Victor + Valor® 2025 Impact Report: The Creative Agency That Donates Itself

Most people hear “creative agency” and think big retainers, bigger invoices, and budgets only corporations can afford.

Victor + Valor® is the opposite.

We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit creative agency that donates senior-level branding, marketing, and media services to veterans, active-duty service members, military spouses, and military-connected young adults whose ventures earn under $1 million a year.

In 2025, we turned world-class creative work into a lifeline. We took the tools that usually sit behind a corporate paywall and placed them in the hands of people who wore the uniform, held the home together, or grew up in the shadow of service.

This is what happened with the time and money donors entrusted to Victor + Valor®.

2025 by the Numbers

Behind every number is a real founder and a real family. The scale matters for anyone who wants to know if their giving truly moves the needle.

In 2025 alone, Victor + Valor®:

• Donated more than 20,000 hours of senior level strategy, branding, design, web, content, and media work

• Delivered over 16.4 million dollars in equivalent services and creative assets

Across our first two full years, Victor + Valor® has:

• Supported 264 brands led by veterans, active-duty members, military spouses, and military-connected young adults

  • 158 new brands joined in 2025

  • 106 brands continued from 2024

• Reached 300 plus founders through our training community and touchpoints

• Provided returning brands with 56,000 to 100,000 dollars worth of donated services each in 2025

• Helped more than 70 brands leave multi-brand photo and video shoots with assets that finally match the quality of their work

Every one of these brands earns under 1 million dollars per year on the idea we support. Some were at zero when we began. Others are comfortably into six figures. Several are on track to approach 1 million dollars in 2026.

The common denominator: they all received creative and strategic support at a level usually reserved for well-funded companies.

Darren and Barracks Barista®

A disabled veteran, a coffee brand, and a family of six

If you want to understand Victor + Valor®, start with Darren Henry.

Darren approached us while still on active duty. His dream: build his coffee brand, Barracks Barista®, into an income stream strong enough to support his family when he left the military. Today he is a 100 percent total and permanent disabled veteran, a father of four children with his youngest born in September, and the heart behind a brand that keeps the humor, grit, and heart of America alive in every bag.

Darren came with the things no agency can manufacture: character, courage, and a genuine love for people. What he did not yet have were the tools. His packaging could not compete with big name roasters. His copy did not fully tell the story of the coffee or the cause. His visuals and social presence did not communicate the quality of his product or his heart.

Victor + Valor® began working with Barracks Barista® in 2024. In 2025 we deepened that partnership. We produced professional photo and video shoots. We showed up at events to support and strategize. We helped him navigate access to military bases across the country. Our volunteers turned raw photos and footage into ready-to-post content and walked beside him as he learned how to use it.

Now Darren has a brand that looks and feels as strong as his story. His social audience is active, engaged, and buying. He knows that when he posts, sales follow. Media coverage is not just a nice ego boost; it leads to orders that help pay for everyday life.

For a disabled veteran supporting a family of six, this is not cosmetic branding. It is groceries, rent, and breathing room.

Andrew and A New Veteran™

Hope, silence, and starting again

Not every story moves in a straight line. Andrew Davenport, founder of A New Veteran™, is open about that.

We met Andrew at the Military Influencer Conference in 2023. He needed a website quickly so he could protect his concept and file for a trademark. We built the site, he filed the paperwork, and then life pressed in.

As a veteran who navigates mental health challenges, Andrew stepped back. Doubt grew. He questioned his value. He did not want to bother anyone.

In many programs, that would be the end of the story.

In 2025, Andrew came back.

He joined our photo shoots. He reentered the Victor + Valor® community. He stepped more fully into his role as the founder of A New Veteran™. He used his expertise to help Darren secure total and permanent disability within three months of retirement. He began planning events for 2026, both nationwide and in his home community in Georgia. The stronger brand and visual presence we have built with him is now helping him pursue larger grants and partnerships.

Andrew jokes that our Executive Director, Ali, is his personal AI assistant. What he really means is this: at Victor + Valor®, the door stays open. We understand that life and mental health are real factors. When a founder is ready to start again, we simply pick up where we left off.

Bryan and Core Focus Performance Coaching

A four-year runway instead of a cliff

Bryan Hedrick is still wearing the uniform. After moving from Boston to Kentucky, he has about 4 years left on active duty and a clear vision of what he wants next.

He holds advanced degrees in leadership and psychology. He has seen the cost of poor leadership and the power of good leadership. His dream is to help leaders and coaches use those insights to build stronger people and stronger teams.

Most transitioning service members stand at the edge of a cliff. One day they are in, the next day they are out, scrambling to build a new life. With Brian, we are building a runway.

In 2025, Victor + Valor® helped Bryan turn one of his leadership and mindset assessments into an online tool. The assessment can now be taken on demand and licensed by other coaches. We also launched Core Focus Performance Coaching, giving him a professional brand and a clear offer that aligns with his current time and future goals.

Right now Bryan keeps a small, select client load, which is all his schedule allows and all he needs. The purpose of this season is not a packed calendar. The purpose is a strong foundation. When he takes off the uniform in a few years, he will not be starting at zero. He will step into a business he has already tested, refined, and grown.

Michelle and Operation Honor Rural Salute™

No more forgotten veterans

Michelle Lang is a military spouse, a mother of three, and the founder of Operation Honor Rural Salute™. Her mission is to serve rural veterans and their families across the United States, the people who are most likely to be overlooked because of where they live.

We met Michelle at MIC in 2023 and began working with her in early 2024. By 2025, our work together had evolved into a full rebrand, a sharper focus on rural veterans, and support for programming and events in rural communities.

The most powerful change, however, is inside Michelle. She now sees and owns her value. She approaches major funders, large foundations, and government partners with clarity and confidence. Her brand finally reflects the scale and seriousness of her mission. When she speaks for rural veterans, decision makers pay attention.

All of this happens while she manages the daily realities of military family life: three young children, school, training cycles, and deployments. Victor + Valor® flexes around that reality. Sometimes we meet on Zoom, sometimes on the phone, sometimes by text message or voice notes between school pickup and bedtime.

Because Michelle said yes to her calling and because donors made it possible for Victor + Valor® to build a brand around that calling, rural veterans are less invisible today than they were two years ago.

Future founders

Three military-connected teens and fundamental business skills

Not all of our founders are adults.

In 2025, three military-connected young people, ages 12, 15, and 17, came to Victor + Valor® with dreams of creating clothing and fashion brands. It would have been easy to smile, point them to social media, and leave it at that.

Instead, we treated them like the founders they are.

We walked them through how products actually move from idea to customer. We discussed suppliers, pricing, and margins. We explained trademark basics for apparel. We talked through drop shipping, sales tax, and shipping logistics. We connected each teen with a mentor who understands that industry or audience.

They arrived with bold dreams. They left with bold dreams and a clearer understanding of what those dreams would require. That knowledge will shape how they approach money, work, and risk for the rest of their lives.

This is the kind of impact that does not show up fully on a balance sheet, yet changes a generation.

What donated agency-level service really include

On the surface, twenty thousand donated hours sound abstract. In reality, those hours look like strategy calls at odd times because of deployment schedules, weekends spent on photo shoots, late nights writing copy, and constant back-and-forth sending files, feedback, and encouragement.

In 2025, our donated services included agency caliber:

• Brand strategy, positioning, and messaging

• Visual identities, logos, and cohesive brand systems

• Websites and email infrastructure

• Photo and video shoots plus professional editing

• Social media content and guidance

• Public relations and media outreach that led to national coverage

• Public speaking, leadership, and resilience coaching

We applied those skills to very different types of brands.

• Owners In Honor™ is a more mature nonprofit that still earns under 1 million dollars a year. It supports veterans who want to become entrepreneurs through acquisition. Our work helps them align their message across development, programming, and events, control the quality of what goes out, and leverage every asset they have for media and funding.

• Luna Leaf™ is a bold wellness app vision led by a single founder. Our role is to sequence and prioritize. We help decide what to build now, what to wait on, and how to make every hour and dollar move the project forward instead of creating burnout.

• Three Forks™ Wood Reclamation is a for-profit brand led by former special operators who reclaim historic wood and bring it to high-end architects and designers. Our job is to make sure their story, visuals, and digital presence feel as authentic and premium as the material they carry out of historically significant sites.

Same nonprofit. Different models. Same promise: if you are under 1 million dollars a year and your work is legal and ethical, we will bring our best creative and strategic work to your side.

The power of staying

Victor + Valor® does not graduate brands and send them away. We stay.

Out of more than 200 brands served, only two have proved not to be the right long-term fit. Everyone else remains part of a living, breathing ecosystem. Founders come back when they pivot, launch something new, are ready to grow again, or when life knocks them sideways.

The Pillar Foundation, led by Teresa Schick and focused on special operations force spouses, was our very first Victor + Valor® brand. We still support Teresa today.

Over time, we have helped Pillar rethink how it serves spouses, so the model supports both the women who come for help and Teresa herself as a deeply invested SOF spouse. We have worked with her to move away from a rigid, one-size-fits-all cohort approach and toward a more flexible, personalized structure. We are now helping prepare an advisor and resource model that will launch in 2026.

Staying means we do not just help brands start. We help them mature, adapt, and grow in ways that stay true to the people at the center.

Our reality in 2025

One full-time leader and a near-capacity crew

Behind all of this impact stands a very lean team.

Victor + Valor® currently runs with:

• One full-time team member, Executive Director Ali Craig, who leads strategy, creative direction, founder support, and operations

• A small circle of core volunteers providing public speaking support, social media help, photography, videography, and editing

• A handful of paid independent contractors, including resilience coaches Patrick and Susie Lander , and a PR team that secures national media for our brands

We do not consider a brand finished until it crosses the 1 million dollar mark on the idea we support. Founders are always welcome to return for new launches, new offers, and new seasons. The roster only grows. We add, we do not replace.

This is beautiful for founders and heavy for capacity. We are very close to the limit of how many brands we can serve at this depth with our current structure.

If nothing changes, our bandwidth will become the limiting factor rather than founder potential.

2026

What it will take to scale this impact

To keep serving our existing brands well and to say yes to more founders in 2026, we need to grow our team and our financial foundation.

Funding in the coming year will allow us to:

• Hire additional full-time staff so our Executive Director is not carrying the weight of a full agency alone

• Convert our social media volunteer into a full-time role so we can better support dozens of brands online

• Bring photography and videography support into paid positions so we can run more high-impact shoots throughout the year

• Hire our publicist full-time so the national press engine behind our brands is stable and sustainable

• Add development and fundraising capacity so the mission expands beyond the shoulders of our earliest private donors

We also plan to host a two-and-a-half-to-three-day in-person event in Austin, Texas, where we will fly in founders for concentrated photo and video shoots, live training from experts, and high-value networking with each other.

We have seen what happens when our brands gather. They hire each other. They collaborate. They share contacts. They create opportunities that would never appear on a spreadsheet. We want to make that possible more often.

Your part in the story

Victor + Valor® exists because a small group of private donors believed that military connected founders deserve more than slogans about bootstraps. They believed that veterans, spouses, and military kids deserve real tools, not just motivational posts.

They were right.

But it is not their responsibility alone to carry this mission.

If you believe in the dignity of work and ownership, if you believe that those who served and those who stood beside them deserve a real chance at business success, if you believe that world-class branding and marketing should not be reserved only for the wealthiest companies, then we invite you to stand with Victor + Valor®.

Your support can turn:

• Donations into billable hours of strategy, design, web, media, and coaching

• Volunteers into sustainable full-time roles

• One-time gifts into long-term stability that allows us to plan shoots, events, and programs that change lives

We are not only building brands. We are building legacies, one donated hour, one founder, and one family at a time.

To fuel the next year of impact and help us expand for 2026, visit: https://www.victorvalor.org/give

Make your tax-deductible gift. Share this report with someone who loves this country and its people. Help turn world-class creative work into real, lasting futures for military-connected founders and their families.