Crux & Bolts
Through her consulting practice, Crux & Bolts, Gisela helps B2B professional services firms and partnership-driven nonprofits to better align the things they say with the things they do. Gisela’s clients get great copy, and their audiences get greater clarity.
“Untitled (Gem)” was created by Virginia Overton in 2018. Photo of the piece by Gisela Garrett.
Internal-External Alignment Assessment
At some point, every organization has gaps between what they say and what they do. The bigger the gaps, the bigger the risks to credibility — which messes with win rates, customer retention, employee satisfaction, donor acquisition, and more.
The Internal-External Alignment Assessment outlines those discrepancies in an individualized report, which flags high priorities and recommends ways of bridging the biggest gaps.
In less than two months, clients get actionable clarity on how to refocus their messaging and rebuild trust.
Internal-External Alignment Assessments start at $6,000, but organizations may invest $20,000 or more, specifically depending on their scale and how deep we go with discovery.
Campaign Retro
For nonprofits and community groups facing resource constraints, I offer a concentrated Fundraising Campaign Retroactive Assessment. This one-time assessment is available following a Giving Tuesday campaign, an annual benefit, or another donor-facing fundraising push. The assessment specifically focuses on the campaign’s alignment with a stated mission, and the resulting report includes actionable takeaways for use during the next messaging-heavy donor engagement.
Campaign Retros cost $3,400 and include a report along with two workshops for reviewing and unpacking the findings. A report without workshops costs $2,500.
Editorial Realignment
At the base of any well-branded content, there is a powerful collection of verbal building blocks. They represent the core messaging infrastructure of an organization.
And yet, these assets are typically unmaintained and unmanaged. For some organizations, standard language is totally undocumented and simply lives in a few people’s heads.
To build and maintain credibility with your messaging — and to ensure that your whole team is creating high-conversion materials without a ton of internal rewrites — you need a set of go-to, incontrovertible building blocks.
An Editorial Realignment project gives you that. The specific boilerplate text documents are different for every client but may include “about us” language, foundational case studies, overviews of primary services or programs, leadership bios, and more. In some cases, I do strategic rewrites; in others, I provide totally new language.
All Editorial Realignment projects also include an editorial style guide. This practical and time-saving tool keeps your team on the same page going forward — and helps your clients, partners, donors, and other stakeholders hear a cohesive and credible organizational voice in every future touch point.
Through an Editorial Realignment project, clients get the core messaging infrastructure necessary for writing confidently and consistently about the organization. As a result, they experience reduced internal rework and increased external credibility.
Rates vary based on the scale of the organization and the nature of boilerplate text documents. For clients looking to improve upon existing editorial building blocks, pricing starts at $9,000. For those starting from a relatively blank slate, pricing starts at $12,000.
In either case, hiring me for an Internal-External Alignment Assessment will earn you a $6,000 discount on your Editorial Realignment project.
Special Projects & On-Call Editorial Support
I’m also available for ghostwriting, op-eds, blogging, other executive thought leadership, targeted writing support for key account growth, writing and editing for multi-author plans and documents, employee onboarding materials, and more. I help extend the voice of your organization — and the reputation of your leaders — beyond the rooms that you’re physically in today. And I ensure that we do it in an operationally efficient way.