Embedded Leadership
Run by Don Martelli, The PR Bunker is an embedded leadership and strategic communications firm that steps inside nonprofits, associations, real estate developers and professional services firms to own how they grow and how they're seen. Don takes the seat, PR Bunker does the work behind him, and both stay until it runs. 25 years, no junior handoffs.
"Most organizations don't have a story problem or a growth problem. They have a seat problem. Nobody senior owns how the place shows up and grows, so the work gets split across a vendor, a board member and whoever has time on Friday."
The job is to take that seat, build the system underneath it, and leave it running.
Before founding PR Bunker I was a journalist, then president of a large Boston agency. Today I'm embedded at Alignable, the small business referral network, where I lead user education, PR and social media, and I chair the library board and the Chamber of Commerce board in Revere. Everything I bring to your seat has been tested in a room where I was accountable for the outcome.
Embedded CMO
For nonprofits and associations. I own brand, member and donor growth, and the board-ready story that holds all three together. The executive director gets a senior partner at the table, and the board gets the numbers and the narrative in the same meeting.
Embedded Community Relations Lead
For real estate developers with a contested project. I own the community meetings, the approval story, the local officials and the press, from the first rumor to the first hearing. 165 million square feet of permitted Massachusetts development sits behind this seat.
Embedded Head of Growth
For professional services firms, law, accounting, engineering, consulting and agencies, whose growth runs on referrals and whose partners are the brand. I own the firm's visibility, the partners' profiles, the referral network and the partnerships that bring work in the door.
What a seat includes
A named senior leader with a title on your org chart, a weekly presence in your leadership meetings, ownership of a growth number, and the authority to run the people and vendors already doing the work. Month to month, with a floor on the time you get, never a retainer that quietly shrinks.
PR Bunker behind the seat
Every seat comes with the firm: media relations, writing, community and stakeholder work, crisis readiness, and the AI and search visibility that decides what people find when they look you up. The seat decides what gets done. PR Bunker does it.
Too small for a seat
Owners and small-nonprofit executive directors get the self-serve version. SBGA for business owners, the Mission Engine for nonprofits: the operating system and the agents you run yourself, with Don one call away.
Nobody should hire an embedded leader off a sales call. The Growth Diagnostic is three to four weeks at a fixed fee, it ends in a 90-day plan you keep whether or not we go further, and about half of them turn into a seat. Here is how the four weeks run.
Interviews with the leadership, the board chair or the project lead, and the people who touch growth every day. What's working, what's stuck, what the numbers say and what nobody has written down.
How you're seen from the outside: the press, the search results, the AI answers, the referral partners and the competitors a donor, a member, a town or a client compares you to.
Where the growth work actually lives today, who owns each piece, what gets dropped, and what one senior person at the table would change in the first 90 days.
A 90-day plan with owners, dates and a number, presented to the board or the leadership team in person. You keep it. Most organizations can run it themselves. Some want the seat.
If the plan calls for one, the Diagnostic rolls straight into the embedded seat with no second discovery phase. Month to month, with PR Bunker's work attached and the 90-day plan as the first scorecard.
Don Martelli, on every interview, every board presentation and every week of the seat. No account team, no junior handoffs, no learning on your organization.
Diagnostics run between $7,500 and $15,000 depending on the size of the organization. Seats start at $8,000 a month. Both numbers are on the first call, not the fourth.
An embedded leader is a senior outside executive who takes a named seat inside your organization, owns a growth outcome, and runs the people and vendors already doing the work for as long as the seat is needed. At The PR Bunker that leader is Don Martelli, as an embedded CMO for nonprofits and associations, an embedded community relations lead for real estate developers, or an embedded head of growth for professional services firms, with the firm doing the work behind him. The seat is on your org chart, the accountability is to your board or your leadership team, and the engagement is month to month.
A fractional CMO or fractional head of communications sells you hours from the outside: a set number of days a month, a vendor relationship, and a scope that stops at the edge of the contract. An embedded leader sits inside, carries a title, owns a number, and brings a firm with it, so the strategy and the execution come from the same place. If you searched for a fractional CMO, a fractional community relations lead or a fractional growth partner, this is that role with one difference. Don doesn't bill hours from the outside. He sits inside.
A seat comes with a weekly floor on Don's time that is written into the agreement, usually a standing day a week plus leadership meetings, board presentations and the moments that can't wait. The firm's hours behind the seat, writing, media, community work and visibility, are separate and scoped to the plan. What you never get is a retainer that quietly shrinks after month two.
Lead them. Most organizations already have the people, a development associate, a marketing coordinator, an outside designer, a PR vendor. What they don't have is a senior person who owns the outcome and tells everyone what to do in what order. The seat is that person. If the Diagnostic finds a gap the firm can fill, PR Bunker fills it behind the seat rather than adding another vendor you have to manage.
A 90-day plan with owners, dates and a number, presented to your board or leadership team in person, plus the read that produced it: how you're seen from outside, where the growth work actually lives today, and what one senior person at the table would change first. It takes three to four weeks at a fixed fee between $7,500 and $15,000, and you keep the plan whether or not we go further. About half of Diagnostics turn into a seat.
Seats start at $8,000 a month, month to month, with PR Bunker's agency work attached and scoped to the 90-day plan. Work that needs more hands, a campaign, a hearing season, a rebrand, is priced on top as a project. The numbers are on the first call, because an embedded leader who hides the price is not someone you want on your org chart.
Boston, with the seat in person for Massachusetts and New England organizations and remote with regular on-site time elsewhere. The developer work is Massachusetts first because that's where the permitting record is. The nonprofit, association and professional services seats run anywhere a leadership team meets on a screen each week and in a room a few times a quarter.
Owns brand, member and donor growth, and the board-ready story that holds all three together: the one account of who you serve and what's at stake that the executive director, the board chair and the development lead all tell the same way. In practice that means the donor and member communications calendar, the earned media, the partner and sponsor pipeline, the AI and search visibility, and the numbers the board asks for, all run by one senior person who sits in the leadership meeting.
Owns the community side of a contested project from the first rumor to the first hearing and through the approval: the stakeholder map, the community meetings, the abutters and the Facebook group, the local officials, the press, the community benefits agreement, and the approval story that goes in front of the board or the siting authority. PR Bunker has 165 million square feet of permitted Massachusetts development behind that seat, including Suffolk Downs and MarketStreet Lynnfield.
Three to four weeks, a fixed fee, and a 90-day plan you keep either way. If it calls for a seat, I take it. You get me in every room. No junior handoffs.
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