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We know the context of this moment is scary and unprecedented, and that many of you reading this are actively working toward making this world safer for all people—especially Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities. Our hope is that the work and event described here will help with that work. We also acknowledge that not everyone has the capacity to think about this or join our roundtable right now. We will continue to share these resources as well as a recording of the event afterward if you prefer to digest on your own time. 

We talk about metrics a lot. Clicks, donations, shares, likes, sign-ups, media hits—all the things we can count, the quantifiable measures of success. 

Effective creative is essential to every nonprofit and every campaign. But there is a danger in single-minded attention to those metrics—the risk of undermining or betraying the values that we claim to stand for.  

So we can’t just talk about effective creative—we must develop ethical creative. 

For those of us whose job is to conceive, execute, or approve creative, it’s imperative that we produce content and concepts that advance our values. It is our responsibility to understand and acknowledge the context in which we are producing creative: a society defined by inequities of race, gender, and more. And, we must actually do the work to address those inequities through our creative.

It’s something we’ve been digging into, and we’re thrilled to announce that we’re launching M+R’s Guide for Effective and Ethical Creative for Nonprofits: Theory and Practice at the end of the month. 

We’re eager to share the guide with you, but this is a complex set of issues that deserves a nuanced conversation from a variety of perspectives. We want to hear about your own thoughts, priorities, challenges, initiatives, and approaches to align your creative strategy and tactics with your values.

We hope you can join us on January 26 from 4pm–5:30pm ET / 1pm–2:30pm PT for a Roundtable discussion. M+R staff and some special guests will be discussing how to develop a creative approach that is not only effective but ethical…and we want you to join the conversation.

During the Roundtable, we’ll discuss how to change both processes and creative products that:

• Perpetuate racist, misogynist, ableist, and otherwise inequitable structures
• Reinforce stereotypes and prejudice
• Exploit suffering
• Undermine the power of communities to advocate for themselves and create change
• Consolidate power among the already powerful
• Create distance between causes, the people who support them, and the people they serve.

We want you to come with your questions as well as your expertise—there’s no one best way to do this work, and we are excited to learn from and with you and our panelists. RSVP here.