Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact
Designing Tomorrow explores a new playbook for modern social impact leaders and brands to reach their true impact potential.
Why do some social impact brands thrive, while so many others fail to get traction, build support for their cause, and make meaningful progress? Imagine your impact with truly sustainable revenue and resources. With deeper community engagement and relationships. With more influence in your social impact category.
Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, each episode dives into the strategies, mindsets, and behaviors top social impact brands use to play and win in the attention economy. Go beyond high-level concepts to specific tools and tactics you can use today.
Watch on YouTube or listen to new episodes each Tuesday.
Let’s design a better tomorrow, together.
Designing Tomorrow is a Cosmic Production. Learn more at https://designbycosmic.com/
Designing Tomorrow is a registered trademark of Design By Cosmic, Inc.
Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact
Your Most Durable Asset Is Still Your Website
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Everyone keeps predicting the death of the website. First it was social, now it is AI. But it is still the one channel you actually own and control, which is exactly what makes it your most durable asset. So when a site has gone untouched for five years and a redo runs six figures, the real question is whether it is worth it, and when.
Episode Highlights:
[00:03:00] The identity impact gap, and when a redo is the wrong call
[00:10:30] The 10-second homepage test 90% of nonprofit sites fail
[00:13:00] Brand as coherence: the Apple experience, and your version of it
[00:17:30] What happens the moment a funder leaves your meeting
[00:23:30] What funders actually look for: financials, team bios, clear impact
[00:28:00] The underperforming employee analogy, and the player on your team
Notable Quotes:
Eric Ressler [00:05:20]: "I still believe that your website is your most important and your most durable asset as a brand."
Eric Ressler [00:26:20]: "Your website should be your best fundraiser, not your only fundraiser."
Jonathan Hicken [00:29:10]: "Website is almost the wrong word. It's a player on your team."
Resources & Links:
- Seymour Marine Discovery Center — seymourcenter.ucsc.edu
- Candid — candid.org
- “Are Website's Dead?" — earlier Designing Tomorrow episode.
- Joel Breakstone interview — earlier Designing Tomorrow episode.
Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.
→ Subscribe: designingtomorrow.show → Work with Cosmic: designbycosmic.com
Listeners, now you can text us your comments or questions by clicking this link.
*** If you liked this episode, please help spread the word. Share with your friends or co-workers, post it to social media, “follow” or “subscribe” in your podcast app, or write a review on Apple Podcasts. We could not do this without you!
We love hearing feedback from our community, so please email us with your questions or comments — including topics you’d like us to cover in future episodes — at podcast@designbycosmic.com
Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.