🌱 the roots of change agency

Welcome 👋🏼

If you're like me, you recognize our world is on fire 🔥, our institutions are crumbling, and 🧗🏼‍♀️ you want to do something about it. (listen to songs of resistance)

Let's Grow Together

Navigating heart-first activism & storytelling.

We help communicators and activists avoid burnout and tell empathetic stories that cultivate connections that empower social change. 🌍🌱

Join & Grow

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Too many activists and organizations are building paths to a new sustainable, equitable society with little support and resources. However, growth and learning from our past is crucial to build a vision for the future.

How Do You Relate to Social Change?

Our goal is to make social change storytelling accessible and sustainable for all. We offer multiple paths to resources depending on how you relate to and participate in social change.

❤️‍🔥 for activists & heart-first humans

Navigate social change activism in today's uncertain digital world.

• 💌 Weekly Digest: Our weekly digest helps support heart-first activists through the news and related actions. Take a deeper look at social issues to build healthy practices that cultivate lasting change while caring for ourselves & communities.
• 🎙 Podcast: Conversations with activists, organizers, and communicators who are shaping change. Members get a private feed for deep strategy. 
• 🎬 Video News: Follow us on YouTube for regular updates, insights, and analysis on today's worlds of activism and movement building.
• 🎟 Activist Gatherings: A space for activists to decompress, enjoy connection, and support care practices. Seedling members get in free.
• 🌱 Resistance & Reciprocity ✊🏼 Playlist: Listen to our Spotify playlist! Activism and movement building requires joy, art, and imagination to thrive.

📚 for social change communicators & organizations

Reshape 📚 digital communications to avoid burnout, cultivate connections, & advance change.

• 💌 Weekly Newsletter: End of week digest with news, advice, clips, and tips for your communications & tech. It's like a mini-consultant in your inbox!
• 📝 Communications Planning Templates: get back to storytelling with our tools built to streamline work, while staying strategic.
• 🎙️ Private Podcast for Deeper Learning: on our private podcast feed, we can go deeper into strategy & tactics with organizers and communicators who are shaping change differently.
• 🗞️ Custom Advice for Social Change: Our content & resources are actionable and timely to curate the best advice and news for busy communicators.
• 🧰 Library of Resources: Flowering members have access to a full library of videos, workshops, resources, templates, & more from the roots of change agency & our collaborators.
• 🎟 Workshops & Trainings: grow and learn in community with fellow social change communicators with our workshops, office hours, & live podcast recordings. Flowering & Fruitful membership get free access.

🍓 for allyship, strategy & community

Our work is 100% people-supported so that we can keep sharing free and affordable content for anyone who needs the resources. Fruitful members help us produce more content for everyone! A fruitful membership will get you everything in the other tiers plus:

• 🍋 1:1 Strategy Call (1-Hour): If you're a social change communicator or activist with a strategy question or problem, your membership includes a complementary 1-hour strategy session with founder, Sam Chavez, or one of our collaborators! The time can be used however you need. We can focus on a big theme or I can help answer specific questions.
• 🧢 Merch: On our roadmap is to have merchandise that's useful & sustainable, while also being radically fun! The more support we get, the sooner we can introduce this perk.
• 🌍 Help fund our efforts & support the community!

🗼 Find Us on the Decentralized Internet

Mastodon • BlueSky • YouTube • PeerTube • Podcast • Events • Signal

Memberships & Growing Healthy Media

The roots of change agency and our financial model is created differently, away from the extractive advertising model and towards a model of reciprocity. We are a 100% community-led model and not funded by grants, organizations, or investors.

🌱 About the roots of change agency

the roots of change agency was founded to support nonprofits, campaigns, and activists to avoid burnout and tell empathetic stories to cultivate connections that empower social change.

I started this agency to help make social change communications more sustainable & accessible. That's why we offer multiple solutions to support any organization no matter their size or capacity. Reach out to me to inquire about direct coaching services, speaker, or media opportunities.

Storytelling for Social Change

Our society and institutions were built on top of the unhealthy soil of ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ (as bell hooks refers to it).

I believe that social change comes from uprooting the unhealthy soil that is rooted in our past and cultivating new soil that will allow all of us to grow in healthy, sustainable, and equitable ways.

Storytelling is our tool.

All messaging and communications can be forms of storytelling. Non-profit communications, Hollywood movies, political campaigns, underground poetry, and everyday conversations are all opportunities for us to use storytelling to influence and shape our culture.

Storytelling deepens human connection, which allows cultures to become more empathetic and open to change. Cultural change opens the door for lasting social change.

👋🏼 About Me…Sam Chavez

Hi 👋🏽 I'm Sam Chavez (she/they/he). I'm a New Texican who’s passionate about building a pathway to a livable planet & equitable societies. On the surface, I am white and femme, but I am also Latino, two spirit, & much more. I contain multitudes!

I founded the roots of change agency in 2020 to:  
🔭 Explore the roots of the old world to shape the future we deserve  
✨ Empower & sustain heart-first activists  
✍🏽 Develop regenerative messaging  
🌱 Spread empathy with storytelling  
🪢 Cultivate connection that builds  
🌍 Lasting social change

I founded the roots of change agency to harness my film, media, & advertising studies and 15+ years of marketing experience to shift the way organizations think about communications. Growing up as a closeted queer, indigenous kid in a conservative Texas family shaped my approach to activism and how I understand the urgency of shifting our culture away from harmful systems.

"If I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance for a dialogue." - bell hooks

I'm passionate about social justice, queer & radical love, equitable finance, mutual aid, and combating the climate crisis. I balance our innate curiosity & creativity with resilient strategies and stories to decolonize how we approach communications, marketing, & digital outreach.

Learn more. Connect with me on Mastodon!

🧗🏼‍♀️ What Does Activism Mean to You?

Activism is often defined differently by different people. I view activism in the broadest sense of the word as a way of being and living in this world. I founded this newsletter to harness my love of writing and 15 years of marketing experience to help less-resourced activists and organizations create impactful change starting with their messaging.

Assist an Activist: Making Change Accessible

We believe that the work of change is for all of us. That’s why we aim to have our resources accessible and affordable.

Our work is 100% reader-supported and not funded by grants, organizations, or investors. Paying subscribers and donors are greatly appreciated and help fund our efforts so we can release more content for the whole community!

If you would like to support our work, you can donate a membership to another activist.

Can’t Pay Now? Money shouldn't be a barrier to getting the support you need to advance social justice. Get on the list for a complementary membership for yourself or organization.

Explore Our Monthly Rooted Series

Each month, we dive into a social topic to understand the roots of how we got here and how we can move forward with a heart-first & liberatory framework.