Celebrating 4 Years of PorchLight Insights
In the winter 2021/spring of 2022, when we started planning what would become PorchLight Insights, the learning curve felt overwhelming - we knew very little about starting a business, and we felt especially inexperienced in branding and business development (just ask us some time about how we came up with the name).
So we fell back on what we did know - when in doubt, take out the Post-its. Exercise 1: Brainstorming what our new firm could offer - what we felt like we brought in terms of skills and experience. Exercise 2: Documenting our shared values that would be the foundation of this firm - values that we had developed while building DataKC (City of Kansas City, MO) but had never written down in this way.
Our initial values brainstorm
When we were preparing to hire our first employee (Lauron Fischer!) in the fall of 2023, we upgraded those post-it notes to a list of values that we could share with prospective employees.
In 2025, as we onboarded our second employee (Ruanda McFerren!) and continued to grow our network and business, we decided as a team to dedicate time and effort to refining our mission, vision, values, and story, so we could all be part of defining who we are as a firm, and what we are trying to accomplish.
And then we hit a wall - we had a LOT of ideas and words that we all felt good about, but we found it incredibly hard to turn that into something clear and incisive. Enter Brightside Creative, an amazing KC-based branding and graphics team. They literally took our messy Miro board and used it to refine our story as a firm. (THANK YOU to Katie Koch and Jess Dyroff!)
Miro screenshot (no, we will not show it up close)
As we celebrate four years of doing this work, we're thrilled to showcase our newly stated mission, vision, and values, which all feel very much like US:
Mission (what we do): We strengthen the public sector from within, championing data-informed, people-centered cultures that work well for everyone.
Vision (our North Star, what we are aiming for): A public sector that works well for everyone.
Values (how we do our work):
Iteration: We believe in continuous improvement and growth. We seek to fail forward and learn from the past. We adapt as the need arises.
Collaboration: We pursue our work as a team and work to actively build and support a high-functioning team environment.
Integrity: We approach our work with honesty and responsibility. We are ethical in our work and seek to live up to our commitments.
Empathy: We value psychological safety, emotional intelligence, and a person-centered approach. We listen, learn, and care for each other.
Abundance: We cultivate an abundance mentality. We are fearless in sharing work with partners or promoting competitors. We encourage consideration of what is possible.
Spirit: We value humor and lightheartedness. We make time to build relationships, laugh, and have fun.
Community: We believe in local government and make space for our employees to engage with their communities. We are learning how to use our work and personal lives to right past wrongs.
We are so grateful to feel that we are still learning and growing as we enter our fifth year in business. Thank you to all who have partnered, collaborated, or supported in some way.