A look inside our Austin team retreat and why intentional pause, thoughtful design and humanity-centered practices strengthen nonprofit and social impact teams.

Why Retreats Matter for Mission-Driven Teams | Black Sheep

Why intentional time together shapes the way we work, think and lead

Designing Retreats That Strengthen Mission and Momentum

Condensed

Digital Predictions for 2024: 7 Trends to Watch

As we look ahead into what we believe will be an unpredictable 2024, with new forms of technology progressing by the day, our team has been keeping tabs on the digital realm. We’ve listed the seven obvious digital trends that will seemingly shift the world in 2024. Let’s dig into the details of what 2024 could bring to the internet.

What marketers need to know about the future of digital content

Regular

Elevating Creativity: Our 4-Day Workweek Experiment

As an agency that was established to provide a better working environment and positive, caring cultural experience surrounding the creative process (even before we settled into our impact mission in 2012), we’ve decided we can’t let this ride. That's why Black Sheep has embarked on a 4-day workweek experiment to see how it affects the way we feel and the energy we can put into our work.

How our team is embracing a new way to work together

Hopescrolling: Is Gen Z actually optimistic?

Cynical. Overstressed. Irony poisoned. The generational outlook for Gen Z is feeling bleak these days, and the marketers and strategists of the world are buried under piles of data about it all. But what if there’s a different way to think about hope? 

Gen Z never lost faith. They just express it a little… differently.

What could generative AI mean for creatives?

AI and the Future of Creativity

Fostering allyship and community in the midst of chaos

Knowing Thy Neighbor

While AI’s latest uses may seem futuristic, artificial intelligence has already been influencing our lives for decades. Two things have changed recently, though: its expanding applications for a variety of industries, and our ability to be calm about it. 

But before we panic about imminent societal collapse led by robot overlords, here’s a crash course on how we got here.

WTF is AI?

What is generative AI and what can it do for us?

Houston Landing is a local nonprofit newsroom with no paywalls to provide essential journalism that empowers our communities.

Meet Houston Landing: designing the next frontier of local news

A new, nonprofit and nonpartisan news outlet for local voices.

Sometimes, social media feels like a horror show. Can we defeat the monster and save the day?

Escaping our Social Media Spirals

7 Native American Designers You Should Know About

Support Indigenous designers in the creative industry.

Picking up the pieces and finding our voice.

We are all we've got.

Sometimes sharing our deepest thoughts is enough to give someone else the courage to move ahead.

AAPI thought leaders that can help us look ahead

Supporting AAPI Heritage and Future

Thoughts and tips for landing your first advertising job with intention

The Breakout Role

How Did We Become a B Corp: the B Corp Series

Our lessons and reflections on becoming a better business.

How Did We Become a B Corp?

We stand with trans Texans. Find ways to engage with local organizations in the fight to protect trans kids and their families.

Texas: The State of Our State

Making a list, checking it twice and shopping sustainably, which feels very nice.

Black Sheep 2021 Gift Guide

For flocking around the Christmas tree and other season's festivities. 

Giving Tuesday: A Day of Global & Digital Giving

A guide and history of Giving Tuesday, the world's largest generosity day.

A roast worthy of a turkey, but instead focused on what makes us truly grateful this season.

Here's to the American Tradition

Let's give it up for turkeys, football and violent misunderstandings

We're a B Corp. You're a B Corp. So why aren't we working together? (Hint: we could be.)

We're the Agency for B Corps

Are You a B Corp? Then We Should Be Your Agency

Here at Black Sheep, we believe you need time to step away from your desk and give your brain a reset. And so we're making mandatory time off a reality.

Mandatory Time Off Is Our New Normal

We need time to rest and come back ready. 

The Black Sheep Agency Stands in Opposition to SB7

We as a Texas business would like to affirm—loud and clear—for all our State elected officials that we do not support the passage of SB7.

Speaking up and speaking out about the preservation of expanded, accessible voting rights 

This year marks our 5th as a B Corporation, joining over 3,800 companies that push back on business and economic models that put profits over people.

Better Business is a B Corp

We deserve a world (and workplace) that gives a damn about something bigger than profits

The Hidden Political Life of Postage Stamps

The postage stamp is a lot more than a sticky tag attached to our envelopes. They are a reflection in culture, and a political tool used to persuade the masses.

Celebrating tiny sheets of beauty, patriotism + philatelic propaganda 

5.4 Million Women Lost Their Jobs Last Year 

We're looking at a sesmic shift in our workforce—and not for the better.

5.4 Million Women Lost Their Jobs Last Year

We're looking at a major shift in our workforce—and not for the better. 

Here's a roundup of podcasts created by Black creators, covering topics from culture, money, work, and history. There's something in this list for everyone.

A Collection of Podcasts for Black History and Black Culture

February is winding down, but we're continuing our celebration of Black creators.

We Are Hiring Chief of Staff (Now Closed)

New role for a visionary Chief of Staff at The Black Sheep Agency

Now hiring at Black Sheep in Houston for Chief of Staff

For years, the advice to every nonprofit was some version of "be more like a brand." Post more. Sound more polished. Chase the same tricks beverage and mattress companies use to win attention. But that advice is going out of date fast. 

Here's the good news buried in the shift: being human, being rooted in a real community, telling the truth about the work you do - these used to just be things nonprofits talked about. Now they're becoming part of how the algorithm decides who gets seen.

Let’s be real, the social media feed you're posting into isn't the feed you learned on. There are three changes to pay attention to here:

You are no longer broadcasting to your followers. You're being matched to people by interest, whether they follow you or not. According to Meta, only 17% of time on Facebook and 7% on Instagram goes to content from friends and family. The rest is strangers' content, served by an algorithm reading for interest, not relationship. This means that follower count matters less than it used to; what your organization is actually about matters way more.

For a decade, the game was capturing eyeballs at any cost, but that game is almost out of runway. This new reality rewards the meaning people seek out, instead of the noise people scroll past. A nonprofit was never going to out-shout a beverage brand for attention, and it doesn't have to start now.

Bots now account for more than half of all web traffic, the first time automated activity has outpaced human activity online. Add the flood of low-effort AI content built to trigger a reaction, and feeds get louder, faker, and angrier by the month. Outrage travels, so platforms keep rewarding it, regardless of whether it's true.

Platforms are starting to notice the same AI slop we are, and they're building against it. As feeds fill with machine-made content, audiences and the platforms chasing those audiences are turning toward visible effort, texture and even imperfection. 

Authenticity is starting to get measured less as a brand value and more as "proof of process": can people actually see the work behind the thing? Instagram has begun actively suppressing reposted and aggregated content for exactly this reason. Original, human, made-for-the-platform work is now structurally advantaged, not just ethically preferable.

The appetite for this is showing up in surprising places too. Myspace's owners are reportedly plotting a relaunch, betting that algorithm fatigue is real enough that people will pay attention to a platform explicitly selling itself as an escape from optimized feeds.

Brands without a real story are feeling the squeeze from the other direction. Even insurance companies and mattress brands, categories built on being interchangeable, are now scrambling to act like media companies just to stay visible, hiring writers and building personalities where there used to be none. But your nonprofit isn't scrambling for any of that. The real stories, real people and real process you already have aren't a compliance requirement anymore. They're the raw material every faceless brand is spending real money trying to fake.

You're the expert. Make sure AI knows it.

The same shift is happening in search. More than half of Google queries now return an AI-generated answer before a person ever clicks a website. Being the credible, well-documented source those answers get built from is starting to matter as much as being the thing someone finds by scrolling. Same principle, different doorway: substance and legitimacy are becoming the input, not just the output.

No one knows your mission, your people, and your work better than you do. When someone asks an AI assistant how to get involved in your cause, that answer should be built from what you've actually published, not a stranger's guess or a five-year-old blog post. Making sure your own documentation is the source AI pulls from isn't just a search tactic. It's how you keep your story accurate and keep your work moving forward, instead of watching it get flattened into someone else's summary.

What this actually means for your nonprofit online

Here's the part that should feel like relief: none of this asks you to get louder, weirder or more "on brand." It asks you to do less pretending and more proving. Show the work. Show the people. Let the algorithm find you doing the thing you're actually good at, instead of trying to out-shout accounts that were never your competition to begin with or hoping to be stumbled upon via hashtag soup.

The real question is whether what you post could hold up to a stranger asking, "how do I know this is real?" That's a content question, a design question and a strategy question all at once, and it's the kind of work that's easy to know you need and hard to carve out time for.

That's the work we do at Black Sheep Agency. We help mission-driven organizations turn what's already true about them- the real stories, the real people, the real process- into content and strategy built for a moment when that's exactly what gets rewarded.

Why Nonprofits Might Finally Win the Algorithm

The algorithm now rewards real stories and community over polish and AI content. See why nonprofits are positioned to win the shift and what to do next.

The algorithm stopped rewarding polish and started rewarding (human) proof

The algorithm now rewards real stories and community over polish and AI content. See why nonprofits are positioned to win the shift, and what to do next.

The Black Sheep blog is turning up the volume on community engagement, social media strategy, Houston happenings and what it means to lead a purpose-driven life.

The Black Sheep Agency | Social impact and nonprofit blog

We like to type as much as we like to listen.

We're not shy.

Why Nonprofits Might Finally Win the Algorithm

Designing Retreats That Strengthen Mission and Momentum

Digital Predictions for 2024: 7 Trends to Watch

Elevating Creativity: Our 4-Day Workweek Experiment

Hopescrolling: Is Gen Z actually optimistic?

AI and the Future of Creative Work

Knowing Thy Neighbor

WTF is AI?

Meet Houston Landing: designing the next frontier of local news

Escaping our Social Media Spirals

7 Native American Designers You Should Know About

We are all we've got.

Supporting AAPI Heritage and Future

The Breakout Role

How Did We Become a B Corp?

Texas: The State of Our State

2021 Holiday Gift Guide

Giving Tuesday: A Day of Global & Digital Giving

Here's to the American Tradition

We’re the Agency for B Corps

Mandatory Time Off Is Our New Normal

The Black Sheep Agency Stands in Opposition to SB7

Better Business is a B Corp

The Hidden Political Life of Postage Stamps

5.4 Million Women Lost Their Jobs Last Year

A Collection of Podcasts for Black History and Black Culture

We are hiring: Chief of Staff