funds to grassroots organizations whose missions we support and trust them to use it as they see fit. So more resources get directly to the people who know how to make an impact.

Triniti & Tory, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

We’re Tory Howell and Triniti Burton, the co-creators of Doorway Creative.

Doorway is a social impact agency that creates strategies, brands, and websites. We work exclusively with nonprofits and purpose-driven companies that share our mission to create more equitable worlds. Most of our clients are in the social justice, harm reduction, sustainability, and tech for good spaces.

People usually come to us for one of three reasons.

– They’re either launching (or recently launched) a new project or product and need a simple brand identity and website so they can create awareness and establish credibility.
– Their organization has been around for a few years and has grown quite a bit. They’ve had some notable accomplishments but their brand and website don’t reflect all that great work.
– Or their organization has shifted focus and needs to reimagine itself. Sometimes strategic planning takes organizations in new directions. They find themselves needing to step back and rethink how they’re positioning their work or solutions.

These last ones are some of our favorite projects to work on. We love partnering with folks who have “reimagine” mindsets and are open to possibilities. There’s real potential for magical outcomes there.

Regardless of which stage organizations are in when they come to us, we meet people where they are to co-create what they’re looking for. And if they don’t have a clear vision, we help them define it.

How’d you meet your business partner?

We met in 2019 while working at an agency together. Triniti was heading up marketing and Tory was leading design. We wound up landing a major project for the National Harm Reduction Coalition’s rebrand and website redesign.

As we immersed ourselves in that project, we had some deep conversations about harm reduction principles, the evolution of language, the practice of radical love, and what it means to meet people where they are.

The project lasted about 6 months and we grew closer during that time. We realized we held shared values and deep respect for each other’s experiences. Our skill sets complemented each other perfectly. And we learned that we were both wildly committed to doing our best work and supporting our clients’ missions.

Starting something together seemed natural.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Our growth strategy is pretty simple. We focus on creating a delightful experience for our clients and putting exceptional and meaningful work into the world.

This shows up in a lot of ways. In the way we interact with people. In the tools we use. In our collaboration processes. In our project management approach, communications, and transparency. And, of course, in the outcomes of our work.

Beyond this, we run one—what could be looked at as “marketing”—program every year. We call it The Open Doors Project. It’s an open call for nonprofits to apply for a free brand redesign, messaging framework, and website package. It gives us a chance to showcase our end-to-end capabilities while helping a mission-aligned organization do its work.

That’s it. We haven’t written any blog articles or done much on social media. We’ve only sent emails about our Open Doors Project. And we don’t do any paid advertising. And we’ve steadily increased our book of business. So it seems to be working.

Every one of our clients has come to us organically through a referral or because they’ve seen our work. And the words people share in their post-project interviews have been known to inspire a few happy tears.

We had a client tell us recently that we raised the bar of what it means to work with consultants and that they’re now looking at all their partnerships and asking if they were getting “Doorway feels.”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.doorwaycreative.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doorwaycreative/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/doorway-creative