What’s with the fox?
A few weeks ago, I shared with you why I chose the name LEAP Nonprofit Consulting for my company. The next question I always get is “What’s with the fox?”
I’ll be honest, while I like foxes in theory, it’s not always been an animal that I’m drawn to. But once I picked the name for the company and was starting to think about a logo, a leaping fox kept coming up as an idea. And much like the name feeling serendipitous, so did the fox logo.
First, I admittedly wanted a logo that would match my personal colors and branding. So it needed to be an animal that could be red. (More on my personal style journey here.)
Second, if you know me in real life, you know that I am proudly childless by choice and completely obsessed with our pets. Our “little” dog Bette (who is small for us but still almost 50 pounds) is an inspiration to me every day and we always joke that she looks like a little black fox.
The thing is, Bette is afraid of everything. We don’t know what happened to her before we adopted her but it wasn’t good. She’s a ball of anxiety, so much so that when she gets really scared she completely freezes. We give her anti-anxiety meds every morning just so she can function.
But when Bette decides to love you, she’s all in. She’s the sweetest thing to her pet siblings. When she gets excited, her whole body vibrates. When she hears a loud noise, her first instinct is to find one of us instead of running away. You can literally see her choosing to trust that everything is going to be ok.
So getting to see a reminder of my brave and inspiration dog every time I see my logo? It’s a pretty powerful image and reminder for me.
Last but definitely not least, there’s a beautiful mural in downtown Stevens Point (where I live) that I’ve always been drawn to.
I’ve working in a lot of different kinds of nonprofits and I’ve seen this play out time and time again. Small organizations - especially if they are smart, nibble, and strategic - have an outsized impact on communities. Big organizations can get bogged down by layers of bureaucracy, years of history, and too many people making decisions without understanding how they impact the whole.
Yes, smaller organizations have less resources. They need to work smarter, not harder. They need to make tough decisions about what they can and cannot do because they can’t just pour people and money at a problem. But I think the smallest organizations have the ability to solve the biggest problems facing society. And those are the organizations I want to help.
So what’s with the fox? It’s a combination of several things. But I think it’s the perfect symbol for what I’m trying to do here. And I’m proud to now call myself a crazy fox lady. (Seriously, the number of things I’ve bought with foxes since I launched the company is a little ridiculous!)
On site with a client on the day they happened to have the animal program. This little fox was the cutest!
Our “little” dog Bette who chooses joy and trust over fear every day
The mural in downtown Stevens Point
