Charmaine Jones is a registered dietitian in Washington, DC. Through Food Jonezi she brings chefs into managed care organizations and underserved communities across the city, running food demonstrations that teach people how to cook and eat well — how to build flavor without leaning on salt and sugar.
Since 2023 we’ve handled nearly everything on the marketing side of that work, and a fair amount that goes beyond it.
The challenge
Food Jonezi is really two organizations. There’s the company, with its chefs, its demonstrations, and its partnerships. And there’s the nonprofit arm, with a different audience, different funding conversations, and a different story to tell.
Both were competing for space on a single website, and neither was well served by it. Social media had been handled by a previous manager and had plateaued at around 1,500 followers — a problem, because social is where this audience actually is.
On top of that, the work itself is relentlessly visual and event-driven: sessions across the city, flyers to produce, schedules to publish, chefs and vendors to coordinate, communities to reach where they already are. That’s more than a website problem. It’s an ongoing marketing operation.
What we did
Two websites, two audiences
We redesigned the main Food Jonezi website around the company’s programs and the people it serves. Then we built a separate, smaller site for the nonprofit arm at foodjonezifriendz.org, so that side of the work has its own home rather than a subpage.
Separating them meant each site could speak plainly to who it’s for. Partners and communities on one, supporters and funders on the other.
Hosting and maintenance
Both sites run on our managed hosting, so updates, backups, and security are handled and Charmaine never has to think about them.
Social media, every month
We took over social media management from a previous manager with the account sitting at about 1,500 followers. It’s now at 6,265.
That growth came from treating social as the front door rather than an afterthought. When you’re running a session at a senior center in Southeast on Thursday, the people who need to know aren’t searching Google — they’re on Instagram and Facebook. Every month we plan, design, write, and post content that tells them where to be and makes it look worth showing up for.
Quarterly newsletters
Every quarter we produce a newsletter that keeps partners, supporters, and community members current on what Food Jonezi has been doing and what’s coming.
Events: vendors, logistics, comms, and graphics
We handle Charmaine’s events across DC end to end — not just the flyers and graphics, but the coordination behind them. That includes bringing together the vendors and chefs, keeping communications moving between everyone involved, and handling the logistics that decide whether an event runs smoothly.
Two are in flight now: Healthy Flavors of the City in October, and the grand opening of Food Jonezi’s first brick-and-mortar location on October 10th. For both we’re coordinating the chefs and vendors alongside producing the full set of materials.
The results
The social following has gone from roughly 1,500 to 6,265 since we took over, and Charmaine now runs a growing organization across two entities, a regular schedule of community events, and a physical location — without also running a marketing department.
Food Jonezi is one of our largest clients and uses nearly every service we offer, plus work that goes beyond them. It’s the clearest illustration of what a full-service relationship looks like: one team across web, hosting, social, email, event design, and the coordination that makes the events happen, rather than five vendors who don’t talk to each other.
If you’re running programs, not campaigns
Community-facing organizations have a particular problem. The work is constant — sessions, events, partnerships — and the marketing has to keep pace, but nobody has time to be both the practitioner and the marketer.
What usually helps isn’t a bigger website. It’s a team that handles the recurring parts: the monthly content, the event materials, the newsletter, the site itself, and the coordination that turns a plan into an event that actually happens.
If that’s your situation, get a proposal or book a call.
