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Festa Blog: A Communication System for Setup Your Project for Success

I’m building two things at the same time.

Abayomi Ogundipe

Abayomi Ogundipe

3 min read
Festa Blog: A Communication System for Setup Your Project for Success

I’m building two things at the same time:

If you lead a nonprofit, social enterprise, or small NGO team, this space is for you. It’s where I slow down, explain how I think about project design, and give you practical ways to apply those ideas to your own work.

Why I Built This Blog for You

Most social impact leaders don’t need more noise. You need a calm place where someone helps you make sense of:

  • messy project ideas,
  • donor language that shifts every few years, and
  • the pressure to “show impact” with limited time and staff.

My work at Festa has always been about communication systems, not just logos or websites, but the structure that helps people understand what you’re trying to do.

This blog is one piece of that system. Every article is designed to do one of three things:

  1. Clarify the ideas behind my work – like why I design “pencil over pixel” and how that shapes the Festa Design Foundation.
  2. Connect your day-to-day challenges to the bigger picture – including where sustainable development and education are heading beyond 2030.
  3. Translate those ideas into tools you can actually use – especially through the lessons and templates inside Setup Your Project for Success.

How the Blog Supports the Toolkit Launch

The toolkit itself teaches you how to build stronger projects: Problem Trees, Stakeholder Mapping, Affinity Diagrams, and Theory of Change.

The blog tells the story around it.

In the weeks leading up to launch, I’m using the blog to:

  • Take you behind the scenes of how the toolkit was sketched, tested, and refined.
  • Share my design philosophy, why I care so much about clarity, accessibility, and trauma-informed learning environments.
  • Connect my SDG and education work over the last decade to the realities you’re facing now in your programs and proposals.
  • Show, in plain language, what you’ll be able to do once you start using the toolkit.

By the time we reach the January 9 intro session, I want you to feel like you already know the “why” behind the toolkit, not just the features.

What You Can Do Here

As you move through the pre-launch and launch period, you can use the blog to:

  • Warm up your thinking. Read a post, then look at one real project you’re working on and ask, “Where am I unclear?”
  • Follow the sequence. Start with the origin stories and futures pieces, then move into the posts that sit closer to the lessons themselves.
  • Bookmark what you need. If an article helps you explain something to a colleague, board member, or donor, keep it close and reuse the language.
  • Bring a project to the toolkit. Let the blog surface questions; let the toolkit give you the structure to answer them.

This is not a news feed or a random collection of thoughts. It’s a deliberate path that leads you from big ideas to practical, repeatable workflows.

An Invitation

If you see yourself in any of this, a program officer trying to design a better project, a founder trying to make sense of scattered notes, a director needing a clearer story for your board, you’re in the right place.

Use the blog as your calm starting point.

Then, when Setup Your Project for Success opens, bring one active project and walk through the lessons with me. My goal is simple: help you design stronger projects, faster, with tools and stories that respect the reality you’re working in.