Justice and equity for low-income Virginians.
Since 1978, Virginia Poverty Law Center has been working to end the cycle of poverty in the state. Through community and legislative advocacy, education, and litigation, the organization has championed access to healthcare coverage, public benefits, and affordable utilities and energy. It has fought to end food insecurity, prevent evictions, expand tenant rights and protections, advance fair and equitable homeownership programs, protect victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence, keep families together, strengthen unemployment insurance protections, and fight predatory lending and abusive debt collection.
Its vision is a Commonwealth where all people have the resources and opportunities to live and thrive with dignity.
Challenge
After more than 47 years as Virginia’s cornerstone legal aid organization—and with a new website on the horizon—Virginia Poverty Law Center took the opportunity to reflect on how it had worked to end the cycle of poverty and build upon its strengths and accomplishments.
VPLC has an exceptional reputation with policymakers on both sides of the aisle, funders and donors, government officials, the legal aid community, attorneys, partners, and the public. The organization decided to bring these strengths to the forefront while addressing confusion about its work—unlike many legal aid organizations, VPLC supports and strengthens local and regional legal aids throughout the state rather than representing individuals in court.
Approach
I researched the brand and its peers, and led a series of interviews, surveys, and workshops with the leadership team and staff. Although VPLC’s work is organized into specific Centers, there is a deep interconnectedness among the issues surrounding poverty. The brand strategy needed to align the organization around core messaging while allowing for both the autonomy and overlap of its work in each Center.
INSIGHT
A cornerstone in a larger movement.
The human-centeredness of VPLC’s work and approach became the centerpiece of our brand strategy. We needed to position VPLC as a cornerstone organization in the movement to end the cycle of poverty—and as a key provider of legal support, training, and expertise that state legal aid organizations, policymakers, and individuals rely upon. This helped refine the organization’s messaging broadly and address misconceptions about legal representation.
INSIGHT
We must change the narrative surrounding poverty.
Poverty carries with it an unfair stigma. Stories often separate the “deserving” from the “undeserving,” placing blame on the individual for their choices and ignoring how policies have discriminated against people of color and create racial and economic inequality. They often reinforce the “bootstrap” and “rags to riches” narratives that focus on an individual’s willpower to lift themselves up.
In reality, people typically experience multiple aspects of poverty simultaneously. For instance, a family that has fallen behind on rent and bills may also likely be experiencing food insecurity and is often the target of predatory lenders. Ending the cycle of poverty requires not just fixing a broken system but also restoring the dignity of people experiencing poverty.
By changing the narrative through the stories it tells, VPLC also changes the frames through which legislators and policymakers view poverty, ultimately helping to create concrete solutions and pathways for the broader changes necessary to end the cycle of poverty.
“Working with Paul on our brand strategy was nothing short of transformative for VPLC. Through his thoughtful process of interviews, research, and guided discussions, he helped us distill who we are at our core and how we want to be seen in the world. The final brand strategy document gave us clarity and alignment across the organization: it unified our voice, clarified our mission and values, and created a strong foundation for our upcoming website redesign. Paul’s work didn’t just give us a roadmap for communications—it gave us confidence and cohesion as we move forward.”
My Role:
- Conduct surveys, interviews, and workshops with leadership and staff and analyze the results for themes and insights.
- Author of the Brand Strategy, positioning, and messaging, which clarified and documented VPLC’s most deeply-held beliefs, its vision for the world, its values, strengths, promises to its audiences, and the work its advocates do every day. The Brand Strategy also captures the short-, medium-, and long-term indicators of progress, storytelling strategies, narrative change, personality, voice and tone, brand attributes, and its visual language.
- Content strategist, oversight for copywriting, and page building for the organization’s new website, launching in October of 2025.
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