Save Our Schools Veterans Dawn Penich-Thacker and Kate Tice Form New Community Assistance Organization Called Agave Strategy

Fresh off helping the public school community fend off voucher expansionist plans and assisting the Red for Ed Movement, Save Our Schools Arizona Veterans Dawn Penich-Thacker and Kate Tice, along with public affairs specialist Charles Siler, have created a new organization devoted to helping activist organizations and candidates “make positive change in their communities.”

This new organization is called Agave Strategy and its staff is trained to provide activist organizations and candidates assistance with:

• Messaging and strategic communications.
• Website and social media development.
• Grant writing.
• Fundraising.
• Media outreach and marketing.
• Event planning and support.
• Creating network support teams.

Currently, Agave is working with over a dozen organizations and individuals including Arizona ACES Consortium, Morning Star Leaders, and Mitzi Epstein for Arizona Senate. They have already written and won well over $ two million in grant funding for two clients and secured six-figures worth of earned media for others just in the few months since they formed Agave Strategy.

One of their long-term goals is to assist public school districts with bond preparation and elections.

Founder and Communications Director Dawn Penich-Thacker graciously took the time to respond to questions about Agave Strategy.

The questions and her responses are below.

1) Please tell the reader what is the mission of Agave Strategy?

“We call ourselves a “force multiplier,” a term we used in the military to mean that we come in and make it seem like your team is a lot bigger than it is. We want to be able to support and amplify groups who have great ideas and an important mission but who don’t have a lot of staff, a lot of funding or enough hours in their day to get to everything that needs to happen to meet their objectives. We have seen first hand how many great people there are with amazing, incredibly important goals but who don’t have the time, help or sometimes know-how to make their ideas come to life in a big way. That’s where we want to step in – whether it’s the messaging needed to frame your issue, branding your identity and purpose and getting your issue in the news or in front of the right people, or some of those 21st century basics like a solid, accessible website and strategic social media presence or even developing a fundraising plan and applying for grants. That’s what Agave Strategy can help with – and more.”

2) What were at least two reasons you wanted to start this new organization?

“Having been in the trenches of grassroots organizing in Arizona since I was literally a child – I circulated my first petition when I was 12 years old living in Mesa – I know that there are a lot of amazing people out there who want to make badly-needed important impacts on our community, but so much of the time, they’re trying to make a difference during limited free time, after working a full time job and raising a family, or they have amazing ideas, but they’re not technology experts. Or they have assembled a network and they have people power but no real idea how to get funding or they’re incredibly underfunded for the work that’s required. The list goes on but the point is: I know that organizers, candidates, leaders can’t do it all. No one can. You can’t be the ideas person and the tech support and the grant writer and the graphic designer and the speech writer and so I’ve seen dozens of amazing groups and ideas over the years fail to launch or fizzle away because they just didn’t have enough time, enough different skill sets, to sustain themselves and not burn out. I didn’t want to see that happen anymore, so I got together with a brilliant tech person – Kate Tice from LD18 and Save Our Schools Arizona and Charles Siler, who has worked on fundraising and campaigns nationally and locally and we decided we would fill that role. We would be the tech support, we would help groups advertise themselves, we would help them raise money so that they could grow and thrive and actually make their awesome ideas come to life. We aren’t looking to get rich off this, we’re doing it to contribute to the important fights happening all over the state and nation, so that was another key element to starting Agave Strategy. We are going to do this at rates grassroots groups and smaller organizations can actually afford because we’ve seen firsthand how often finances are the barrier that keeps great ideas from coming to life or making the impact they could.”

3) Please tell the readers about Agave Strategy leader’s background and expertise.

“Dawn Penich-Thacker is our Communications guru and focuses on everything from messaging to branding to speech writing to what to say on social media and how to get featured in the news. She’s been doing that work since 2001 when she was a Strategic Communications and Media Relations officer for the US Army, and that’s what she did upon starting Save Our Schools Arizona who kicked off so much of the education advocacy and RedForEd energy we see today. She’s also a professor and mom of kids in elementary school. Kate Tice also came from Save Our Schools Arizona where she was the digital director, the genius behind the always-updated website, all the technology involved in statewide phone banks, texting campaigns, digital advertising and more. She did similar work for LD18 and was also a music teacher for many years. Charles Siler actually was also an Army Public Affairs specialist and worked for Dawn back in the day but then went on to do lobbying work, communications, grant writing and fundraising for policy firms and national political candidates. He actually worked on the right, in conservative and libertarian politics originally and then realized their values didn’t align with his, so he brings a lot of insight in terms of why the right is so effective in their policy goals and what the left could be doing to see that same success. The three of them started Agave Strategy with this shared vision for helping good people do good things.”

4) Will Agave specialize in several specific causes or individuals? Please explain and advise on whether you are working on any issues or campaigns now.

“We’ve already been hard at work for a wide array of causes, but they’re all linked by the fact that the groups are progressive, anti-racist and pro-social. We have a couple clients who are working in the voting rights space, especially in terms of indigenous voter outreach. We have a number of clients who do mental health work for the Black community and the Latino community. We have a few clients locally and nationally who are in the public education advocacy realm, supporting teachers, getting the word out about the harm of privatization schemes. And we have a few candidates both in Democratic races and in nonpartisan local races. We have a few clients who are child welfare organizations and that work is more important than ever now, so we have a wide variety of clients but they’re all focused on making the community better in progressive, inclusive and equitable way.”

5) What are at least three goals Agave has for 2022? Please explain.

“A. Our goals are our clients’ goals – that’s the beauty of working only for causes you believe in. We’ve taken on clients who want to win their election in November. We’ve taken on clients who want to provide funding and training to 50 school districts before the end of the year. We have clients who want to get hundreds of new Indigenous teens signed up to vote before August, so boom – those are our goals too.

B. We want to be a financial incubator, a financial propeller for groups who want to be around, making positive, progressive impacts on their community for years to come and so they need to identify and execute a fundraising system that sustains them well into the future as well as the branding, processes and presence that keeps them front and center. We also want to train and mentor groups to get such a solid foundation that they can stay doing what they do best, with or without us involved.

C. We want to help redefine the playing field. Even on the progressive side, too often you see the big organizations with the money and the office space downtown get seats at the table while other voices with really important perspectives are too small or too unknown to get a seat at the table; they’re not taken seriously. This is especially true of BIPOC leaders and voices and that’s why we’ve deliberately focused on helping groups led by Black and Indigenous leaders who work in that space. We want to make the people we work with a force to be reckoned with. We want to change the perception and the practice of who can move mountains and who deserves a seat at the table.”

6) Is there anything not covered in the first five questions that you would like the reader to know? Please explain.

“Please check us out at AgaveStrategy.com and if you know of an amazing group that could use our help, please reach out!”