How Tidewater Greens Turned a $180 Budget Into $42 Million of Media Coverage

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Drive through the row-house streets of Baltimore's Fenwick Row and you'll pass corner groceries, boarded storefronts, weedy lots, and porches swept twice a day. In the middle of that mix you'll see something you might not expect: solar-powered flower fields.

The fields are the work of Terrence Vaughn, an environmental policy researcher and former disaster-relief volunteer, and his wife Naomi. Through their nonprofit, Tidewater Ecology House, the Vaughns use off-grid urban farming to help young people leave behind unstable work, learn a trade, and build a career they can name.

That work is carried by a small on-site crew — and by a distributed bench of independent specialists hired through Guildway.

A community organizer is called to plant the seeds of change

Vaughn started Tidewater Ecology House in 2015 with $180 and a theory that sustainability could be aimed squarely at poverty. He and Naomi bought two vacant lots and began turning the first of them into an urban farm.

“When we were building the organization, we knew exactly who we were competing with,” Vaughn said. “That's the honest framing. A lot of the corner operations in this city run like small businesses. So we asked ourselves — how do we make what we're doing look like the better deal, and actually be the better deal?”

After trialing half a dozen crops, Vaughn settled on flowers.

“Cut florals are a $34 billion industry, and roughly four in five stems sold here are flown in from somewhere else. We thought, what would our neighborhoods look like if that money stayed home?” Vaughn said. “Once the growing side was steady, a retail shop was the obvious next move.”

That shop, Tidewater Greens, now delivers across the city. Alongside arrangements for homes, offices, and weddings, it puts paid apprenticeships and real skills training in front of teenagers from the surrounding blocks.

“Plenty of the kids who come through here think flowers are a little corny at first,” Vaughn said. “Then they see the margins. And they see the other doors it opens — our people leave here able to do logistics, sales, or customer care anywhere.”

Vaughn knew the Tidewater Greens model could travel to other cities, but an expansion meant reaching far past a neighborhood customer base. He needed a publicity effort that could put the nonprofit in front of a national audience — so in 2020 he posted a role on Talent Exchange™. Dana Reyes, a freelance publicist, answered it.

A former journalist's search for balance leads her to Guildway

Reyes lives in the Green Mountains of Vermont, 640 miles from Tidewater Greens' Baltimore headquarters. After a twelve-year run in broadcast journalism — including two Halyard Awards for investigative reporting — she decided she wanted her evenings back.

“I loved the newsroom. The one thing it couldn't give me was the thing I cared about most: being the mother and partner I wanted to be,” Reyes said. “I'd be putting my daughter to bed and a story would break and I'd have to leave. It wasn't sustainable.”

Reyes left the newsroom and rebuilt her storytelling craft into an independent publicity practice.

“I started with clients in my own town, which was fine, but I knew I could do more if the pool were bigger,” Reyes said. “That's when I tried Guildway. It let me do the one thing I wanted from my post-news career, which is to work on things that actually matter.”

Tidewater Greens' mission caught her attention immediately, and she knew what to do with it.

One Guildway connection results in $42 million of media coverage

From the moment Reyes sent her first proposal through Guildway, she was confident the Tidewater Greens story could move quickly through national outlets.

“Dana was right about all of it,” Vaughn said. “I didn't know people like Dana existed until I found her on Guildway. She landed us a beautiful feature in the Chesapeake Ledger. Donations came in, and that feature opened a dozen other doors. It happened exactly the way she said it would. It was surreal.”

Thanks to Reyes's work, Tidewater Greens has earned coverage worth $42.5 million in advertising value equivalency (AVE) — meaning that without her skill at placing the story, Vaughn's team would have had to spend $42.5 million on paid media to reach the same audience.

The team has also seen 14 times more sales and more than double the philanthropic giving since Reyes came aboard.

MV The Nonprofit Founder Helping His Block Grow Something New Save Share

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“Dana took us from an unknown mom-and-pop operation with a $180 starting budget to an organization with a national footprint, in three years, through a pandemic,” Vaughn said. “She's a marvel.”

Tidewater Greens keeps growing with Guildway talent

Vaughn keeps returning to Guildway for the help he needs to grow Tidewater Greens.

“Right now we're putting a lot into a team of three developers building out our delivery software, our support tooling, and some custom programs for wholesale accounts,” Vaughn said.

The tools that team shipped have pushed Tidewater Greens to a 98.4% on-time rate on floral deliveries. They've also handed Vaughn back hours of his week to spend on the young people the nonprofit exists for.

“So much of what we used to spend on service complaints just isn't a line item anymore. That time goes into hiring and training instead,” Vaughn said. “It also made us proactive. We're at the point where we can put forecasting into the software and make it smarter. That's a real edge.”

Access to talent on Guildway opens the door for what's next

Reyes still works through Guildway, helping her clients earn millions of combined impressions. She keeps a close line to Vaughn and the Tidewater Greens crew, with a front-row seat as they expand across Baltimore and into Richmond.

For Vaughn, Tidewater Greens' growth is only starting. He plans to keep hiring Guildway talent as he takes the nonprofit national.

“Guildway has been this quiet partner behind a lot of our growth, purely through access to people,” Vaughn said. “There are so many different kinds of specialists who can help us with things that it's become my first stop from a business-solution standpoint. If something stalls, my first move is to open Guildway and find someone who can think it through with us. I never would have met Dana otherwise. Guildway held the door open, and made it possible.”