LISA ORYE
Branding & Design
Give a Square, Grow our Community:
An Organic Social Media Campaign to Raise $35K
Audience/Donor Research · Strategy · Community-Centered Design · Campaign Naming · Creative Concept Development · Storytelling · Campaign Logo/Mark Design · Design System · Motion Graphics · Guidelines · Print Collateral · In-House Printing · Board Pitch Deck Design · Youth/cohort program integration
A grassroots fundraising campaign built on a simple premise: big impact doesn't require a big budget, or a big gift. Wide Angle Youth Media wanted to keep costs low and stay close to its existing community, so I proposed an organic social strategy — one that would ask current followers and allies to give, while building in natural moments for them to share, so the audience could grow alongside the campaign itself.
Wide Angle Youth Media is a Baltimore nonprofit whose mission is cultivating and amplifying the voices of Baltimore youth through media arts education and apprenticeship. To serve more of them, the organization set out on an ambitious capital campaign to expand its media lab — and asked me to help make the case.
Understanding the purpose mattered as much as understanding the practicalities — the how became just as important as the why. I kept coming back to two things: what 721 square feet of new space could make possible, and the energy, learning, and life-changing moments already happening in every square foot they had. My strategy was to bring those two truths together through story.
Starting with a Question
Research into the organization's social following showed an audience of families, colleagues, and neighbors — people already invested, not strangers to be won over. So I started with a simpler question: what actually keeps someone from giving? Most often, it comes down to scale. The ask, or the need itself, can feel too large for any one gift to matter. I wanted every grandmother, neighbor, and student who saw this campaign to feel like they could do something big with something small.
The Concept
That question became Give a Square — a giving structure built around the square foot, where a contribution as small as $35 could claim a literal piece of the expansion. Working with WAYM's team on their Network for Good platform, we made giving as easy as a single click. The campaign turned one large, distant ask into hundreds of small, personal ones — no gift too small, no supporter too far removed to matter.
Built With the Community, Not Just for It
Bringing the program's youth into the campaign made the effort feel like it belonged to the whole community, not just to donors. Each cohort set its own square-foot goal, tracked their progress, and distributed customizable, branded campaign cards — printed in-house — to family, teachers, and friends. Watching their own pride in reaching that goal became part of the story the campaign told.
Every square foot of WAYM was already activated — with education, discussion, mentorship, cohorts, and workforce development. My strategy became a quest to inspire people to give a square, using that story as the case.
A Mark Built to Do Everything
The visual identity was designed for flexibility above all. The square itself became the engine of the campaign — functioning as a standalone logo, breaking apart and animating for motion content, holding the organization's logo for profile use, and overlaying photo and video content across every platform.
