IM ABLE Foundation
One Message, Every Audience
How IM ABLE Foundation built a clearer message across every audience it serves.
Work: Messaging and positioning strategy, marketing roadmap, quarterly marketing planning, and ongoing strategic guidance.
The Challenge
The IM ABLE Foundation helps remove obstacles that prevent people with disabilities from being physically active. Its work includes adaptive equipment grants, inclusive fitness programs, and opportunities that bring people of different abilities together through movement.
The organization already had a strong mission, committed leadership, and meaningful stories to share.
But as its programs and reach grew, its marketing needed a clearer foundation.
IM ABLE was speaking to several different groups, including program participants, families, donors, sponsors, volunteers, and community partners. Each audience needed to understand the organization from a slightly different perspective.
The challenge was not finding more things to say. It was deciding which messages mattered most, how they connected, and how to communicate them consistently.
Without that clarity, marketing could become reactive. Individual events, fundraising needs, programs, and stories competed for attention rather than working together to reinforce the larger mission.
The team needed a message and a practical marketing plan that felt true to the organization and could guide its decisions throughout the year.
The Shift
We helped the IM ABLE team step back from individual marketing activities and look at the organization as a whole.
Together, we clarified what the foundation needed people to understand, who it needed to reach, and how its programs connected to one central purpose.
The work was highly collaborative. Rather than bringing in a standard nonprofit marketing formula, we listened carefully to the team, asked questions, and built the strategy around IM ABLE’s mission, values, and priorities.
This gave the team a clearer way to evaluate marketing opportunities. Instead of treating every event, program, or communication as a separate project, they could begin making decisions from a shared strategy.
What We Did
Messaging and Positioning Strategy
We worked with the team to clarify how IM ABLE explains its mission, the barriers it helps remove, and the difference its programs can make in people’s lives.
We also considered the different reasons participants, families, donors, sponsors, and community partners connect with the organization.
The goal was not to create a polished slogan and stop there. It was to give the team language that felt authentic and could be used across conversations, fundraising, programs, and marketing materials.
Marketing Roadmap
Once the message was clearer, we developed a two-year marketing plan, organized into quarterly phases, that connected IM ABLE’s priorities, audiences, programs, events, and fundraising efforts.
The roadmap helped the team determine where to focus, what to communicate, and how different marketing activities could support one another throughout the year.
It also created a more practical structure for planning ahead rather than making each marketing decision in isolation.
Quarterly Marketing Planning
Our work continued through quarterly strategy calls.
These conversations gave the team time to review upcoming priorities, consider new opportunities, and adjust the plan as the organization evolved.
Rather than handing over a strategy document and stepping away, we helped IM ABLE continue applying the strategy to its real work.
The quarterly planning process also helped keep the organization’s messaging, marketing activities, and broader goals connected.
What Is Different Now
IM ABLE has a clearer foundation for explaining its work and making marketing decisions.
The team has more consistent language for communicating the organization’s mission, values, and programs to the people it wants to reach.
Its marketing is guided by a plan rather than a collection of unrelated activities.
The organization also has an ongoing process for reviewing priorities, adapting the strategy, and keeping its communications aligned as new needs and opportunities arise.
Most importantly, the message still sounds like IM ABLE. It reflects the heart of the organization rather than feeling like a marketing formula placed on top of it.
“Working with Tracey at Illustrated Designs [ID Nexus] was an exceptional experience from start to finish. She took the time to truly listen, ask insightful questions, and understand the heart of our mission. That level of care made all the difference."
Ashley Tomasko, MBA
Director of Marketing and Communications, IM ABLE Foundation
Why This Project Matters
IM ABLE already had the mission, commitment, and substance.
The opportunity was to make that value easier for participants, families, donors, sponsors, and community partners to understand.
This project shows why ID Nexus begins with strategy and messaging before moving into more marketing activity.
We helped the organization clarify what it needed to say, organize its priorities, and build a marketing plan around that foundation. The ongoing quarterly conversations then helped the team continue using the strategy as the organization grew.
The result was not simply a set of marketing materials. It was greater clarity about where the organization was going, how to talk about its work, and how its marketing could help move the mission forward.
Build a Clearer Path Forward
We’ll talk about what’s working, where your marketing feels unclear or disconnected, and what the right next step might be.