WHY WE ARE DIFFERENT
Most agencies sell their team.
We build one for your project.
A specialist marketing and operations partner for sustainability-minded organizations.
A problem-solving marketing agency for sustainability-minded businesses, startups, and local governments. We do marketing and operations work with the right team for the job, customized for your challenge.
KATHARINE BIERCE
Founder · PMP · CSM
"Let's make shift happen!"
THE STRUCTURAL DIFFERENCE
Most agency failures
are accountability failures.
In conventional agency structures, the people who pitch the work are not the people who deliver it. The result is a quiet relay of responsibility and the client is left with issues. Our model is built to remove that gap.
The Conventional Model
Senior partners pitch. Junior staff deliver.
An account manager juggles your engagement alongside a dozen others. Specialists you have not met execute the work in isolation. Status meetings stand in for genuine progress. When the work falters, ownership disperses.
The Sangha Strategies Model
The senior operator scopes and delivers.
One scoping conversation establishes a single accountable owner. The specialists doing the work are the ones who shaped the proposal. Written progress notes may even replace the standing meeting. When something needs to move, the founder owns it.
OUR OPERATING MODEL
Diagnose. Assemble. Deliver.
In Sequence. Without Exception.
You want a team that solves your problem. We put together the right team for you - and we also have a recruiter ready to bring in talent as needed, too.
Diagnose
Your business goal determines the business strategy, which determines tactics and channels. Before we jump into tactics, we can review current performance, interview your customers, and map the competitive landscape. Did we mention our founder has a background in market research?
Assemble
Sangha Strategies' founder is a project management professional (PMP) and agile Scrum Master - so we build your team based on the diagnosis. Some clients want strategy only, others want photo/video work, others need CRM setup and some may want online ads or other work. We size and source the team to the work - so you don't pay for full-timers you don't need.
Deliver
We aren't just creative types who come up with brand campaign ideas. We have disciplined project management a at our core. Each project has a documented owner, timeline, and next steps between meetings. Regular written progress notes keep the work visible. We ship what we scoped.
1 · DIAGNOSE
What a real diagnosis
looks alike.
While we can propose deliverables after a first call, we also have the expertise to dig deeper to give you more based on actual research and problem-solving to address your goals - not just symptoms.
Influence is sometimes a question of new tactics.
More often, it is a matter of seeing the system you are already part of.
01
Who actually buys from you?
We can use your existing personas, or do original market research to get truth from the marketplace.
02
Where is the real bottleneck?
Awareness, conversion, retention, and pricing each need distinct interventions.
03
What is already working?
Most organizations have something that works already; we find that out and help you do more there.
04
Where is the budget going?
We can audit the current allocation before recommending additions, or reallocations.
05
What does success look like?
We work with you to define what outcomes you want.
02 - Assemble
Real talent
Matched to the Work.
Every project gets a custom-built team. We size, sequence, and source specialists in response to the diagnosis drawing from a vetted bench of senior US-based operators and a global network of contributing specialists, all coordinated under a single accountable lead. We use AI where appropriate to help keep costs low, too.
US-Based Project Lead
Your single accountable contact. Scopes the engagement, manages the cadence, and is the operator you escalate to when work needs to move. Always senior. Always domiciled in the United States.
Senior US Specialist
We bring in American talent for regulated industries, executive communications, policy work, and any context where US persons or work authorization are required.
Global Contribution
On a budget? No problem. We have vetted, trained specialists who can implement projects at reasonable rates - including project management. by by your US lead.
This is how we deliver agency expertise at freelancer prices, with work supervised by a project management professional, who is an American citizen and native English speaker.
03 - DELIVER
Operational Discipline
Applied to marketing
Ideas are cheap - implementation is where results happen. Our founder is PMP-certified and an Agile Scrum Master. We know how to make shift happen.
Weekly Written Updates
If you prefer fewer meetings, we can document what shipped, what is in progress, what is blocked, and what we need from you. The note can help reduce the number of standing meetings.
Documented Initiatives
Every workstream has an owner, a due date, and a next step.
We use an easy to review slide-based meeting summary that makes it simple to align everyone from executives to interns.
Asynchronous and Flexible
We reserve meetings for decisions that need a discussion room. Reviews, drafts, and updates can be in writing, protecting your calendar and our delivery time alike.
(Optional) Retrospectives
If you'd like to use the Scrum framework, we can run retrospectives at the end of sprints, with what worked, what did not, what we run differently next month. We accumulate institutional knowledge of your business so longer engagements get sharper
HOW WE ENGAGE
Priced to your outcome,
not your media spend.
For ad campaigns, pricing is based around the work itself, not a percentage of media spend. That means our recommendations are guided by what your business needs, not by what would expand our retainer.
Fractional Operator
Senior leadership embedded in your team for a defined period. The right structure when you need ongoing direction, hiring counsel, and an operator who compounds knowledge of your business month over month.
Monthly retainer · 3–6 months minimum
Defined Project
Fixed-scope build with a clear start and end: website, go-to-market launch, rebrand rollout, or campaign sequence. Appropriate when the deliverable is understood and the requirement is delivery on a timeline.
Project fee · scoped to outcome
Advisory & Diagnostic
Time-boxed strategic input. Diagnostic of your current marketing program, market research on customers, and more. Often the right step before hiring or before significant additional spend.
Flat-fee diagnostic · 4-8 weeks
WHO THIS IS FOR
We figure out what you actually need
then assemble the team to deliver it.
WE WORK BEST WITH
Sustainability-minded organizations seeking problem-solvers.
Climate-aligned companies with material marketing or operations problems to solve.
Founders and senior leaders prepared to engage on the diagnosis, not only the deliverable.
Leaders who value clear communication.
WE ARE PROBABLY NOT THE RIGHT FIT IF
Your search is for a vendor relationship, not a partner.
Your scale requires a global agency network of several hundred staff.
The lowest bid will win, regardless of fit.
Lead by Principal
Sangha Strategies principal and founder Katharine Bierce spent over five years at Salesforce.org and Salefsorce leading marketing and editorial programs for the nonprofit and education industries — managing the blog, producing thought leadership market research reports with multiple vendors, ebooks on topics like AI for Good ebook, and launching major campaigns. Prior to founding Sangha Strategies, she served as Senior Communications Project Manager at the Building Decarbonization Coalition. Her expertise includes green buildings, clean energy, and biodiversity.
In her free time, she co-leads the Fossil Free 529 Coalition, a volunteer effort that has led to changes in funds to options with lower reduced fossil-fuel exposure in California's state-run 529 college savings plan. The same operating discipline that moves civic outcomes runs every engagement she leads. (The photo at left is Katharine and other Fossil Free California members after a day of advocacy in Sacramento, CA.)
Do you replace our in-house marketing team?
We often augment in-house teams. We bring senior strategy and missing specialist capacity. Many of our clients have a junior marketer or contractor in place we operate alongside them, and unlike most agencies, we have a "do it for you" or "train your staff" option.
What does a typical engagement look like?
You get a principal as your main point of contact, with one or more specialists matched to the work. Depending on the project cadence, we offer weekly written progress notes and meetings when a decision requires one.
Do you work with my industry?
We have the most experience in green buildings, clean energy, and biodiversity. That said, we are always open to using your skills for good, so you can also contact us if you want a second opinion!
How is your pricing structured?
We have several pricing options, including monthly retainers for ongoing engagements, project fees for fixed-scope builds, and occasionally hourly or flat-fee diagnostics for advisory work. We don't price based on ad spend or media percentages.
Who is actually doing the work?
Senior US-based operators handle strategy, founder-level communications, and any context requiring US persons. Vetted global specialists supervised by your US lead handle execution-heavy delivery to identical standards.
Can you start within a week?
For defined-scope projects, occasionally. For fractional engagements, we typically require a few weeks to do a diagnosis before we commit to a plan.
BEGIN WITH A DIAGNOSIS
Tell us what is broken, and
we will tell you what we would do.
If you can share your problem, we can share a few ideas in a 30-minute conversation. Not a canned sales pitch. This is a brief working session in which we listen, ask substantive questions, and offer a clear assessment of whether we are the right partner. If we are not, we will tell you.
Sangha Strategies
490 43rd St. #114
Oakland, CA 94609
