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While working as a creative director at the nonprofit Charity: Water, Tyler Riewer kept getting variations on the same question from other nonprofits: How had the organization built a wildly successful brand? When it launched in 2006, the nonprofit immediately looked different from traditional nonprofits. It was modern, optimistic, and radically transparent. It told personal stories that people wanted to share. It experimented with new ideas like peer-to-peer fundraising. To date, its raised more than $1 billion for clean water projects around the world. The creative team freely offered advice, but they always wanted to be able to do more. Thats why Riewer and three other former Charity: Water coworkers are now launching an agency of their own. The agency is called Mutiny for Gooda name thats tongue in cheek but also represents what its founders genuinely feel, says Anthony Marinos, who previously led business development and partnerships at Charity: Water. We cannot sit idly by while others try to shape our world into something that we dont believe in, Marinos says. Theres so much negativity at the moment. We really feel like we can channel our expertise, our optimism, our excitement for this sector as a whole, to help uplift the messages and tell those stories that are often either being ignored or buried or going completely untold. [Image: courtesy Mutiny for Good] A turning point came earlier this year. We knew there was an opportunity to help share our expertise with the wider nonprofit communitybut the thing that really gave us purpose was the pressure being applied to the sector from the outside right now, Riewer says. Kelly Herrington and Tyler Riewer in Nepal for Charity: Water in 2022 [Photo: Cubby Graham/Charity: Water] We were filming a video for Charity: Water in Ethiopia when the USAID cuts were announced earlier this year. We were in a womans home, and behind her was a bag of flour with the words, From the American People. That food saved lives and was one of the few reliable things when her country was going through civil war. And then bam . . . gone overnight,” he says. We just had this collective moment where we felt like doing good was under attack. And we all felt an immediate obligation to do more. (Also, Charity: Water had relocated its headquarters from New York City to Nashville and was asking remote employees to move; the founders felt like the timing was right for them to go in a different direction.) [Image: Charity: Water] For many nonprofits, branding is still an afterthought. That might be especially true now, as nonprofits face funding cuts while simultaneously dealing with the fallout from changing federal policy on everything from immigration to the environment. But it doesnt have to be expensive to arm small nonprofits who dont have much budget with tools that they need to be successful, Riewer says. Along with Riewer and Marinos, the founding team includes Kristina Brumby, a design director at Charity: Water, and Kelly Herrington, who was creative and video lead at the nonprofit. Charity: Water launched after founder Scott Harrisonpreviously a hard-partying nightclub promoter in New York Cityquit his job, volunteered in West Africa, and saw firsthand the devastating impact of polluted drinking water. When he returned to New York, Harrison asked friends at his next birthday party to donate money to help rebuild wells at a refugee camp in Uganda. He documented the work in detail so that his friends would know where their money had gone. That idea helped spark the nonprofit, which later invited donors to host their own fundraising partiesand which promised new transparency in showing how the nonprofit used funds. From the beginning, it presented itself differently than others in the space. Instead of bleak photos of suffering children that make potential donors feel a sense of guilt, the organization focused on “after” images of people who were thriving, and used bright, optimistic branding. Charity: Water’s branding focused on storytelling, helping people feel an emotional connection with individuals whose lives changed because of clean water. And the nonprofit was early to embrace social media. The brand made donating feel cool and empowering. Harrison described his mission as “reinventing” charity. [Image: Charity: Water] That approach is still rare in the nonprofit world. Right now, the team says, the ads that are most successful at making someone have an emotional reaction tend to be for products, not causes. But that doesnt have to be the case. If an ad is for a dog food company, Why did Farmer’s Dog make this ad instead of the ASPCA? Marinos asks. A nonprofit might not have the budget to buy ad space on streaming platforms. But if an ad genuinely connects with people, it can work just as well on YouTube. The Mutiny for Good team plans to encourage clients to take risks and experiment with new messaging, the strategy that helped make Charity: Water successful. (One recent Charity: Water video, for example, starts with the words, “Charity sucks. Another asks viewers to imagine that they’re a 6-year-old girl growing up in poverty in a rural part of the developing world.) Mutiny for Good aims to work with a wide range of organizations, from local groups to national and international organizations. One of its first clients is Hookuaina, a nonprofit in Hawaii that mentors youth on a farm growing traditional crops like taro. Filming for Hookuaina, 2025 [Photo: Cubby Graham/courtesy Mutiny for Good] “The thing that we’ve been hung up on lately is for-profit brands outspend nonprofits on advertising by 100 to 1,” Riewer says. “The answer is not necessarily that you need to throw money at this. It is, you need to see yourself as a competitor and you need to step on the field. You solve it by finding meaningful ways, human ways, to connect with people and tell your story. If you can do that, you can compete with the for-profit space. Riewer adds: Why don’t world-changing organizations have world-class creative and strategy? We believe that they should and they can.”
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E-Commerce
A few years ago, I met a woman at a networking event who whispered her confession over a plastic cup of chardonnay: I love my job. Im proud of what Ive built. But every time I miss a school play or forget to sign a field trip form, I feel like I failed them. She didnt say who them referred to. Perhaps her kids, society, herself. Maybe all three. That moment stuck with me because it symbolized the tension so many ambitious parents live with every day: The drive to achieve versus the guilt that comes from not always being present for our family. And lets be clear, this isnt just a working mom issue. Dads feel it. Stay-at-home parents with side hustles or passion projects feel it. Anyone who wants something outside of parenthoodwhether its a promotion, a creative dream, or even just a regular workout routineknows that familiar battle between showing up for yourself and showing up for your kids. Where does the guilt come from? Lets start with the root of this guilt. For many of us, especially women, ambition and parenting, have long been thought of as rival (if not warring) priorities. A parent who is all-in at work is assumed to be checked out at home. The culture tells us you cant be fully present in both places. And if you try, be prepared to be stretched thinner than a toddlers patience in a long checkout line. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2015\/08\/erikaaslogo.png","headline":"Girl, Listen: A Guide to What Really Matters","description":"Ericka dives into the heat of modern motherhood, challenging the notion that personal identity must be sacrificed at the altar of parenting. ","substackDomain":"https:\/\/erickasouter.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} Social media certainly doesnt help. While were eating chips over our laptops, we scroll past moms packing bento box lunches with star-shaped cucumbers and love notes. We see dads coaching every Saturday soccer game while were FaceTiming from a hotel room on yet another work trip. The comparison game is brutal. Yet, guilt doesnt only come from comparing ourselves to the parents who treat lunch prep like a Top Chef challenge. It hits because we care. Ambitious parents arent just chasing promotions, were also chasing snuggles, bedtime stories, and the sense that were nailing this whole being a present parent thing. So if we fall short, it feels like a dagger to the heart. Is it possible to be ambitious and a great parent? The short answer is yes. But not without first redefining what great really looks like. Being a good parent isnt about being there for every single moment. Its about being there for the ones that matter most. You can miss the bake sale and still raise a kid that feels cared for and secure. What children need more than perfection is a realistic role model. They need to see what it looks like to pursue a dream, have challenges, set boundaries, and show up for the people you love. When its rooted in purpose, ambition teaches kids resilience, how to manage their time and what it looks like to care deeply about something. That doesnt mean we should be so focused on the next achievement that we miss whats happening right in front of us. The key is staying in syncpursuing your goals without neglecting your childs needs . . . or your own. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2015\/08\/erikaaslogo.png","headline":"Girl, Listen: A Guide to What Really Matters","description":"Ericka dives into the heat of modern motherhood, challenging the notion that personal identity must be sacrificed at the altar of parenting. ","substackDomain":"https:\/\/erickasouter.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
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E-Commerce
Ever since AI chatbots arrived, it feels as if the media has been on the losing end of a war of attrition. Chatbots are surging in popularity, and the more people use AI to get answers instead of search results, the fewer visits to the websites that provide those answers. Even Google, whose business model depends on monetizing search, is pushing deeper into AI, and industry data shows AI bots are flourishing. However, actions have a habit of inspiring reactions. Lawsuits are mounting as more media companies take on the AI giants over copyright, which may yet prove decisiverecent rulings notwithstanding. And publishers are increasing their website defenses against AI crawlers, blocking more of them than ever. And now we may have hit a tipping point: Cloudflare, a major internet infrastructure provider, has taken a stand in the conflict. In an announcement designed for maximum impact, the company said it would begin blocking AI scrapers by default on the websites it manages. If you’re a site operator on Cloudflare’s network, you will now need to actively allow AI bots to index your content. If you don’t, they get blocked. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} Clout in the cloud Cloudflare manages about 20% of all internet traffic, so the implications of the move are significant. And so is the business opportunity: With the announcement, Cloudflare is also launching a marketplace for bot traffic. Instead of blocking AI bots completely, site owners will be able to charge them a fee for access via the new Pay Per Crawl programessentially a micropayment system. A few startups, such as TollBit and ScalePost, operate similar systems, but considering CloudFlare’s scale, it may have instantly become their biggest competitor. Cloudflare is a content delivery network (CDN), a crucial but largely invisible part of the internet to most users. A CDN will cache content to keep it closer to end users, generally speeding up web traffic. It runs many other related services, toothings like preventing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, enabling secure connections, and hosting websitesbut mostly it’s a middleman between website visitors and website servers, optimizing delivery and ensuring security. The way AI bots interact with websites is usually managed by each site’s Robots Exclusion Protocol (robots.txt), but it’s largely an honor system that depends on bots accurately identifying themselves and then following the rules, which they tend to liberally interpret. Cloudflare’s influence isn’t regulation per se, but it may give that standard some de facto teeth. The company claims it “identifies and distinguishes AI crawlers through its sophisticated bot detection system.” If that means Cloudflare can detect, trace, and perhaps even punish bad actors who ignore or bypass the protocol, it could mean the tides are turning. However, there is the nagging reality of the other 80% of the internet. Other CDN giants, such as Akamai, would need to get on board to really have an effect, but even that would only amount to about half of web activity. And large parts of the rest of the internet aren’t motivated to act: Google, Meta, and Microsoft operate much of the infrastructure that supports their massive, scalable businesses, and they’re all in the business of building AI models so they have an interest in maximizing AI crawler activity. Still, the pushback is real. Cloudflare’s announcement was deeply planned: the press release includes quotes from dozens of media executivesfrom Time to Dotdash Meredith and even content-based tech platforms like Quora. Although some in the group are media players who are suing AI companies, you get the sense that the others are using this moment to voice their own indignation at what they see as the wide-scale theft of the lifeblood of their industry. That indignation is fueling a new consensus, which is reflected in the many content licensing deals publishers have signed with AI companies over the past two years: that AI summarization should require some form of compensation. Monetizing the internet of bots The Cloudflare news gives publishers a more solid foundation to not just mount a defense against AI bots, but to build on that consensusto turn the rising robot activity into an opportunity. A comprehensive strategy around the growing “internet of bots” should include three elements: Block or introduce a toll for AI scraping: Identifying bots is conceptually straightforward, but has practical challenges because they multiply and sometimes mask what they are. Build for bots: Publishers should build a good user experience, and that goes for bots, tooas long as they pay to get in. They should have real-time access to simply presented, accurate information to fuel the best possible summaries, with correct citations. Build branded AI experiences: For the people who do come to your site, give them a reason to stay. Going back to ChatGPT for every query isn’t idealfor anyone. The third element is important because, while publishers are threatened by unscrupulous AI bots, they can’t deny that people still want to use them. AI answers remove friction andare changing expectations around searcheven site search. Publishers shouldn’t just acknowledge that, but take advantage of it to keep audiences on its own site. All of this depends on being able to separate bot traffic from human traffic. And if Cloudflare is indeed only the first CDN to make this move, there’s a hope that publishers won’t have to wait for a favorable court ruling or new regulations to get the teeth they need. However, there is still a role that the government can play. Cloudflare’s sophisticated bot detection would have an even greater effect if it were illegal for bots to hide their true nature and try to pass for humans. Such a rule would be simple and strongly encourage a fairer information ecosystem, one where publishers can start designing the right experiences for the right audiences. If the future of websites is to serve up the best experience to a bot, they should at least have clarity on what that is. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
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E-Commerce
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