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?

Regular

7 Social Trends for Purpose-Driven Organizations

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has paid off PR firms to spread lies about its competitors, and Elon Musk is set to buy and privatize Twitter in an attempt to make it a "bastion of free speech." Are these the things we really expect to have happen in our free and egalitarian internet?

Who Decides What We Say on the Internet?

Social Media is not the egalitarian space for information that you might believe it to be.

Three tools stand between you and getting a perfect portrait of your digital programs. Want to see our recommendations? Click to learn more.

Reporting, Made Easy

Our tools and tricks for digital reporting on demand

Learn how to spot credible social media and become a more savvy online consumer.

Social Media's Red Flags

How Gary Vee Thinks about NFTs | My First Million #209 with Gary Vaynerchuk

Get all the digital and social media predictions that are fit to print, or at least type, from The Black Sheep Agency.

2022 Digital Forecasting

The online landscape is about to get a whole lot more wild.

Let’s look ahead to a world run by Gen Z.

The Generation of Forward Thinking

Understanding the vibrant lifestyles of a new generation.

Gen Z on Exploring Identity

What to know about the next generation of social change.

The Activism of Generation Z

Top 5 Takeaways from our November Workshop

Get the Workshop recap on 2022 nonprofit planning (and see what's to come!). 

The Top 5 Takeaways from our November Workshop 

Don't Succumb to Inevitability

The Metaverse is a term to describe something that isn't good, so why are Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Sweeny so interested in making it a reality? Let's take a consequences based look at the Metaverse, and discuss whether it's a new digital playground, or an inevitable dystopian capitalist nightmare.

The Metaverse

I went to the Metaverse and all I got was this stupid t-shirt.

The Age of Isolation

The Instagram Infographic Industrial Complex

How to create and share information and infographics on social media platforms like Instagram without exploiting relevant issues for engagement.

Let's learn how to bring action into the digital world, instead of noise and spectacle.

What responsibility does advertising have for supporting a creative middle class? We're about to find out.

Yearning for a Creative Middle Class

There's nothing wrong with finding some middle ground. 

Vanity metrics are great, sure, but how can we measure real social change?

How to Measure A Movement

Tangible social impact data is like the holy grail for organizations aiming for real-world change. It can also be frustratingly elusive and hard to capture accurately. So, how do we fix that?

BEEPLE EXPLAINS: What is an NFT ?

NFTs have had an unbelievable impact on the digital art scene, but is it worth our time?

Should we care about NFTs?

Every day, there’s something new in the world of NFTs. 

iOS 14. Facebook. Apple. And us. Who will win as tech giants battle it out for our data and our future?

Facebook vs. The World

You can’t deny the power of the Tube, and it’s a great tool to use if you’re a small business owner, artist, writer, gamer, or all of the above.

How to get results on YouTube

You don't have to be a trendy blogger to get results with YouTube.

The jingle? Dead? Not in 2020—not if you think about it.

Now Is the Time for Jingles

Back in September, I witnessed something that jogged some much-lodged information out of my skull. 

We all know that data is important, but it’s so interesting how tricky it can be when it’s being used to uncover or decide our truths and making our daily decisions. And this is a phenomenon that is far from new.

Data, deaths and dresses

I’ve been thinking a lot about data and how it tells stories about the human existence recently. 

There’s a particular kind of project that doesn’t feel like a project.

It feels like something else entirely. Over Black Sheep’s 16 years, we’ve learned to recognize these engagements — the ones where the stakes are real, where the mission is load-bearing, where getting the story right genuinely changes what’s possible for the people an organization serves. We’ve also learned that these are the projects we want to fill our days with.

Right now, our roster is full of them. I want to talk about that — not as a highlight reel, but as a reflection of what we believe this work is for. And if you’re leading one of these organizations right now and it feels heavy or uncertain or like your story isn’t keeping pace with your mission, this is for you too.


Some projects aren’t a single scope — they’re a relationship, built over time, through the kind of trust that only comes from doing hard things together.

Houston Arts Alliance is in one of the most pivotal moments in its history. A new CEO — the first woman and person of color to lead the organization — has stepped into a role that carries both enormous expectation and extraordinary possibility. We are building alongside them from the ground up: immediate messaging and leadership transition tools, a mission and vision refresh, a public education campaign, a community engagement process and a full brand foundation. Long, layered, listening-first work. Some of our favorite kind.

Houston Parks Board is marking its 50th anniversary at the start of an exciting new chapter — bold new leadership, a visionary strategic plan and a future that has been a century in the making. We’re evolving their brand to match the scale of that moment. Being trusted when the foundation is strong and the future is wide open is its own kind of honor.

Good Reason Houston is an organization we know well — we built their original brand in 2018, and they’ve called on us at several points of strategic inflection since. This is one of those moments. The world these leaders are navigating looks almost nothing like it did seven years ago, and our work together right now is about finding language that tells their story with clarity and confidence for where things are today.

Civic Builders finances and develops school facilities across the country, making excellent schools possible in communities where the need is greatest. We completed a full messaging and positioning strategy with them, and we’re now deep into their visual identity system — in genuine collaboration with their extraordinary internal team. This partnership is the kind we aspire to: the work belongs to all of us.

The Greater Houston Partnership is building an AI-powered tool to connect educators, employers and community partners in ways that expand workforce opportunity. We’re building the brand that makes it accessible and credible from day one.

Fervo Energy is redefining what clean energy looks like. We are their strategic design agency — giving visual and creative form to the complexity of what they’re building, because a breakthrough technology deserves a story told with equal craft.

The University of Nevada, Reno trusted us to direct a digital campaign for their Black Youth Mental Health Initiative — designed to reach young people at the right moment, in the right channels and keep them connected to support that can change the trajectory of their lives. This follows our branding and strategy work for their CDC-sponsored Safer Nights opioid overdose prevention campaign last year.

The Center for Civic and Tech Life is now publishing a magazine for local election officials — the people who make democracy function at the ground level. We named and developed the publication’s visual identity, because this community deserves tools that reflect the seriousness of their work.

In collaboration with January Advisors, we’re working with the League of Women Voters Houston on a set of core values and a strategic plan built for what comes next. The League has been doing this work longer than most organizations have existed. Helping them articulate where they’re headed is not something we take lightly.

Much of this work is happening in Houston — the city where Black Sheep was founded, where many of us live and where we feel the stakes of these institutions personally. When you’re a Houstonian working on Houston, it stops being a client list and starts being something else.

It takes something to make this call. The leaders we work with aren’t doing it because things are easy — they’re doing it because they’ve decided that a story that can’t carry the mission is a liability they can’t afford. That takes clarity about what’s actually at stake. It takes a willingness to look honestly at the gap between where you are and how you’re being perceived. And it takes the kind of courage that doesn’t always get named as courage — the quiet decision to invest in something foundational when there are a hundred urgent things competing for the same resources.

But the thread running through all of it — local and national — is the same: find the organizations doing the most necessary work, and make sure their story is strong enough to carry their mission forward.

If your organization is in a moment that demands more clarity, more confidence or a story that finally matches where you’re headed — we’d love to be in that room with you.

A reflection on 16 years of learning which projects are worth our days — and the mission-driven organizations we're building alongside right now.

The Work That Doesn't Feel Like Work | Black Sheep Agency

What it takes to build a story strong enough to carry a mission forward.

A reflection on the partnerships filling our roster right now — and what it takes for mission-driven organizations to build a story strong enough to carry their work forward.

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.

The Work That Doesn’t Feel Like Work