What Star Trek taught me about nonprofit marketing 

Jaclyn Uloth:
Welcome to How to Market Your Nonprofit, the Counterintuity podcast featuring interviews with experts in marketing, fundraising, strategy, and leadership who offer how-tos and inspiration about how you can help your nonprofit succeed and grow during a time of chaos and change. Bringing his 25 plus years of experience in marketing, strategy, and nonprofit management, here’s our host, Lee Wochner.

Lee Wochner:
Why We Do What We Do solocast 260106

You know, when people ask me what Counterintuity does, the easy answer is “marketing and strategy.” But that’s not really the full picture. That’s like saying Star Trek was about spaceships, and that superhero comics are just about fighting supervillains — when both of them are about a whole lot more.

The real answer? We’re trying to make life better. Seriously. And today, I want to tell you why that matters—especially now—and what it actually means when a marketing agency says something like that.

When I was five years old, watching the original “Star Trek” was something I did with my father. I’d run down to his basement workshop, because he was always down there working on something — this was a man running two businesses and also doing a lot of projects in that basement and in the garage — and I’d remind him that our show was on. This was the original “Star Trek.” Not the reboots, not the movies, not the slick newer shows—this was the one with cardboard sets and Styrofoam rocks and battles with guys in bad alien lizard costumes. And even then, even at age five, something clicked for me. It wasn’t about the phasers or the alien makeup. It was about the idea embedded in every episode: that humanity could be better. That we could work together in this thing called the Federation. That we could solve problems through intelligence, collaboration, and yes—hope. That we could work with other people, other races, each other, and work together from a position of hope and determination.

That seed got watered by superhero comics where the premise was: that individuals could choose to use their abilities—whatever they were—to make things better for others. Then came the writers who shaped how I see the world: Alvin Toffler teaching me about the acceleration of change, R. Buckminster Fuller showing me that design could solve global problems or at least make them better, Isaac Asimov exploring how technology and humanity intersect.

All of them were asking the same fundamental question: How do we build a better future?

And here’s the thing—I never stopped asking that question. It became the lens through which I see everything, including business, including marketing.

We can do better. How do we get there?

Now, let’s be honest. When you hear “marketing agency” and “making life better” in the same sentence, you might be… skeptical. It sounds either too corny, or too false. Because people can associate marketing, or, even reputationally worse, “advertising,” with manipulation.  With selling people things they don’t need, with contributing to the noise and the overwhelm of modern life.

And I get it. Because a lot of marketing does do that.

But here’s the truth:  Marketing, at its core, is about connection. It’s about communication, and communication is about connection. It’s about helping the right people find the right solutions. It’s about telling stories that matter. And strategy? Strategy is about seeing the bigger picture and making intentional choices about how you navigate toward a better outcome.

So the question became: What if we approached marketing and strategy the way those Star Trek episodes approached problem-solving? What if we brought that same orientation—that same belief that we can be better, do better, that we can hold high ideals, and keep them, and act from them—what if we brought that same orientation into how we help organizations communicate and grow?

This isn’t abstract philosophy. This is our approach.

When we work with a client, we’re not just thinking about clicks and conversions. We’re asking: What problem does this nonprofit organization actually solve in the world? Who genuinely needs what they offer? How do we connect those two things in a way that’s honest, clear, and effective?

We’re asking: How does this work contribute to a better future? Not in some grandiose, save-the-world way—though sometimes that’s literally the mission. But in the everyday sense: Are we helping people find solutions that improve their lives? Are we helping organizations that do good work reach the people who need them? Are we creating clarity in a world drowning in noise?

Making life better can mean:

• Helping a healthcare company communicate life-saving information more effectively
• Giving a sustainability-focused organization the strategy to actually compete and survive
• Helping an arts organization find its best audience, and its best supporters, so that everyone involved can feel lifted up by the arts in a time when some of us need it most
• Developing stories and outreach for a nonprofit that supports victims of sexual assault — about 15,000 of them in Los Angeles in just the past year

It means doing work that matters to someone, somewhere. Work that moves the needle toward that better future I’ve been obsessed with since I was five. The future that I naively expected to find as I grew older, but, lacking finding it, that many of us are gamely working toward every day.

So when I saw that Counterintuity landed a 2025 Fan Fave in Spotify Wrapped, it hit differently than you might expect. We’ve won awards for our work before — more than 50 of them — but this one felt different.

I know we have listeners—people email me, they reach out on social, they stop me at conferences. But this was people saying: “This is one of my favorites. This is something I come back to. This matters to me.”

And here’s why that recognition means so much: because these aren’t just passive consumers of content. These are people in the trenches. People running companies and organizations, leading teams, trying to solve real problems. People who are also working on that better future.

To be called a favorite by those people? That tells me we’re doing something right. That tells me the work resonates. That tells me we’re actually contributing to something larger than ourselves.

It may sound corny—”making life better through marketing”—but I don’t think it is. I think it’s more important now than ever.

Because here’s what I believe: we’re at a moment where every choice matters more. Where the noise is louder, the stakes are higher, and the need for clarity, for purpose, for intentionality has never been greater.

The organizations that will thrive—that will actually contribute to that better future—are the ones that understand their real value, communicate it effectively, and build genuine connections with the people they serve.

That’s the work. That’s what we do. That’s what we’re trying to build with every client, every strategy session, every piece of content we put out into the world.

And if you’re listening to this, there’s a good chance you’re working on that future too. Maybe you’re a leader trying to bring something meaningful into the world. Maybe you’re a marketer questioning whether your work actually matters. Maybe you’re just someone trying to do good work in a complicated world.

And I need to be explicit about something that’s central to how we do this work: a huge part of our focus—our intentional focus—is working with and through nonprofits.

Think about it: nonprofits are organizations that exist, by definition, to make life better. That’s not marketing speak—that’s literally their mission. They’re dedicated to improving health, advancing education, protecting the environment, fighting injustice, supporting communities. They’re not trying to maximize shareholder value. They’re trying to maximize human value, social value, planetary value.

Just today, shortly before recording this, we were on a call with one of our clients and they shared how they had personally intervened to rescue someone who had been lured into human trafficking. Coordinated with the victim, picked them up at a safe location, and put them onto a bus back home to family and friends. Without this courageous nonprofit, another person would be trapped into a life of forced sexual slavery.

When we help a nonprofit clarify their message, refine their strategy, reach more of the right people, develop and put out their marketing—we’re not just helping that organization. We’re amplifying their ability to do good in the world. We’re helping them compete for attention and resources in a landscape where they’re otherwise outmaneuvered by entities with ten times their budget.

For us at Counterintuity, working with nonprofits is mission-critical work. It’s one of the most direct ways we can contribute to that better future. Because when a nonprofit succeeds in their mission, when they can articulate their value and connect with supporters and serve more people effectively—that ripples out. That’s making life better in the most literal, tangible sense.

My association with nonprofits and social issues has run throughout my life. As a teenager, I was an inveterate writer of letters to the editor, of newspapers and magazines. I remember getting an invitation to connect with a well-known national nonprofit that responded to a letter I had printed in the Atlantic City Press; I think they assumed I was in my 30s or so, when actually I was 14. I volunteered on some political campaigns in my teens. One election day when I was 18, my father drove the whole family to the polling place so we all could vote, and then told us we’d done our civic duty. (He also served on the local school board, and was prominent in a local civic association, the sort that helps the community whenever needed. My mother was very active in our family’s church, doing bake sales and volunteering and helping families that needed help.)

In 1990, I started a nonprofit that still runs today, a theatre company; I’m still on the board. A few years after that, I got elected to another board, and since then I’ve done a lot of nonprofit board service. At one time, I sat on 13 different boards, panels, committees and commissions — a feat I don’t recommend. (It spreads you too thin to be truly effective.) I’ve also run some other nonprofits, and have served on two foundation boards.

My co-founder at Counterintuity, Amy Kramer, has a similar background. Twenty-five years ago, I actually met Amy through a nonprofit I was running — she was running another one, and we partnered through those two organizations and then later decided to become business partners in founding a marketing agency dedicated to nonprofits. She also co-founded and ran an additional nonprofit organization, that one dedicated to women going through cancer treatments: really important work.

Nonprofit service, and community service, is in our blood here at Counterintuity.

So is hope.

So is determination.

So if you don’t like what’s in the news – and, by the way, I don’t either – please remember that there are millions of us, millions upon millions all over the world, working on all sorts of issues, and making real progress on many of them.

And, if you’re listening to this, you’re no doubt among those millions of people making a real difference in your community, or regionally, or nationally, or internationally, and sometimes without knowing it in the lives of people you know, and sometimes even in the lives of people you don’t know.

Hope and determination are powerful forces.

So thank you. Thank you for listening, for engaging, for being part of this conversation. Thank you for being willing to believe that, yes, we can be better, we can do better, and we can be part of making life better—even through something as mistakenly mundane-sounding as marketing and strategy. Mistakenly because:  If you really want to change the world, you need to involve the world in it. Marketing and strategy are essential to the better future.

We’re working on that future. And I know you are too.

Thank you.

Jaclyn Uloth:
Thanks for listening. How to Market Your Nonprofit is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Please like and follow the show. Visit counterintuity.com to learn more.