Let’s talk design
Let’s talk design. Not about how design sells products and makes money, of course it does that and there is incredible power in that, but let’s talk about the human side of design and how design can create and grow communities.
You already know my origin story — I worked at a nonprofit, transitioned to a design and marketing role and then moved back to the humanitarian sector.
Now I run an organization, Make a Mark, with our staple event being a 12-hour design and development marathon for nonprofits.
Since our first make-a-thon, we’ve grown over the past several years, completing over 100 projects worth millions of dollars and spreading to 11 cities across the globe Asheville, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Brussels, Charlotte, Chattanooga, Lexington, NYC, Roanoke — Blacksburg and San Francisco. The event is incredible, it is high energy, high creativity and high value.
But what I have seen and enjoyed the most over the years isn’t necessarily the event itself. To me, I have enjoyed seeing the community forged and the world views that expand as an extension of that. Our makers, the designers, developers and other creatives build connections with the nonprofits that they are serving.
Not only do the nonprofits get a broader understanding of the power of design and technology for the humanitarian sector, they themselves shine a light on the problems that those in our towns and cities face. Problems that are hard to imagine. Like what happens to those experiencing a terminal disease when they are homeless or how do those with substance abuse issues and mental illness find a community when their insurance won’t cover psychological help?
These are things that we don’t have to think about each day, because people like Sherry with Welcome Home or the staff with On Our Own of Roanoke step up to the plate and carry that burden every single day. They wake up thinking about these problems and go to bed thinking about these problems.
Now, let’s talk about Sherry. Sherry was a social worker and worked in hospice in Chattanooga for many years. She would hear about those that were dying from a terminal illness with no place to go. People would come to her agency for help, but she couldn’t do anything. She would sit back and say “someone should do something about this” and finally one day, she and a few others decided that they would do something. They purchased a small house in the city with enough rooms for 5–10 people and named their organization, Welcome Home.
Now, Sherry, one of the kindest people that I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting, spends her days with the residents she calls friends, sitting, talking, enjoying a meal. She then spends her evenings downstairs in the house applying for grants before getting the chance to go home to her husband. She makes the final days for her friends warm and kind and loving, in a home with others around them.
At the Chattanooga Make-a-Thon, Welcome Home was selected as a nonprofit and they received a video from a super talented team of makers.
We, as designers, marketers and technologists, are able to serve those nonprofits like Welcome Home that 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 safe and controlled environment for pro-bono collaboration.
It is about creating an equity of design for organizations that worry about the toughest problems in our towns and cities, 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 provide grants 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 that work tirelessly. We are building empathy in a world that needs it desperately.
Make a Mark has been my way of using design to not just serve an existing community, but to forge a new community and to create a level of design equity for the humanitarian sector.
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