Archway Communities elevates lives by providing access to affordable housing, food security and the supportive social services people need to thrive.
It’s my pleasure to share with you our new name, Archway Communities, new logo and updated Mission Statement! Sheri Replane, Archway’s Director of Communications and Marketing, and her team have done a fantastic job of working through a robust process to arrive at these markers of our new identity.
You may ask yourself why branding would matter to us, given the important challenges we face in serving our communities. Well, these things – our name, our logo, our mission statement – help establish and reinforce our organizational identity and strengthen the bonds that are critical to our success. We know that creating and serving affordable housing projects is a complex process involving many interconnected relationships. These relationships – these bonds – include those we share as colleagues, those we have with our stakeholders (board, funders, partners, etc.), those we have with our residents and the ones we hope to forge with new partners. All of these are critical to our ability to successfully expand and enrich our communities.
For these reasons, our identity and our mission statement are key components of our larger strategy to continue updating and upgrading Archway so we can serve more residents in more communities and continue to improve how we do it.
What will this new identity say about us? It will let people know who we are and what we stand for. More specifically, it will let folks know that:
· We exist to serve those most in need. We help address their individual needs and we do all we can to create vibrant communities where our residents can thrive.
· We are a great place to work, where all staff members are respected and treated with dignity and where the highest quality people come to work, to stay and make a difference!
· We are an organization that is entrepreneurial and opportunistic. Given the challenges we face in creating and serving affordable housing communities, our work can be disheartening at times. At Archway, we bring creative solutions and positive energy to the table. We never give up and we get things done.
· We are an organization that makes good on its commitments. If we tell you we will do it, we will do it, even if it is hard.
· We have a growth mindset, so we are always looking for new perspectives and exploring better solutions to old problems.
So, why did we evolve from Archway Housing & Services to Archway Communities? Our social services are fundamental to who we are, and they have a lot to do with why Archway was founded in the first place. Since we are providing services to advance the goal of creating stronger communities, we felt the new name would capture the outcomes we are after as well as the team spirit we are promoting with our staff. We are all part of the Archway Community as we work toward promoting healthier communities at our properties.
Branding may seem like a meaningless window dressing, I know. But I think of it as the cover to a great book. All by itself, the cover does not do anything. It’s a fancy wrapping. But if the story inside is good and makes good on the promise of the cover, then the inside and the outside of the package are complimenting and reinforcing of each other. And that is what we are after here.
By themselves, the name, the logo and the mission statement won’t mean much. But if our story is solid and we deliver on the promises we make to be an excellent organization, these things will work nicely together to help advance our story, to expand our network of mission-critical relationships and, most importantly, to support our efforts to serve our residents.
Sebastian Corradino
