2018 San Francisco Make-a-Thon Recap
October 20th marked the inaugural and independently-run San Francisco Make-a-Thon.
The San Francisco Make-a-Thon took place on October 20th as 14 nonprofits received support on projects including brands, website redesigns and much more. Learn about the 14 nonprofits that were selected for this honor.
This event was independently organized by San Francisco Site Leaders, Camille Matonis, Sam Sloan and Alix Cohen who brought together over 50 makers and volunteers to meet the needs of these Bay Area nonprofits.
Camille, Sam and Alix knew it was going to be a great day when they woke up bright and early to a clear, blue sky (a rarity in San Francisco). Makers began rolling into the HoneyBook office and were greeted with a big smile from Sam, a custom “Make for Good” shirt designed by Camille and provided by Real Thread, and a bag full of goodies from our sponsors.
“We’re incredibly proud to work with an organization like Make a Mark! There’s a lot of power in great design, and getting to play a part in making that happen for different non-profits is truly an honor (and a blast!),” said our friends at Real Thread.
Thank you to HoneyBook for lending their gorgeous space for the entire day. Having a creative and energetic environment for team collaboration makes it easy to spend 12 hours making for good.
“Our mission at HoneyBook is to empower creatives to build a sustainable business doing what they love, so when we heard about Make a Mark, we jumped at the opportunity to get involved. Seeing a roomful of designers, marketers, and developers come together at the Make-a-Thon blew us away. Their combined passion for helping non-profits increase their sustainability created high-impact designs that the participating organizations could implement immediately. You definitely don’t see those kinds of event results every day,” said Martha Bitar, Director of Business Development at HoneyBook.
After a busy morning of working, makers got a chance to enjoy a variety of healthy sweetgreen salads and Territory Foods meals to boost their energy.
Surprise, a special guest appeared! Pablo Stanley, a design leader, comic writer, design tutorial creator, and generally incredible human who works at InVision, showed up to lend a hand to teams. We were so lucky to have Pablo as a resource for our makers.
“InVision was delighted at the opportunity to get involved with Make a Mark and support the many talented participants in their pursuit to make an impact with local San Francisco nonprofits. Along with technology and business, we strive to make life better by design, and Make a Mark demonstrated the effects of a well-designed experience.”
Jessi Thorp and Evin Mullins were around all day to support the creatives giving their time. A huge thank you to InVision for acting as the headline sponsor and providing encouragement and badass products for our makers to use.
Nonprofit representatives began showing up — energetically engaged and eager to see the space and meet with their teams. This was the first opportunity that the nonprofits had to see the work that had been created so far.
Later in the afternoon, everyone’s thirst was quenched by kombucha sponsor, Health-Ade, which offered so many tasty flavors, teams started sharing kombucha flights to taste them all.
Makers spent the entire afternoon taking nonprofit feedback and perfecting their final projects. Working until the very last minute, the teams then swarmed back together, topping the day with delicious pizza and local beer from 21st Amendment Brewery and High Water Brewing.
There were tears shed, jokes cracked, and laughs throughout the evening as all of the groups presented their brilliant, thoughtful work.
“The excitement was palpable and the results were outstanding. We at Academy of Friends and our beneficiaries, will be grateful throughout our fundraising season (culminating Oscar Night) for your valuable contribution to our community,” said Michael Myers, Vice-Chair at Academy of Friends.
After Drinks + Demos wrapped up, makers, nonprofits and volunteers headed across the street to Black Hammer Brewery to celebrate the impactful work done by the teams.
“Thanks again to all the organizers and groups for bringing us all together. And to everyone else who came! It was awesome seeing so many people using their powers for good,” said Steven Lewis, maker.
We, as designers, developers, marketers and technologists, are able to serve nonprofits who spend their days being underpaid, understaffed and under-appreciated to do the work that saves our neighbors, our friends and even those that go forgotten.
It isn’t about giving away free design and development labor all year, it is about creating a controlled environment for pro-bono collaboration. We work hard to create a safe space where both the nonprofits and makers are appreciated, respected and understood.
This event is about creating an equity of design for organizations that worry about the toughest problems in our city, slave over grants and reports and sacrifice money and time with their families so we don’t have to think about or solve these same problems.
And through our work to help nonprofits, we are providing beautiful design and technology that can increase funding and share stories. But more importantly, we are sharing experiences and spreading hope to one another. We are saying a small thank you to those in our society who work tirelessly. We are building empathy in a world that needs it desperately.
Check out some of the incredible examples of the work completed in just 12 hours by volunteers.
You can see more photos from the event in our Facebook album below.
Thank you!
A special thank you to InVision and HoneyBook for supporting our efforts.
Thanks to our in-kind sponsors including Parsnip, sweetgreen, Territory Foods, Noah’s, Elixiria, St. Michel, Health-Ade, 21st Amendment Brewery, High Water Brewing, Too Haute Cowgirls, Norm’s Farms, 3–19 Coffee and Sir Kensington’s.
And thanks to our organizational sponsors: Real Thread, Abstract, Balsamiq and Mindsense.
To stay up to date, subscribe to the newsletter or send an email to hello@letsmakeamark.org.
