I work with organizations to build powerful brands, strengthen communities, and deepen engagement to drive social impact. My clients and partners are grassroots organizations, coalitions, advocacy organizations, foundations, and impact-focused businesses that advance racial justice, gender justice, civic engagement, environmental justice, climate justice, education, and LGBTQIA+ rights. Clients and partners have included Tides Advocacy, The Whitman Institute, Barr Foundation, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, The Solutions Project, Earthjustice, PolicyLink, Kiva, Narrative Initiative, Green New Deal Network, COMPASS, Greenpeace, and 18MR.• Brand strategy, positioning, and identity design• Communications consulting - messaging, strategy, collateral development, and more• Campaign strategy and design• Websites• Digital strategy, outreach, research, design• Public relations and media affairs• Writing• Content strategy• Network building• Coalition management• Rapid response and crisis comms

I have been honored to join the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition four times as Interim Communications Director. I served in this role July - Oct 2018, April - August 2019, May - November 2020, and August - October 2023. It's a dream working with this passionate and effective advocacy organization. • Wrote and edited the weekly Biker Bulletin email to 40,000+ supporters• Edited all email communications, including the Business Bulletin, Volunteer Newsletter, Women Bike SF newsletter, Youth and Family Biking newsletter, Bike Education newsletter, as well as advocacy campaign updates.• Managed crisis communications, including communications following three tragic bicycle fatalities in the summer of 2018. • Developed relationships with local media and handled all media requests (print, radio, and TV), resulting in an average of 3 local and national media mentions per week.• Trained and mentored staff across the organization in effective storytelling, writing, and design.• Executive editor of issues 165 and 168 of the Tube Times, SF Bicycle Coalition's quarterly print newsletter for members.• Oversaw communications surrounding the SF Bicycle Coalition's endorsements process and announcements for the November 2018, 2019, and 2020 elections.• Provided guidance to the Executive Director on communications and media strategy.• In collaboration with all staff, honed narrative strategies in response to the COVID pandemic.• Wrote and placed a joint op-ed in the SF Examiner for the Global Climate Action Summit.

Tides is a progressive public foundation and nonprofit accelerator that has mobilized over $3B for social change since 1976. It has long been a pioneer in the field of social change, taking smart risks in deploying philanthropic capital and scaling innovative organizations. In 2015, Tides was at a turning point, having defined a new vision, mission and approach. I joined the organization to rebuild the communications function from the ground up. I led a comprehensive rebranding of Tides in 2016, working closely with the CEO, executive team and consultants. In this process, I engaged stakeholders across Tides' network of funders and changemakers, as well as staff across the organization of 100, to define a brand that captured Tides' DNA, our unique position in the field of social change, and our vision for the future of philanthropy. What resulted is a brand that has been called "pitch perfect," "inspiring," and "spot on" by leaders in the field.In 2017 I managed the complete redesign of tides.org, working with design agency Briteweb, and helped grow the team to 3 people. With the launch of the website, we debuted our new brand to the world. I oversaw the logistics of pushing out our new brand across internal and external facing systems, and orchestrated a brand roll-out that involved and engaged our staff, board, and network in telling our new brand story. This process deepened my passions for internal communications and the nurturing of positive organizational culture, critical components for the success of external communications.In this role I also managed all aspects of communications for the organization, including media relations, social media, writing and thought leadership, event design and production, staff trainings, grantee capacity building, the production of marketing and sales collateral, advertising, and more.

Upwell was a nonprofit tech startup that used Big Listening and networked digital content campaigns to raise attention to marine conservation issues. The ocean was our client.I designed and directed campaigns across a distributed network of free agents and ocean communicators in the nonprofit, academic and government sectors. I worked across an abundance of online content channels, growing audience sizes and deepening existing audience relationships by increasing the volume, substance and relevance of ocean related content. Our campaigns were brand (and organization) agnostic, and were informed by our big listening practices and campaign insights.I curated the best online ocean content and scraped social media conversations about the ocean to identify trends and opportunities to increase attention to conservation efforts (using a suite of paid and free analytics tools, including Radian6, PlexusEngine, Topsy Pro, Facebook Insights and more).I built and strengthened our distributed network of ocean conservation communicators, scientists, executives, bloggers and journalists that amplify our socially shareable ocean content.Read my Upwell blog posts at http://www.upwell.us/blogs/ray-dearbornUpwell closed in 2015.

• Conducted in-depth research, analysis and strategic planning for a variety of nonprofits and foundations with a primary focus on environmental protection, sustainable fisheries and health policy.• Provided hands-on and web-based coaching and training to nonprofits on communications planning, social media, media outreach and messaging.• Served as online communications and social media expert for Spitfire staff. Consulted colleagues on online aspects for projects, and introduced new web-based tools to improve internal communications and productivity for the Spitfire team. • Managed web design projects for clients and made recommendations on design best practices for the nonprofit and philanthropic communities. • Managed large-scale events and projects and provided ongoing communications support for coalitions.

• Provided support to policy team on accounts ranging from ocean policy to children’s health advocacy.• Regularly conducted media and policy research, created comprehensive media lists, pitched reporters, contributed to communications planning, drafted and edited opinion pieces, fact sheets, messages, policy and research reports and advocacy materials.

• Conducted legal research and factual investigations on a variety of civil rights matters and drafted correspondence, legal pleadings, and press releases.• Served as technical support for DC office and handled all website updates and edits.