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values led. equity centered.

rootid is a branding, web development, and communications agency that believes values are not mere buzzwords; they are the guiding principles that underpin every decision.

We are an agency that crafts captivating brands that tell stories of authenticity and purpose. We are a team of talented designers, strategists, developers, and writers who work tirelessly to understand the essence of each client’s vision, infusing it with a unique identity that captures hearts and minds.

Whether you’re a nonprofit or a socially conscious business, we can help you tell your story in a way that resonates with your target audience. With a focus on innovation, creativity, and social responsibility – we are committed to using communication for social change.

Our Values

Anti-racism

Equitable Access to Opportunities & Resources

Partnership Through Listening & Building Trust

Community-led Breakthroughs

Fearless Curiosity & Reimagination

Health & Healing

Learn more about our values

Guiding Principles

We are rooted in community.

As a brand and communications agency, we are committed to building long-term partnerships, grounded in core values and mission. Our focus is on collaboration—working together to strengthen the nonprofit sector through foundational skill-building, sustainability and impact.

Our community centered approach is focused on connecting purpose and process to outcomes that are rooted in values and equity. Our work focuses on building foundational trust with our partners and co-designing accessible spaces that support the needs of their communities.

We aim to not just be responsive and timely, but inclusive and consistent in our project processes & practices while building supportive and transformative relationships that center people over products.

Learn more about our principles

Our Story

A long story made short: It [rootid] all started by Val and Andrew meeting through Habitat for Humanity in 2008—Val as a volunteer and Andrew looking to build some graphic design and photography capacity on his team. Their partnership worked so well, they started taking on outside contract work together.

In 2010, Val and Jason began taking on projects together and after doing a few projects collectively, the three of us banded together to create rootid. (Est. 2011)

Over the last decade+, rootid has grown slowly and thoughtfully, working with contractors to increase capacity or “growing our own,’ by training up developers and designers from interns into full-time positions.

Next came Soy as a senior contract designer in 2015 and is now rootid’s Design Director. Then came Meg who joined rootid in 2016 as a development intern and is now a Backend Developer, and then Mabel who joined rootid in 2019 as a user experience intern and is now rootid’s User Experience and Service Designer.

2021 brought in more team members including Marcus (Director of Projects, Sia (Director of Community Engagement & Fundraising), Bob (Sr. Front-end Web Developer) and, Grace (Part-time Graphic Designer).

We have had other colleagues come and go along the way, each contributing towards our collective vision, growth and continued sustainability.

Learn more about our history

our services

branding & identity

Match your target audiences to messaging. Create community-centered logos and visual language.

campaign strategy & design

Deliver the right message to the right person. Marketing assets your team can reuse to save time and resources.

website design & development

Content strategy meets beautiful interface design. Building websites in WordPress and Drupal.

analytics & site optimization

Select the metrics that are meaningful to your organization. Learn to tell a story from your website analytics.

community capacity building

Work with nonprofit peers to build communications strategy and processes that work for your organization.

equity-centered process

Who will benefit most from what is about to be designed? Who’s voice is missing from the design process?

We have standardized all of our processes in alignment with the Design Justice Network principles and the Liberatory Design process*.

This approach reframes our processes as one of partnership with versus designing for. Allowing us to embrace our role as community conveners, strategic thought partners, and a trusted resource.

We work closely with communities to understand their needs, concerns, and aspirations, and use this information to create solutions that are truly responsive. This approach is essential for creating equitable and inclusive design.

*Liberatory Design is the result of a collaboration between Tania Anaissie, David Clifford, Susie Wise, and the National Equity Project [Victor Cary and Tom Malarkey]

This experience completely changed the way we think about our strategic communications. As we have grown, this has been critical to building partnerships and our support base.

Elizabeth Knight, Executive Director, Upward Roots
rootid's leadership structure

diagram: flow of power

Our initiatives around rotational leadership shift how power and leadership are understood. In our scope, the scale changes; power sharing and leadership are in constant motion. Team members move around to make room for others within a complex spatial relationship via “circles” overlapping groups based around four integral functions of our organization – and within the circles themselves. Information sharing and decision making happen when we collectively meet, discuss, and vote at our All Hands meeting, shown as the epicenter of the spiral, which is in constant motion.

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rootid’s democratic leadership structure

Our company governance structure mirrors our values: we are community run.

It is comprised of semi-autonomous groups called circles. Each circle focuses on tasks and decision making for a different integral function of our agency where everyone shares equal power. Our circles are:

  • Client Services
  • Community Engagement
  • Operations
  • Visioning

Everyday decisions are made within these circles (e.g. if something only affects the members of the relevant circle), while larger decisions like hiring, budget, new product offerings must have everyone’s approval.

We are a proud collection of nerds, community builders, designers, story-tellers, researchers, content creators, program managers, facilitators, organizers, engineers, and food aficionados…  

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