Most companies that want to do good start by writing a check. Status Labs started with its own toolkit. The reputation management firm built a philanthropic program, Incomplete Sentences, around the one thing it does better than almost anyone: telling a person’s story in full. The people it tells those stories for are caught in the criminal legal system, and most have never had anyone present their lives as more than a case file.
The program grew out of a strong belief Mary Lima had carried for years. Lima, who leads the company’s philanthropic work, wanted Status Labs to do something that every Status Labs employee could take part in and feel proud of.
“The whole point is to make sure we all, as a company, participate, and that we all feel proud of this,” Lima said. “It’s saying I am part of something, I’m working toward something.”
That ambition is now a working program. Status Labs, a digital reputation management firm headquartered in Austin, built Incomplete Sentences around one principle: the company would give away the skill the business runs on to illuminate the stories of individuals in the justice system. The firm partners with the Lone Star Justice Alliance (LSJA), a Texas nonprofit that works with youth and young adults caught in the state’s criminal legal system, many of them serving sentences handed down when they were still children. Through its Youth Sentencing Project, LSJA represents young people who were tried as adults and given extreme prison terms, in some cases life without parole, for acts committed before they were old enough to vote.
Status Labs spends its days shaping how people are understood online, and Incomplete Sentences points that same ability at people whose stories deserve to be told in full.
Finding the Right Fit
Getting there took care. Lima first imagined partnering with a national organization focused on the wrongly convicted, and she spent months working to make the connection. When an introduction to a Texas justice organization opened a different door, she saw quickly that the original concept needed rethinking. The people this group served were still incarcerated, and the first plan had assumed otherwise. So she reworked it.
Within a week, she returned with a sharper program and a name: Incomplete Sentences. Co-founder and CEO Darius Fisher backed it right away, and when Lima presented the reframed idea to the partner organization, the response was just as direct: “I love this.”
The refinement is what made the program land. Helping people who have already been cleared is valuable, and many volunteers are eager to do it. Lending skill and attention to people who are still inside, whose stories are harder and less comfortable, is rarer. That is the space Status Labs chose to fill.
Skills Travel Far
According to Benevity, the corporate purpose software provider, employees rarely seek out volunteer opportunities on their own. When a company designs and promotes those opportunities as part of its strategy, participation runs about 7.6 times higher than at firms that offer nothing.
Employees increasingly expect that of an employer. Research compiled by America’s Charities found that 71 percent of workers consider it imperative or very important to work somewhere with a culture that supports giving and volunteering. The same body of research points to a more specific opportunity. A Deloitte survey cites reports that 92 percent of corporate human resources executives agree that contributing business skills to a nonprofit improves employees’ leadership and professional abilities. Expertise, in other words, reaches further than a donation, in both directions: the nonprofit gets help it could never afford, and the company’s own people grow by giving it.
For an SEO/GEO firm like Status Labs, the skill in question is narrative. Status Labs helps a person or a brand be seen clearly. Lending that ability to people whose public record is a single court document, frozen at their worst moment, turned out to be the most direct translation of the company’s work into something charitable.
The Founder’s Framing
Darius Fisher, the firm’s co-founder and chief executive, put the logic plainly.
“We built this company on a simple idea: people are more than the worst thing ever written about them,” Fisher said. “Incomplete Sentences takes that belief and aims it at individuals whose voices and stories deserve to be heard. What we know how to do is help someone be heard, and that turned out to be the most honest thing we had to give.”
The statement doubles as a description of the company’s identity. Status Labs has long framed its purpose around the idea of second chances, and Incomplete Sentences extends that language.
Telling the Whole Story
The campaign also sharpened how Lima talks about the mission. “It’s not really up to us to determine who deserves a second chance,” Lima said. “In order for someone to decide whether a person deserves one, it’s imperative to have access to the full story, to the full narrative. So, it’s more about the power of storytelling, and how powerful it is to have access to the whole picture.”
The Work, in Practice
The first featured voice in the campaign is Lici Carmichael, a writer whose words Lima describes as some of the most powerful she has encountered. Before the team began, the partner organization led Status Labs volunteers through trauma-informed training so they could recognize when a conversation needed to slow down or stop. Lima is careful about the responsibility involved. “It’s a lot of responsibility,” she said, “but it’s also very generous of them to accept being part of the campaign.” Many of the people the campaign features describe never having been heard, treated by the system as though what they had to say did not matter. Being listened to, even by a small audience, is part of the point.
Incomplete Sentences is still in its inaugural year, but the partnership between Status Labs and Lone Star Justice Alliance is already shaping the people involved in it. As the team lays the groundwork to elevate these stories and strengthen the collaboration, employees are also being introduced to a world that can feel distant or unfamiliar to many.
Through listening, learning, and helping tell the stories of people who are too often reduced to the worst moments of their lives, the work asks participants to lead with curiosity and compassion. Status Labs hopes not only to support the individuals whose stories are being shared but also to help shine a light on Lone Star Justice Alliance’s work to build a justice system that recognizes the complexity of people’s lives and the humanity that exists beyond their hardest chapters.
