Community Highlights: Meet Patty Breech of The Purpose Collective

Today we’d like to introduce you to Patty Breech.

Hi Patty, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I did not graduate college knowing I wanted to be a nonprofit digital marketing consultant. What I did know was that I wanted to take some time to explore the world and try a variety of experiences. I biked across the country for Habitat for Humanity, spent some time in Australia, moved to a ski town in Colorado for a while, and lived on Catalina Island, where I worked at a summer camp. After a year of hopping from place to place, I decided to put some roots down with a friend of mine in Boulder.

There, I landed a job as a green building consultant. I stayed in that role for five years, becoming a LEED Accredited Professional. I loved the work and the mission behind it! My job included running a nonprofit focused on bringing more recycling programs to elementary schools. Working with schools and contributing to the green building movement gave me a sense of purpose. I felt like my work was meaningful and that I was making a positive impact.

Although I was connected to the work I was doing in the world of sustainability, it became clear that it was time for me to exercise a new skillset. I took a job as a PHP programmer at a web design firm where a rugby friend was working. I had picked up coding as a hobby, so I gave it a shot. While I lasted only eight months at the job, I was grateful that the experience helped me understand something significant about myself: I need to feel like I’m making the world a better place in order to be truly committed to my work.

Looking for my next step, I reached out to a former roommate who had a connection to Maggie Doyne, the founder of BlinkNow, a nonprofit organization that provides education to the children of Nepal. I thought I might go to Nepal for a short time to help in some way, like cleaning the bathroom or painting the kitchen. It just so happens that Maggie and her team were working on launching a new website and building a new green school at that very moment, two things I was very qualified to help with. This short volunteer trip turned into a full-time job for me for five years, including two and a half years living in Nepal.

I wore many hats there, including serving as the lead for the organization’s communications team. Since the nonprofit was primarily supported by US and European donors, we had a unique challenge: how do we get people to care about a place they’ve never been and people they’ve never met, and the only tool we have is the internet? I learned a lot about how to tell compelling stories that evoke emotion from thousands of miles away. We created funny social media posts about that one student who could only ever find her left shoe when it was time for school (the right one was once spotted on the roof), and we wrote heartwarming blog posts about mothers who learned how to write their own names for the first time in their 30s. It was a life-changing experience.

After 5 wonderful years with BlinkNow, I felt ready for a new challenge. Thanks to some encouragement from a trusted friend and mentor, I decided to start my own business, hoping to take the same successful marketing strategies to other nonprofits. I’m happy to share that the Purpose Collective is going strong and is now in its 6th year. Each day is a new, exciting challenge, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Like any startup or solopreneur endeavor, it has not been a completely smooth road. One of the biggest challenges has been figuring out pricing. Working with nonprofits, I wanted to offer everyone the lowest rates possible so more of their money could go toward their mission. I also found myself wanting to name a low price that I knew wouldn’t be rejected. As a result, I was doing a lot of work without earning nearly enough.

I like to joke that if you want a crash course in personal development, you should start your own business. Pretty quickly, I had to confront my own feelings of self worth and my own hesitation to put a higher value on my work. I’m grateful to my business coach who helped to get me there. Now I believe that if you charge appropriately for the work you do, everyone benefits!

We’ve been impressed with The Purpose Collective, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Nonprofit professionals are some of the busiest people on the planet, accomplishing so much with so little. They often lack the resources or staff needed to complete all the important work they are doing. We can relieve that burden. Whether it’s database management, automation support, email marketing, social media management, Google Ad Grants, or fundraising platform setup, our goal is to provide the technology and support they need to make their work easier.

We want nonprofit organizations to focus their energy on doing what they do best: building schools, empowering underserved communities, rescuing animals, fighting poverty, and being the change we want to see in the world. If we can lift the burden of marketing or database management off their shoulders so they are better equipped to do just that, then I feel like we’ve contributed to their cause in some small way.

What were you like growing up?
When I was a (very nerdy) kid, I liked to organize. For fun.

When I was around 12 years old, I decided that an exciting weekend activity would be to pull all of the board games out of my family’s game closet and make an alphabetical list of them (not PLAY the board games — ORGANIZE them). There were probably close to a hundred in there. My goal was to create a checkout system, so we could keep track of who had borrowed which games when.

(Were lots of people “checking out” my family’s games? No. Were games going missing? No. Did that matter to me? No.)

And so, while you were pedaling around your neighborhood on a bicycle like a normal child, I was making this color-coordinated alphabetical list of games. This gave me joy. I loved creating order from chaos. I loved that we’d never again forget a game existed just because we couldn’t see it. I loved that picking something to play would be so much easier.

Although my days of color coding games and designing checkout systems are behind me, I am still that little girl who loves turning chaos into order. These days, I’ve turned my attention to databases. I love databases — really any automated software program. I love helping people find a database that makes their life easier. I love explaining databases to people who feel overwhelmed and confused by them. I love using databases to create automated processes that save people hours of time and energy. I love forming relationships with database developers so I can send them overly long messages about how to improve their system.

I’ve learned a lot since my board game-organizing days. Like first and foremost, there’s no point in creating a more organized system if no one’s going to use it. The checkout sheet I made in the 1990s has two entries in it from 2003, but that’s about it. Years later, I know the best systems are the ones that people love to use in their daily lives. Those are my favorite ones to design.

Pricing:

• For a complete list of services, please contact hello@the-purpose-collective.com. We would also be happy to schedule a free consultation during our office hours.(https://www.the-purpose-collective.com/free-office-hours)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.the-purpose-collective.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.purpose.collective/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/purposecollectivellc/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/purpose-collective-llc/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@the-purpose-collective