Non-Profit Naming:

Front Porch

Nature of the Work:
Marketing Consulting and Corporate Makeover

Naming Consultant:
A Hundred Monkeys

The InterNext Group was a large social service agency in southern California--they owned a number of continuing care communities for seniors, operate communities for a lot of other non-profit organizations, and supply care to thousands of homebound people every day. InterNext was the result of a three-way merger, not an easy act to pull off. After resolving many of the operational issues, they came to A Hundred Monkeys to bring some life to their marketing. Working closely with senior management and the board, we did some fairly intensive hands-on research. We visited many of the campuses and interviewed all of the key players. Over a period of nine months we developed a new positioning and the Front Porch name, which we introduced to many levels of the organization. We developed concepts and copy for their corporate intranet and their new sixty-page website. We worked closely with the graphic designers and outside consultants to make sure that all of the image-making was consistent with the positioning and attitude that we established.

Kiddo!

Nature of the Work:
Create a Campaign to Raise Money for Public Schools

Naming Consultant:
A Hundred Monkeys

Craig Frazier dragged me into this, but I'm glad he did. Craig is a fabulous illustrator and a good friend. When I moved to Mill Valley, he introduced me to this wonderful organization with a terrible name--The Mill Valley Schools Community Foundation. As you may not know, California is close to Mississippi when it comes to per capita school funding, so many school programs like art, music, theatre, and poetry get little or no funding from the state. The foundation begs parents for money and supports a lot of these programs. Well, Craig and I walked into a Board meeting with four names, and we walked out two hours later with Kiddo! Craig created the logo and the look, and we collaborated for five years on direct mail campaigns that raised millions of dollars for the foundation. Here is a quote from Craig's new book: "If I could only use one tool in addition to a pen, I would have to choose wit. That's not to say that beauty and subject matter aren't important, but it is wit that sets the synapses firing in our heads and requires us to cognitively digest the things we see. It is the stuff that calls our minds to active duty and reminds us that there is definitely more to the picture than meets the eye."

Ithaka

Nature of the project:
Create a New Umbrella for Worldwide Archiving Initiatives

Naming Consultant:
A Hundred Monkeys

Seven years ago, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation gave birth to JSTOR (not our name!), which created a centralized back archive of a lot of important scholarly journals. JSTOR has achieved success on many fronts. About 1500 institutions in 75 countries have signed on to this online service--last year over 16 million searches were performed and over 10 million articles printed. Working with publishers, universities, and scholars, JSTOR has solved some very complex problems, gained important allies, and become a model for organizations that want to digitize content in order to make it available to researchers and students all over the world. The Mellon Foundation wanted to create a new parent organization that would take what they have learned from JSTOR and use it to create a family of initiatives in different areas. Working with William J. Bowen, the President of the Foundaton, and Kevin Guthrie, the President of JSTOR, we conducted a series of lively meetings that resulted in the selection of the name Ithaka. Bill Bowen originally suggested the name because it is the title of a wonderful poem by C. P. Cafavy. The name was put on the sidelines for some reason, then resurrected at the last minute because there was this whole set of powerful meanings about life's journey just beneath the surface.

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