Five Questions with Lauren Savage, Marketing Leader at Delivering Good

Work & Co

Fast Company recently recognized Delivering Good on its list of Most Innovative Companies for two innovations: the Basic Comforts Pack and the GOOD Index. How do you approach innovation in your organization – who are the stakeholders involved, where do ideas come from, and how do they become a reality?

Lauren Savage

With the rise of natural disasters and increasing everyday costs like rent, medicine, and childcare putting pressure on families, it takes consistent innovation to deliver real solutions, and we couldn’t do it alone.

Delivering impact at this scale is only possible because of who we build with. Our nonprofit partners on the ground help us understand real-time needs, and our corporate partners bring strategic thinking to help us turn ideas into scalable solutions. Internally, we’re driven by a leadership team and Board that encourage new ideas and aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo.

We begin by picturing the person on the other end — what they need urgently, and how to get it into their hands fast. That thinking is what led to the Basic Comforts Pack, which came from listening closely to what people face in moments of crisis and figuring out how to respond quickly and at scale. It delivers essential items like socks, t-shirts, and sweats that restore comfort and dignity when it’s needed most.

The GOOD Index is a new digital platform in development, designed to measure impact beyond the volume of goods distributed. By surfacing clear data that answers whether aid helped restore confidence, stability, and dignity, our partners can evaluate and make decisions based on real outcomes.

Work & Co

Delivering Good is built around the idea that dignity is the true measure of effective aid. How has that principle shaped the way you think about building and designing your brand?

Lauren Savage

Dignity isn’t just a value for us. It’s the foundation of how we build our brand and communicate our work. It serves as our north star, guiding how we show up, the stories we tell, and the partnerships we pursue. We believe a brand must be intentionally designed and scaled with integrity, and that means reflecting the respect and care we aim to deliver through our mission. Even as we’re building new AI tools, what we’re working toward never changes.

Work & Co

Before joining Delivering Good, your career was rooted in cause marketing and mission-driven communications, including Boys and Girls Club, UNICEF, 14th Street Y, and Jewish Federation. What has that trajectory taught you about what it actually takes to make people care about a cause, and how do you apply that here?

Lauren Savage

Whether in youth development, global humanitarian work, or local community organizations, I’ve learned something simple and powerful: people care about people. A brand isn’t just a logo or a message — it’s the consistency of what you say, what you do, and what people actually experience as a result of your work. People want to believe their support is part of something meaningful.

What I’ve carried through every stage of my career is that people connect to clear, authentic brands that make impact visible and real. It’s even more true today, as purpose and intentionality become central to how companies across every sector show up and build trust.

That overlap is exactly why Delivering Good makes so much sense. Our responsibility is to communicate impact in a way that builds credibility, deepens belief, and makes it easy for both individuals and companies to say, “I want to be part of that.”

Work & Co

Delivering Good’s mission is deeply physical — essential goods, in-person relief, community partners on the ground. How do you think about the role of digital in advancing that mission, whether through awareness, donor engagement, or the way the organization shows up online?

Lauren Savage

It’s true that our mission is about serving people in person, but our digital presence and activation channels are a critical part of how we drive awareness and get individuals and businesses directly involved in our work.

Communications campaigns, social content, and blog storytelling are all essential to how we share what we do, but the real shift is in how we’re leveraging those channels. As we continue to develop the GOOD Index, that evolution becomes even more powerful. By digitally capturing physical impact and sharing it in real time with community partners, brand partners, and the public, we’ll have a shared, living view of impact as it happens — which is something we can build on together.

That same thinking extends to how we show up online more broadly. The goal is a digital presence that’s as considered and purposeful as the work itself. For example, we’re selling our photography book, Delivering Hope, directly through our site as another surface for people to connect with the mission and support the work. And we’re working with Accenture to think about how to embed more AI into what we do so we can serve even more people.

Work & Co

Your corporate partnerships (with Ralph Lauren, HanesBrands, Accenture, and KnitWell) feel like something more than traditional sponsorship. What makes a partnership actually work for Delivering Good, and what does real co-creation look like in practice?

Lauren Savage

There’s a quote by Benjamin Franklin I love: “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” For me, that really captures what makes a partnership actually work at Delivering Good.

Our corporate relationships are not traditional sponsorships. They’re built on common purpose and a willingness to be in it together. We approach this as co-creators working toward the same goal: helping people move forward in moments of hardship. Accenture, for example, has been a key strategic partner across brand strategy, innovation, and donor and community engagement — exactly the kind of involvement that makes the work stronger.

Co-creation, in practice, means sitting at the table together from the start to shape ideas, test solutions, and build programs that reflect what each partner does best. It’s taking shared values and turning them into initiatives that actually reach people when it matters most, whether it’s showing up to an interview feeling confident in a new suit or long-term stability from financial literacy training.

If we do it right, it doesn’t just strengthen the partnership, it improves the outcome for the people we’re all trying to serve. That’s the work of the next chapter: meeting people where they are, while helping them get where they want to go.