Spread Your Word @ V Formation
MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS
Co-branded marketing and communications strategy and leadership support for charities, nonprofits and social enterprises.
When the mission is strong but the message feels scattered or isn’t landing with target audiences, Spread Your Word @ V Formation helps organizations communicate with clarity, consistency, and confidence. The practice brings senior marketing and communications strategy into the same conversation as fundraising, governance, and strategic planning, so organizations can show up clearly with donors, partners, and the communities they serve.
A specialist practice within V Formation
Spread Your Word @ V Formation is a co-branded marketing and communications practice, led by founder and Chief Strategist Andrea Sakiyama Kennedy. It extends V Formation’s work with small and mid-sized charities, nonprofits and social enterprises by adding technical and creative support for brand, message, content, and communications leadership. Together, the two brands support organizations in aligning their brand promise with their stakeholder experience to drive meaningful and measurable results.
What stays the same
You continue to work with V Formation as the primary partner, with the same sector expertise, strategic orientation, and practical implementation focus presented across the firm’s existing services.
What this adds
Organizations gain access to senior marketing and communications strategy, content planning, interim leadership, and training tailored to nonprofit capacity and governance realities.
Who it’s for
Designed for Executive Directors, boards, fundraising and communications teams, and organizations in growth or transition that need support crafting integrated marketing and communications strategies that shift intentions into actions, and convert outputs into outcomes.
When this support is most useful
Spread Your Word @ V Formation is a good fit when:
✓ There is a strategic plan or fundraising goal, but no clear communications roadmap to support it.
✓ Fundraising, program, and marketing efforts feel disconnected and donors or partners are not hearing one coherent story.
✓ Senior marketing and communications guidance is needed, but a full-time leadership hire is not practical.
✓ The board is asking for stronger public-facing positioning, message discipline and reassurance around reputational risks.
✓ The organization is navigating growth, leadership transition, or program change and needs a steady, strategic communications approach
Support that fits your organization
Our practice is built around practical, right-sized support that strengthens internal confidence and capacity over time.
Brand and message strategy
Clarify core purpose, audiences, and key messages so the organization can describe its work simply and consistently. This work aligns brand, voice, and positioning with strategy, programs, and fundraising priorities.
Content and digital marketing
Strengthen brand presence where people encounter the organization, including website messaging, email, newsletters, and social channels. The goal is a clear and consistent brand experience that supports relationship-building and fundraising goals while respecting internal resources and capacity.
Communications planning
Translate strategy into a manageable and actionable plan through annual or campaign-based communications planning, establishing content priorities and building marketing channel strategies that respect organizational capacity and support team focus.
Reputation and change communications
Support boards and leaders through sensitive moments such as leadership change, program shifts, organizational reviews, or community concern. The work includes planning and drafting stakeholder messages, anticipating questions, and coaching on how to respond in ways that are honest, measured, and aligned with organizational values.
Fractional marketing leadership
Delivers the senior-level guidance and mentorship of a full-time hire through interim and fractional marketing leadership. This can include advising on structure, hiring and mentoring staff, and architecting sustainable internal functions.
Training and facilitation
Design and deliver presentations, workshops, and learning sessions for boards, leadership teams, and staff on topics ranging from brand, messaging, and digital communications planning, including how to engage effectively with internal and external stakeholders such as media, funding partners, or vendors.
How we work together
Our approach is structured enough to create momentum and flexible enough to respect each organization’s unique context.
1: Clarify
Every engagement starts with an audit and review, followed up with direct questions and deep listening. Existing activities and plans, communications and stakeholder expectations are reviewed and discussed to define what audiences need to understand, feel and do as a result of communications activity.
2: Build
The next step is to co-create the strategies, plans and tools the team needs, including message architecture, communications frameworks, content calendars, and decision guides that fit the organization’s team and governance structures.
3: Guide
Implementation support continues through advising, coaching, and adjustment as new approaches are tested. Our goal is to help teams become more confident and selfsufficient over time rather than dependent on ongoing external support.
Led by Andrea Sakiyama Kennedy
Andrea Sakiyama Kennedy is the founder and Chief Strategist of Spread Your Word. She is a highly strategic senior marketing and communications leader whose experience spans brand strategy and execution, content strategy and creation, digital marketing, interim marketing leadership, and reputation and crisis management support.
Andrea is also an educator and mentor who is highly respected for translating complex ideas into plain language. She is known for naming trade-offs honestly (some might say, bluntly) and emphasizing the need for plans that fit organizational realities of limited resources and capacity.
Leveraging her personal experiences as an entrepreneur, community leader, board member, and volunteer, Andrea models a grounded, compassionate, and attentive facilitation style that makes space for reflection, candor, and different perspectives.
Part of a wider support system
Marketing and communications is often treated as a side-of-desk task or project, rather than a core competency. Spread Your Word @ V Formation is designed to connect directly with the firm’s fundraising, governance, and strategic planning work so organizations benefit from support that reflects the full picture of strategy, board relationships, donor communication, and operational reality.
What this work helps you do
The purpose of the engagement is to help organizations communicate in ways that feel responsible, responsive and alive.
→ Articulate mission, priorities, and impact using language and creative assets that are clear to donors, funders, and community stakeholders.
→ Equip staff, volunteers and board members with consistent and on-brand messages they can use in conversations, presentations and online.
→ Build communications systems and habits that continue after the engagement ends.
→ Reduce communications-related stress during periods of change or scrutiny by working from a plan with steady strategic support.
→ Connect communications efforts more directly to fundraising, strategic, and governance goals.
Start with a conversation
Every organization’s situation is different, and we encourage you to explore what level of engagement would serve you best, whether that is a short-term project, a training series, or a season of fractional marketing leadership.