I’m sat in a noisy Starbucks with a soulless coffee cup as I write this — and it’s hard to ignore how much it’s changed.
It used to feel like a coffeehouse. You got a ceramic mug if you stayed. A sharpie-scrawled name if you took it to go.You could sink into a soft chair. Nobody rushed you out.
Now?
You get a printed sticker with your name.
You stand in line with delivery drivers.
You wait longer and linger less.
And the result? Falling sales. A new CEO promising to get back to basics. To return to what made Starbucks Starbucks in the first place.
I’m a big believer in playing into the heritage of a brand — not shying away from it. That familiarity, that identity, is part of why people show up in the first place.
In nonprofits we should also take note.
It’s easy to drift—from mission, from voice, from the small things that made people care. You introduce a new strategy. Change your tone of voice. Make things more “efficient.”And slowly, you stop feeling like you. Supporters notice. They might not say anything. But they stop reading your emails. Stop giving. Stop showing up.
Sometimes, growth isn’t about scaling up.It’s about returning to what made people love you to begin with.