Disruption as Direction: Falling, Fumbling, and Finding New Ways to Communicate for Good

Or: Lessons Learned at ComNet 2025

Even the most seasoned nonprofit communicators can feel unmoored in today’s fast-changing, resource-strained, and hyper-polarized world. At this year’s ComNet conference in Denver, I was reminded—through two very different experiences—that sometimes the best way to find your footing is to let yourself get a little lost.

Inside Meow Wolf’s surreal maze of color and chaos, I felt the disorientation of our current communications landscape: algorithms shifting beneath our feet, audiences splintering, and meaning constantly refracted through too many lenses.

But at the Denver Children’s Museum, the message was the opposite—and the antidote. There, creativity had structure, curiosity had leadership, and purpose was made tangible through play.

Together, these two spaces mirrored the tension every communicator faces: how to navigate disorder without losing direction, and how to build systems that still leave room for wonder.

The Nonprofit Now: Finding Our Footing in a Tilted World

Being a nonprofit communicator in 2025 feels a bit like walking through a funhouse. The ground keeps moving, algorithms change, rules rewrite themselves, and audiences are both more passionate and more divided than ever. Funders want data and heart in the same breath. Messaging must be bold—but also safe. We’re constantly recalibrating, searching for balance in the spin.

And yet, here we are. Showing up again and again.

ComNet25 in Denver met that reality head-on. It was a few days of honest conversation and shared reckoning, a gathering of communicators who are, quite literally, trying to find the right words for a changing world.

These experiences offered a perfect metaphor for the moment we’re all in: wonder and weirdness, structure and spontaneity, the steady hand and the leap of faith.

Between inspiring sessions, generous hallway conversations, and those two planned outings—the head-spinning immersion of Meow Wolf and the heart-centered leadership lesson at the Children’s Museum—we were reminded of the wonder and weirdness, the structure and spontaneity, of the business we’re in (and that the magic, as always, lives in the space between).

Communicators Communicating About Communication

Produced by The Communications Network, ComNet is one of those rare spaces where everyone speaks the same language, and no one’s trying to sell you anything. There’s something beautiful about that. It’s a conference where conversations aren’t transactional, they’re transformational. You can feel it in the hallways and breakout rooms: that collective exhale of people who get it. People who are doing the same work you are: fighting for clarity, compassion, and connection in a world that too often rewards the opposite.

Instead of competing for airtime, we’re sharing it. Someone’s talking about a campaign that got unexpectedly flagged on social media, while across the table another communicator nods because it happened to them last week too. Someone else shares how they reframed their messaging to meet new restrictions without losing emotional resonance. Another group swaps notes on how they convinced their leadership to take creative risks again after months of cautious edits.

That’s the power of ComNet: shared experience becomes shared progress. When you’re surrounded by people who know what it’s like to wrestle with mission language or stretch shrinking media budgets, it stops feeling like a personal struggle and starts feeling like a collective evolution.

It’s easy to feel isolated working in nonprofit communications, especially when your role sits somewhere between strategist, therapist, and magician. ComNet’s a reminder that we’re all in this together, shaping similar stories but from different angles. Every hallway conversation, every honest admission, every “we tried this and it bombed” moment becomes data, encouragement, and direction.

There’s a kind of magic in that openness. It builds trust faster than any keynote ever could. It’s how our sector gets stronger: not by competing, but by collaborating. By refusing to hoard our hard-earned lessons and instead holding them out for others to learn from.

In a time when the communications landscape feels unstable, talking about the work might be the most stabilizing thing we can do.

Passionate Leadership Is Everything

If ComNet gave me a masterclass in community, the Children’s Museum of Denver gave me one in nonprofit leadership.

From the moment we walked in, it was clear: this wasn’t just a children’s museum. It was a living, breathing expression of purpose. Every corner pulsed with creativity and care, and it all traced back to the people leading it.

Listening to President & CEO Mike Yankovich and COO Gretchen Kerr talk about their work was a reminder that true leadership isn’t about managing operations; it’s about cultivating wonder. It’s about creating a culture where imagination and mission meet in the middle, where staff feel just as inspired as the kids who visit.

Mike and Gretchen didn’t talk about metrics first. They talked about moments. About how play shapes empathy, how art builds curiosity, and how community partnerships strengthen the fabric of their organization. They made the business case for joy, and I believed it because I could see it in action all around us.

Their kind of leadership is contagious. It sets a tone that ripples through every touchpoint: from how exhibits are designed to how staff greet families to how the organization communicates with the public. That’s the thing about passion: it’s visible. You can feel when leadership is all in, when they’ve moved beyond management and into mission-driven stewardship.

And for communicators, it’s a powerful reminder. Storytelling without leadership buy-in is like trying to light a match in the wind: the message might spark, but it won’t last. When leaders model enthusiasm and authenticity, when they truly believe in the story you’re telling, it gives every campaign a heartbeat.

The Denver Children’s Museum shows what happens when leadership doesn’t just support communication—they embody it. Their passion is the strategy. Their vision is the story. And their team? They’re proof that when an organization’s leaders lead with both conviction and creativity, everything from donor engagement to visitor experience just works better.

Disruption Can Be a Direction

And then there was Meow Wolf: the ultimate exercise in creative disorientation.

It’s strange and stunning and overwhelming all at once. You wander through glowing hallways and walk through open refrigerators that lead to other dimensions, losing track of where you—and who you are—in the best possible way.

Sound familiar? Because that’s a lot like what it feels like to do nonprofit communication right now. The rules are changing faster than we can rewrite our playbooks. Words that once inspired can now be flagged. Website titles can determine whether someone’s job survives the next audit. Every step feels like a balance between expression and compliance, clarity and courage.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the goal isn’t to fight the disorientation, but to learn how to walk through it; to find your footing amidst the chaos. To do what it takes to push your mission forward, for your nonprofit to survive.

Here’s what that looks like:

1. When the Rules Change Mid-Game

One week your ad copy works fine; the next, it’s flagged for “restricted content.” Build flexibility into your foundation. Keep a living message library. Update it weekly if you have to. “Pivot” shouldn’t feel like panic; it should feel like a part of the process.

2. Words Are Everything

Language has never carried higher stakes. The difference between “helping” and “serving” can mean the difference between your message running or being removed. Develop a few ways to say the same truth; rotate them, test them, keep them alive.

3. Creative Courage (Without Recklessness)

Safe language might get you approved, but it won’t get you remembered. The challenge is to be bold and smart. Say something real, then run it through your filters and legal checks and say it again, even clearer.

4. Anchors in the Chaos

At Meow Wolf, you eventually learn to look for cues—a sound, a light, a thread of story that helps you find your way. In our work, those anchors are our values, our why, our audiences’ trust. Keep returning to them. They’ll lead you out of the maze.

5. Small Bets, Fast Learning

Gone are the days of year-long plans that never flex. Test fast, learn fast, and share what works. Every small experiment is a breadcrumb for someone else trying to find their way through the dark.

Disorientation Isn’t Failure. It’s Feedback.

We don’t have to wait for the world to settle before we move forward. The ground may shift beneath us, but that’s where innovation starts. It’s where brave stories are born.

In the end, that’s what ComNet, Meow Wolf—and this field—is really about: Letting go of the need for perfect clarity long enough to find new perspective. It’s about building orientation for others, even when we don’t fully have it ourselves. And most of all, it’s about being there for each other amidst all the weirdness.

Disruption doesn’t have to mean disarray. With the right partners, it can become momentum: fuel for smarter storytelling, stronger strategy, and deeper connection. That’s the work we love most at Big Sea: helping mission-minded dreamers see the pattern inside the noise.

Want to turn your next moment of uncertainty into a new direction forward? Reach out and let’s talk. No pressure, no pitch—just an honest exchange about where you are, where you’re headed, and what’s possible next.

Let’s talk.