Elizabeth & Marissa - Community-Centered Strategy for a Changing World

Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories. This podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Kristy. And I'm Dominique. And. Today we're joined by two wonderful green champions, Elizabeth Schuster and Marissa Ferrari.

They have collectively built a firm that focuses on the intersection of nature and communities called sustainable economies. They offer a research driven approach to shaping identity, setting strategy, and evaluating impact. Elizabeth and Marissa, thank you for being here today. Let's get to your champion story.

Hi. Thank you both for being here. I'm so excited. 

We previously had each of you on individually and we got to hear more about like your background and how you found yourselves caring about sustainability, but also like finding your kind of like secret sauce and the things that you bring to the table.

And today we're obviously talking about how you now collaborate and have built this joint organization. Um, before we get into what you do and how you did that, how'd you even first meet? We both were members of the Women in Sustainability Network in northeast Ohio. So we first started meeting at events and then we went out to lunch one time and she was telling me about a branding project she had done for the Grand River Network.

In Michigan and she was talking about how she engaged the community, was developing the brand, and that she was collecting information from this audience to make sure that the brand resonated. And I was like floored. I had never heard of somebody engaging communities with branding before. So not only was I impressed with how collaborative it was, but I also instantly recognized that it was almost the same process that I used for strategic planning.

So that was a seed planted, that there was a lot of compatibility. 

And so was that lunch, like the direct lead into starting a business together or like kind of what happened next and how much time was between that and really founding sustainable economies? it was at least a year or a year and a half after that, but we were communicating throughout it, you know, emailing, trying to find opportunities.

What ended up happening is I ended up getting a contract to work with Summit Metro Parks. Hmm, which, you know, is in Summit County, Ohio. And it was a very big, complex project and I realized that it was too big for me to do a loan and due to a range of circumstances that were outta my control, um, Marissa had one day notice and I was like, could you co-lead this project with me?

I think it's big enough and complex and it has communications as a key element, and so we were launched into it and. So you had worked together before you mm-hmm. Actually founded the business. Yeah. Which is lovely. Yeah. Yes, yes. That's awesome. We had a chance to collaborate together and maybe three or four months into that summit Metro Parks project.

 Elizabeth had the idea to formalize our collaboration and become business partners and merge our two consulting practices into one business, which became sustainable economies. So you were both independent consulting prior to this? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Very, very cool. How long were you both doing that for?

I had been consulting for 10 years. And now I'm at six and a half years. Wow. 

I think you know, one of the things that stands out, Marissa, you've talked to us a lot about strategy and communications, and you were mentioning that in that example with Summit Metro Parks, and you have a conviction that they should be built together.

 Why is that so important? Sure. Yeah. I'll try to illustrate that through an example. Elizabeth mentioned the project that I worked on with Grand River Network, and I worked on this before Elizabeth and I met each other.

 so I'll say I instead of we, but most of the time we are working on projects together. Grand River Network was a brand development effort that happened alongside a strategy effort, and one of the reasons why that work was so powerful. Um, was that we were developing a brand for a coalition. So it was, you know, a number of groups, public and private partners.

There were banks, there were museums, there were nonprofits that were all coming together around revitalizing a river corridor. And, um, the context surrounding that was that. The river that was running through this city in Michigan had been mostly characterized by industrial uses. So there were factories, kind of light manufacturing that really used the river as a dumping ground.

It was really not a place that was a gathering place for the community. And when city leaders and others decided we wanna change how the community sees the river corridor, um, this coalition was, uh, a sort of chosen to spearhead that effort. So the strategy behind the coalition's effort was to ensure that the river corridor redevelopment would be for everyone.

It was an equity focused effort that ensured that it wouldn't just be high-end hotels and fancy restaurants and a redevelopment effort that would be for some of the community. It was an equity focused effort that ensured that the river would be the center of the community for absolutely everyone in the community and.

We were able to talk to people through interviews and focus groups, including talking to some of the tribal leaders who were part of the indigenous communities that had been there long before the city itself was established at a time when the river truly was a center of community. When people came there to get drinking water, to play, to wash their clothes, to have sacred ceremony.

Mm-hmm. And that feeling of the river being the center of community life from. Everyday activity to the most sacred moments in a person's life. The nonprofit leaders in that coalition were able to make a choice. To lean into that aspect of the brand strategy and pair that with the equity focused organizational strategy and make a choice around how they paired that organizational strategy and brand strategy.

And when you both came together and wanted to make sustainable economies, what was the problem you were really looking to solve?

so there were a couple of problems that we were hoping to solve. the first one is kind of twofold. the first was that. Conservation nonprofits were just not on track to meet their goals. They were not making enough progress toward meeting their biodiversity and community wellbeing goals.

And what we learned from, you know, five, 10 years of working directly with nonprofits is that they needed a few things from that process. One is that they really needed to be rooted in research. They needed to talk to their stakeholders and understand what communities needed from their organizations.

 the process is also a lot more effective when we look at it as a learning process that is iterative. So we usually spend three or four months. Doing research and engagement and learning before we make any decisions. But we also, um, in continue to refine the process and the decisions that we make as we continue to gather data and learn throughout the entire, through all the phases of the process.

Mm-hmm. And then we bake in change management and communications along the way. So that there are no surprises at the end when we're launching a strategic plan. Everyone who is impacted by the strategic plan is hearing about it from start to finish, and they're empowered to launch the plan and work on the plan because they've known about it for months ahead of time.

And then lastly, we're making sure that. The way it's written, the way it's launched, the way it's messaged is in plain language and in compelling messaging so that it's well received by all the stakeholders who are going to make that plan effective. Speaking of plain language, for most people who don't maybe know how, you know, nonprofit organizations work or how, usually the conversation around communications and strategy.

Goes, um, what is usually happening in these nonprofits? Like what's the status quo for navigating those things and what do you do differently? The status quo, even as recent as 10 years ago, traditional strategic planning is more top down. It's less collaborative. It doesn't involve engaging stakeholders or communities, and it has a detailed five-year action plan.

So strategic plans, even 10 years ago, they would map out quarterly actions for the next five years. Oh, and I know it's laughable in 2026. Uh, so today's plans are more flexible. So when we say getting to what matters most, bringing in the identity and the core elements of strategy that matter most, uh, we often call those North Star goals the outcomes.

'cause if you are a nonprofit that's addressing the biodiversity crisis. It doesn't matter what happens with the macro economy or policies, you're not gonna stop working on species because the biodiversity crisis is the thing that matters most. So we wanna pin down those tify, can I non-negotiables? Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. So you pin those down. Then we do still have three to five year goals because if you're changing too often, it confuses your staff and your donors. And even during change, you do still need to allocate resources. Uh, what I say is for those who say that strategic planning is dead. If you truly believe that your organization still has a strategy, whether or not you're choosing it, it's probably just not an intentional one.

Yeah. And then, uh, I'll link back to, I had mentioned that Summit Metro Parks is the first project we ever did together, and it was a really good first project. 'cause their executive director, Lisa King. Values planning. Mm-hmm. And she wanted to do all of the pieces, right? So we did stakeholder engagement in every phase of that project to make sure that we were linking it to staff needs.

We were listening to partners and we were listening to communities. So those are kind of all of the different elements. The the North star, oh, I didn't say this with the North Star or the piece, that doesn't change. You can adjust your strategy as you go. Mm-hmm. So that's a change from the five-year fixed plan.

You have adjustable strategies that can pivot, but as long as you're linking to your core identity, what matters and what resonates with communities, you have that flexibility built in, that echoes. Um, one of my mentors always says like, have a plan. Hold it loose. Mm-hmm. Like, yeah. I think that you, you live that very well of, you're helping organizations to plan because planning is so important.

And sometimes it's helpful to know your plans, that if you're gonna change, you see what's going to change. But that like, capacity for change seems really important. Mm-hmm. In the way that you. Guide organizations and help them think about strategy. So That's awesome. You know, thinking about Summit Metro Parks a little bit, um, and how you've approached, I, I love that that systems approach to, you've got your North Star, we know.

What we're working towards. But you're engaging with so many different pieces, again, and back to that systems thinking systems, complex systems that we're talking about. So many engagement areas. And one thing that has come up in, in how you're doing that is unlocking insights. That's how you're unlocking insights.

 that seems key to what you're doing, unlocking insights? And is the explanation that you gave by how I, how you engage people, how you unlock insights? Or is it slightly different? 

Marissa talked about the three to four month period in the beginning. We always say during that period, no decisions are made till the end of that period. And so we call it our learning period sometimes. 

So that's kind of where the insights come from. It's the combination of the dialogue and learning and then seeing the quantitative themes that come out of it. 

I wanna make sure we talk about some of the outcomes you've seen too with like successful client experiences.

 and I'm sure we probably could have an hour episode about just, I'm sure one client story, let alone maybe be a couple. what are some favorites that stand out to you? And, walk us through like where they started versus where they landed.

My favorite example is probably Muskingham Watershed Conservancy District. That's the biggest watershed in the state of Ohio. It takes up 20% of the state. 20% of the state? Yeah. 8,000 miles. Wow. And 18 counties. It goes from Akron down to Marietta. Wow. So the Musk Watershed Conservancy District has always had these three pillars of recreation, flood control, and conservation, but they had never truly formalized their conservation work.

So this was before Marissa and I partnered. So this was a project that I did about four years ago. I did their conservation strategic plan. I helped them facilitate that process. Uh, we did decide to incorporate the community focus groups, and we did six of them across the watershed. It included, you know, nonprofit leaders, government officials, and community leaders.

And after that, when I was presenting out to MWCD, they said to me, give us the bad news. Like they just assumed that people would go to a public engagement to complain about mm-hmm. The work that they were doing. And I was like, no, no, there wasn't any bad news. They said they wanna work with you more. And they were like, what?

And I said, every single one of the six focus groups said we would love in the space of conservation plan for the watershed, we would love MWCD to take more of a leadership role in convening partners, in making multi-jurisdictional connections. But because they were building this new formalized program, it took them a couple of years to build that in.

We set a goal of catalyzing collaboration in addition to like a biodiversity and a water quality goal. Mm-hmm. Um, but it took a few years, and it wasn't until November of this past year that Craig Butler, their executive director, finally was able to convene a group of university researchers to set a research agenda.

For the Muang and Watershed that would then inform policy and he was able to put funding in, um, the foundation for Appalachian, Ohio. He created a fund for this. So now, three, four years later, there's a funded collaboration to identify the research priorities that inform policy for the watershed. Wow.

Financial outcomes, community outcomes, organizational outcomes. Mm-hmm. That's beautiful. do you have a favorite of your own in terms of like seeing, seeing, you know, storytelling change the way we, well, I actually wanted to build on what Elizabeth was just talking about, because I think the process of strategic planning, and especially when you're able to pair strategic planning with thinking about organizational identity.

It helps you achieve that clarity that makes your organization so much easier to fund. Hmm. When you know your people love unique value in the sector. When you understand what differentiates you from other organizations who are competing for funding and also you understand. Your identity and you can work on building awareness and relationships based around that identity.

It is so much easier for you to focus on, these are the foundations and the grants and the donors that we know that we're gonna be successful in going after and knowing how many tasks in. Just like so much is on this organization's plates. You, you can be doing everything all the time, but that sense of like, it almost feels like you're really illuminating clarity for them.

Exactly. So they can really see like where their sweet spot is, where they're going to connect with people, where their personal magic is like, okay, you have this mission, but you're also good at these things. Mm-hmm. And you, you gotta connect those. Mm-hmm. Because we could hang out what we're not good at and not get anywhere.

Yeah. and to get a sense of like who you support, um, are your clients mostly in a certain geographic region where do you usually find your clients? We have about 60 to 70% of our clients in Ohio and the rest outside of Ohio, so nationally and then in several states around the country.

 How long is a usual engagement with a client? It really depends between three months to a year. Yeah, that sounds right. Okay. So it can just be that learning period, or it can be, the entire year. Yeah. Some projects are smaller. Maybe if we're working on a segment of a planning or a communications and messaging project, the Summit Metro Parks Project took.

Nine to 10 months, as an example. Okay. So it depends on the scope of what you're helping with and maybe how many stakeholders you gotta. Mm-hmm. Gather information from to fill in yourselves. Yes. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Um, one of the things that I think it can intimidate nonprofits or public agencies, 'cause it sounds really long, I think they get this perception that they'll be working on the project a hundred percent of the time for nine months.

Yeah. They're like, I'm busy. Can't time for this. Right. But no, actually the reason we make them a little longer is so that you can have two weeks between meetings and get caught up on your day job and process. What we thought about. So you can reflect. So it's actually that long because we pace it and build in breathers.

Mm-hmm. And I imagine you're helping them to also focus their efforts. Mm-hmm. You're helping them identify, I mean, probably a little bit tangentially, um, but as a result of the work with, with you both, is that you're gonna know what efforts are most impactful and what are, you know, worth their time. So helping them to make sure they're using their time wisely.

'cause they now are more aligned. That's right. Yeah, I think there's another thing that's become more important, more recently. Um, this is true for a lot of sectors, but especially for the conservation sector right now. There's a lot of uncertainty around funding, around policy and the nonprofits and public sector agencies that are trying to navigate that.

S they may feel a tendency to put things on pause. Um, but what we know from working with groups over the past 10 years is that a strong brand, especially one that is co-created with the stakeholders that are really important to your mission. Actually makes you more resilient in the face of those kinds of massive shocks.

And I'll tell you just a small example of that, you know, um, there was a report recently about a really vital homeless shelter that was serving victims of domestic violence that had to close because they lost a source of federal funding. And they could not pivot quickly enough to replace that funding from local sources.

And it was because they had done what so many mission-driven organizations do, which is to just kind of do their work quietly in the background and focus on serving their clients, which is noble and great, but what that means is. They didn't have relationships in the community. There wasn't a broad awareness of the good work that they were doing.

If you know what your North Star is and you know that these are the strategic pillars that we are focused on, you can. Pivot more easily in the face of a major shock to adjust your strategies while still remaining focused on your North Star. And so we're really counseling our clients to stay committed to building awareness, building relationships, and holding fast to your North Star to actually be more resilient.

 Yeah, and, and I can say I've seen that firsthand in the last year. I'm on the board of a nonprofit, and we were cut from funding that was supposed to be a reimbursement, and so the project was actually already complete.

And we were seeking the reimbursement, and that was when funding cuts occurred. Um, and so not only were we not able to have the funding, we expected, we were actually like really in need of that to come our way because the work had been completed and everyone else had been paid. and I, I mean, the way we got through it.

No credit to me, to our executive director. but she had already built such a strong network in the community and was able to put a call out and just be honest. And we even talked about how to word that and, you know, but the way people had shown up, um, to, with, with dollars and support and whatever we needed, was honestly truly amazing.

And the reason organization is still around today. I think that that could have certainly taken an organization under. Because mm-hmm. Nothing prepares you for that kind of surprise, but mm-hmm. Definitely could have seen that in action. Yeah. What a great example. 

What is the importance of measurable outcomes? Like we have this strategic plan, we do storytelling. you've gotta have some data and information to tell a story with too. So what are some examples of things that are important to measure?

And maybe can you give us some examples of where you've seen that apply for organizations? Yeah, I think in 2026 with all the uncertainties, I think that traditional smart goals. Specific, measurable, actionable. Um, realistic. Realistic. Realistic. Thank you. And time bound teamwork. Yeah. Um, that can be a little too constraining.

Mm-hmm. So rather than having, like in the land protection space, it used to be like, oh, we wanna get 5,000 acres by x date. We need more flexibility than that. So I say it should be measurable, that it can be measured. That's the first thing. Uh, we often see where nonprofits go wrong. They actually have too many metrics.

 And that can be very overwhelming. So what we tend to say is, some of the nonprofits we work with, it's the first year that they have, tied a measurement to goals in the strategic plan. And so it's normal in that first year that you're still figuring it out. You're building the data infrastructure.

And you're figuring out what the right metrics are. Because it's hard to measure biodiversity directly and it's hard to measure community health directly. So mostly what you're measuring are proxies for that, and it takes time to get better proxies that get a little closer to that. one client that we had last year was the Land Trust Alliance.

They're the national organization where all the land trusts in the US are members of them. They have about a thousand members. 

 But at the end of the year. We had all their metrics and a one pager. Oh, wow. And I say that because there were like five metrics at the end. Yeah. It's better to have five of the best, most accurate metrics than to have 50 that distract you.

Yeah. Well, I think that that's an excellent example of pairing the strategy and the story kept telling measurable, um, impacts through deep relationship building and then really having. That financial, social, and environmental outcomes. Mm-hmm. I think those are amazing. Um, I think we could keep talking about this forever, but we, we do have to eventually shut it down, but, and in some ways those are my reflections.

 Yeah, I just appreciate hearing how you both have collaborated. I think even just. The, the beauty, the fact that you both were independent working as consultants, and then you found this like beautiful synergy and now you get to bring your strengths together for your clients.

 I think you can really feel the way that you both balance one another, but also the perspectives you bring. yeah, the fact that. our nonprofits, you hit on it really well, Marissa, but like right now, it's really hard, for various reasons.

And it feels very unstable. And I think the reaction for so many people is to like hunker down and to think that they, you know, need to, to pivot or pause or whatever. And I think that you just bring such, like a calm mm-hmm. Data-driven, like human-centric energy to problem solving through this stuff. Um, I like your optimism while still being like really full of wisdom 

 this brought me hope right now given how very scary some of these conversations are for nonprofits. So thanks for walking through how you approach problems, how for organizations and just thank you for the work that you're doing. Yeah. How can our listeners connect with the two of you to learn more?

You can find us on LinkedIn at sustainable economies. And our website is sustainable economies.com. Fantastic. Perfect. Thanks guys. 

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