Good questions.

Buena is a creative studio for good causes, founded by Doug Burnett in Portland, Oregon. From big ideas and branding to websites, apps and AI tools, we give good causes everything they need to grow, built by one team, so it all works together.

Doug Burnett founded Buena in Portland, Oregon, in 2016. Before Buena, he spent years making work for global brands at Leo Burnett, and the One Show named him one of the Top 25 art directors in the world.

It means “good” in Spanish. It’s also how you say hi.

Both, and that’s the point. One studio does everything a good cause needs, so the campaign, the brand, the website and the app all work together.

We’re an ad agency that hates ads. Instead of buying attention, we make ideas the world wants to talk about, then design, build and ship them ourselves, so the people who have the idea stay on to make it.

Human rights, climate, democracy, criminal justice, health, hunger, peace and equality, among others. If it makes the world better and needs people to notice, we want to hear about it.

Impact startups, B Corps, purpose-driven brands, nonprofits, foundations and corporate impact teams, in any country.

Yes, when the work does good. Country Time’s Legal-Ade, which paid kids’ lemonade-stand fines, and Coca-Cola’s Arctic Home, which raised money to protect polar bears, are two of our best-known campaigns.

Three steps. Concept: one big idea, sharpened until a stranger gets it in a single sentence. Produce: we design, build and ship the whole thing ourselves. Amplify: we engineer the earned media, so the world spreads it for free.

You tell us what you’re fighting for, and we listen. We’ll tell you honestly if, and how, we can help, and give you an honest sense of cost before anything else.

Your goal, your audience, any deadline that matters (a launch, a vote, an awareness day) and whatever you already have: brand, research, past work. We take it from there.

Yes. Our work has run from six European countries to North Korea, and our team works remotely across the Americas.

Buena started in Portland, Oregon. Today the team works remotely across the Americas, with good causes everywhere, in English.

Ours run from the US Pacific coast to Brazil, so our working day overlaps with every US time zone.

One person runs every project from kickoff to launch, with one place for every task and a weekly rhythm with each client. You always know what’s next and when.

The whole thing. We concept, design, write, film, build and launch, then handle the press. Nothing gets lost between agencies because there’s only one.

It depends on what your cause needs. Tell us about it and we’ll give you an honest range on the first call.

For websites, yes: three ready-made plans, Starter, Growth and Elite, each with a set scope and a set delivery date. Campaigns, brands and apps are scoped to the job.

A Starter site launches in three weeks, Growth in four and Elite in six, from kickoff to a live site. Custom builds are scoped to the project.

A focused identity sprint takes about two weeks. A full rebrand with naming, voice and guidelines takes longer, and we’ll give you a plan on the first call.

It depends on the idea and the date it has to hit. Tell us your deadline, whether it’s a launch, a vote or an awareness day, and we’ll work back from it.

Yes. A website package or a brand sprint is a good first project, and many of our partners have kept working with us for years after.

Coverage you don’t pay for: news stories, shares, posts and conversations that happen because the idea is worth talking about. It’s how our campaigns reach millions without a media budget.

Yes. Flash Drives for Freedom earned 1.23 billion media impressions with $0 spent on media, and Unlock Day reached 53 million people with no media budget at all.

No one honestly can. What we can do is build every idea to be shared and covered from day one, plan the launch with the press, and measure what happens.

Yes, when it helps the cause. Jane Fonda, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle and more than 500 actors joined Actors Retire Big Oil, and stars from Kerry Washington to Chelsea Handler joined Unlock Day.

Yes. We write, direct and produce films, photography, social content and launch sites in-house, so the idea comes out the way it was meant to.

Yes. We’ve made work for human rights, democracy and climate causes, from keeping dictators’ Olympic seats empty to asking a pension fund to retire Big Oil.

Whatever the brand needs: strategy, naming, logo and identity, voice, messaging and guidelines, made to work everywhere you show up, from a website to a T-shirt.

Yes. We’ve named organizations and products, and Causeway, an impact platform, is one recent example.

More than 30, for nonprofits, impact funds, campaigns and products.

Yes. We design brands that a small team can keep using without us: clear guidelines, ready-made templates and a system that’s easy to get right.

Every package includes a site your team edits itself, fast hosting, good search visibility, a contact form for leads, traffic insights, layouts for every device, and setup and launch. Brand design comes with every plan.

Yes. Every site we build comes with a CMS your team can actually edit, no developer needed.

Starter covers up to 3 pages in 3 weeks. Growth covers up to 10 pages in 4 weeks, with a blog, site search and scroll animations. Elite covers up to 20 pages in 6 weeks, with brand research and storytelling that unfolds as you scroll.

Yes. Monthly maintenance comes in three sizes, and add-ons include page testing, more languages and custom motion. Every package also comes with training or a knowledge base for your team.

Yes. Beyond the packages, we design and build custom sites, like the ones for RESOLVE, Nightjar and Sphere.

We build every site for good search visibility, with clean structure and fast pages, and our QA tool, Ojo, checks links, layout and SEO on the sites we ship.

Yes. The same studio behind award-winning campaigns builds apps and platforms, for clients like Sphere and for ourselves.

Our own include Gitterdone for projects, Yarn for communities, Corazón for docs and knowledge, Ojo for website QA, and Fuego, the website system this site is built on.

Project management for the people doing the work, with AI drafting the first pass of every task and a leaderboard that makes finishing feel like winning.

A private home for your community, with feeds, polls, events and knowledge, and no platform taking a cut of your people.

Yes, every day, from first drafts to final builds. We use AI to move faster and test more ideas, and people make the calls.

Yes. We build tools that answer from your own documents, draft work for your team and automate the busywork, the same way we built them for ourselves.

Among others: 11 Cannes Lions, 8 One Show Pencils, 10 Clios, 3 D&AD Pencils, 2 Webbys and an ADC Gold Cube. Cannes ranked Buena the 13th most awarded independent agency in the world.

Legal-Ade earned 1.1 billion impressions, Flash Drives for Freedom gave 1.2 million North Koreans access to the outside world, and Unlock Day gave 5.8 million days of education to people in prison.

By the goal we set together: coverage and reach, sign-ups and letters, donations, votes or visits. Every case study on this site shows the numbers.

On the Work page, with the story and the numbers behind each project, and in News for launches, results and what’s new.

One team of designers, developers, storytellers and operators. Meet everyone on the Team page.

We grow carefully, and we’re always glad to meet great people who care about good causes. Write to us at hola@buena.org and tell us what you do best.

Yes. We bring in directors, photographers, specialists and partner organizations when a project needs them, and we stay accountable for the whole thing.