About Us
Dearborn Strategies, led by Rachel Dearborn, is a communications and brand strategy agency. We help nonprofits and mission-driven companies solve their communications challenges and build brands with staying power, influence, and meaning.
For each project we take on, we build the best team of passionate pros from our deep network of organizers, designers, digital strategists and consultants working in social change.
If you’ve got a big, sticky challenge, we’re waiting to hear from you.
Our Approach
We bring intention to our partnerships, forming long-lasting relationships built on trust, mutual respect, and shared purpose.
BE AUDACIOUS
We partner with people who are willing to take risks, whether it be through unconventional methodologies, bold words, or adventurous projects. We push our partners to make tough decisions and we help hold them accountable to their goals.
BE TENACIOUS
We won’t stop working on a problem until we’ve figured out the right solution together. We welcome critical feedback. Through iteration, we constantly push ideas forward.
TAKE CARE
We examine problems and solutions through every possible lens. We pay close attention to details while keeping an eye on the big picture. Our goal is to create a communications infrastructure that is coherent, consistent, and crafted with care.
CENTER EQUITY
The strongest brands are rooted in equity, accessible by everyone—particularly those who have been historically marginalized. We center the people who are most impacted in decision-making processes. We use communication to lift up new voices and dismantle systems of oppression.
Rachel Dearborn
she/they
Rachel is our lead strategist, project wrangler, researcher, coach, design director, writer, and co-conspirator. She’s been in nonprofit communications for over 15 years. She started out in this work at the birth of “web 2.0” when she was the digital whiz kid at national communications firm Spitfire Strategies. In her four years there, Rachel worked on a range of issues, from children’s healthcare to sustainable seafood to arts philanthropy, conducting media and policy research, writing op-eds for national news media, producing digital content, and crafting comprehensive communications and brand strategies.
She then went on to lead digital campaigns for Upwell, a nonprofit startup that was pioneering and experimenting with what is now referred to as a “narrative weather service” for ocean conservation issues. She built a network spanning disciplines and geographies and ran un-branded, distributed campaigns to measurably increase attention to and shift narratives on critical ocean issues like overfishing and ocean acidification.
In 2015, Rachel stepped into the lead communications role at Tides, a global public foundation and nonprofit accelerator. While at Tides, Rachel led the forty-year-old organization through a comprehensive rebranding and website overhaul and rebuilt the communications function from the ground up.
Today, Rachel works at the nexus of grassroots movements, philanthropy, and social enterprise. She partners with leaders to solve tough challenges and build resilient teams, networks, and communities. Rachel is driven by a commitment to anti-racism and advancing social justice.
Collaborators
We form teams of passionate pros.
For every project, we assemble the best team of passionate pros from our deep network of organizers, designers, digital strategists, and consultants working in social change. This distributed model helps us be efficient and more responsive to the unique needs of each client. When partnering or making referrals, we prioritize BIPOC, queer, trans, gender non-conforming, and female-identified specialists. Here are some of the many folks we partner with.
Where we work
We are based in Portland, OR, the ancestral and unceded territories of Multnomah, Wasco, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other Tribes who made their homes along the Columbia (Wimahl) and Willamette (Whilamut) rivers.
Oregon has a dark history rooted in racism and willful, legalized theft from, violence toward, and exclusion of Black and Indigenous peoples and other people of color. We recognize and acknowledge that history and honor the significant contributions, resilience, and power of the communities of color in our city and state.
The Racist History of Portland, the Whitest City in America (The Atlantic)
When Portland banned blacks: Oregon’s shameful history as an ‘all-white’ state (Washington Post)
Oregon once legally banned Black people. Has the state reconciled its racist past? (National Geographic)
giving locally
As part of our commitment to reparations work, we donate 2% of profit annually to BIPOC-led organizations in our local community that focus on food justice, housing stability, and community wellness. No strings attached.