What do you do with thirty cases of ripe bananas?
This was a question Isaac Farley grappled with one summer while a participant in the School of Visual Arts, Impact! Design for Social Change program in New York. Heading into his senior year as a graphic design major at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, Isaac, like many emerging and seasoned creative professionals, was eager to learn more about how to use his talents to engage in social issues.
While at Weber State, he had a part-time job as the manager of a local food pantry that served the needs of the homeless. Growing up Isaac had experienced homelessness, so he had a deep awareness of the difficulties that individuals in crisis faced, and he understood what they most often needed were jobs. The food pantry would receive large donations of ripe fruit and vegetables and, while perfectly good on that day, did not have a shelf life to be put to use in a timely manner. So, they ended up in the garbage.
Isaac asked the question, How can we use perfectly good produce, destined for the landfill, and provide jobs for the homeless? He took these two ideas and developed a concept he called O-Town Kitchen. O-Town is Ogden’s nickname. The basic premise would be that large donations of ripe fruit and vegetables would be repurposed into canned goods and packaged foods to be sold at farmer’s markets. He would hire homeless individuals to prepare and sell the products.
In the fall semester of his senior year Isaac began to develop O-Town Kitchen. He filed for incorporation, got his food safety license, and formed an alliance with Utah YCC Family Crisis Center, which had a commercial kitchen. A fellow student, Nestor Nobles, joined his team.
They tested their idea at a local farmer’s market and within one month had produced five hundred jars of jam, baked over seventy pounds of bread and repurposed six hundred pounds of food that would have ended up in the garbage. They also employed two homeless moms for two hundred hours, paying minimum wage.
They garnered the attention of the press, and a Salt Lake City television station ran a story on O-Town Kitchen. This brought them to the attention of the Ogden City Zoning and Planning Commission, who promptly shut them down because of a discrepancy in their permit. It was an easy fix. They continued to pursue the idea and received $15,000 in start-up funds from a Weber State University business competition.
Isaac was the first in his family to graduate from college; he now runs O-Town Kitchen full time. They recently moved into their own commercial kitchen and sell online, in twenty locations and at farmer’s markets all across Utah.
Design has traditionally been a service industry. As the creative professions evolve and as the lines between the silos of the profession blur, the range of what design has to offer is more expansive. As the world seems to devolve on a daily basis into one grim situation after another, creative professionals are looking to incorporate social-minded activity into the work they do.
Jason van Dyk, a graphic designer in Vancouver, British Columbia, was interested in figuring out a way to support individuals who were struggling with addiction. He understood the healing power of nature and the easy access living in Vancouver had to the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. He believed that getting people out of the confines of the city and the difficulties in their lives could contribute to the recovery process.
While a participant in the Impact! program he developed a simple idea: take individuals who were struggling with addiction on hiking and camping expeditions. Shortly after his experience at Impact!, Jason accepted a job as a graphic designer for the Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver, an organization that provides services to those dealing with addiction and homelessness.
After working there for a year, he pitched his idea to the senior leadership team who gave him the budget and resources to pilot the program he called Expeditions. Now, five years later, the program is going strong and Jason has had over one hundred men participate. Many have overcome addiction and homelessness during their time at Union Gospel Mission and attribute Expeditions as a key part of their success.
While the road to social change is paved with good ideas and good intentions, this does not mean these concepts ever reach their full potential. For an idea to be sustainable it needs to be more than a good idea; it needs to be built on a solid strategic foundation.
Jason is no longer working at Union Gospel Mission, but he built a sustainable platform on which the program can thrive. The idea is also scalable; other organizations have reached out to learn how they can bring Expeditions to their communities.
The desire to engage in social issues comes from within. You see an injustice in the world, a wrong you want to right. The issue may affect you personally, someone you know, or a constituency you care about.
As a service profession there are generally four ways in which designers can incorporate a social agenda into their daily work. Many creative firms choose to focus their client base on nonprofit organizations, and many nonprofit organizations have in-house communication departments. Designers working in the civic arena have the potential to impact the lives of millions of people by providing better access to public services. The US government is in dire need of good design, a challenge to be sure, as they have not been seduced by the term design thinking. Corporations are taking the lead through corporate shared value and recognize that consumers care about how they behave in the world. If a designer does not have an opportunity to work in one of these sectors they may turn to pro-bono work, which at the outset can be rewarding but often, over time, is not sustainable.
Like Isaac and Jason, many design professionals have turned their efforts to self-generated, non-client-based projects, geared toward positive community impact. Briefly, here are ten broad things to consider if you are contemplating an entrepreneurial approach, asking yourself the question, Where do I begin?
Be an active participant in life and engage in the world. Exposing yourself to as many ideas and situations as possible will allow you to discover new avenues and ways of being in the world that you did not know existed.
FOLLOW YOUR INTERESTS
Everyone always says to “follow your passion,” but passion is developed over time. By engaging in the world you will discover your interests; by following the threads of those interests you will find your passion. You need passion around a given issue to effectively engage in it entrepreneurially.
THINK SMALL
The popular American perspective is think big! Small acts inspire big ideas; it is better to have success on a small scale, which will encourage you to proceed and grow rather than fail because you took on more than you could handle.
LOOK IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD
While flying to Africa to help the disenfranchised is a wonderful idea, it often results in parachute design. The all-knowing designer drops into a culture they know little about to bestow upon them the brilliance of their solution. Look around—there are plenty in need right in your own neighborhood. You will find that you come to the problem with a local perspective, along with the connections and resources to help you on the road to success.
BE REALISTIC
It is always more work than you imagine it to be. There is no way to prepare you for this; be ready to embrace the unexpected workload.
RESEARCH, DEVELOP, PROTOTYPE…REPEAT
Iteration is the heart of the matter. Developing a business, program, or project is not a linear path. An idea is developed over time and best prototyped iteratively. Always consider what is the least you can do—your minimum viable product—to test your idea to see if it works. Then revise and repeat.
BUILD A COALITION
Social-minded work is all about community. Building a coalition around your idea to garner support is the only way to be successful. You start with who you know and go from there. It is all about relationships.
For most entrepreneurial efforts funding is the big challenge; whether you are seeking a foundation or corporate grant, individual donations or some type of sponsorship, this is where you can leverage your relationships for guidance and further connections. In-kind contributions are goods and services in lieu of cash. A social enterprise model is where you sell goods or services, which in turn create the positive impact you are seeking. Funding is usually a combination of many sources. If you are looking for major foundation support, they will often only give to other nonprofit organizations. If you do not have nonprofit status you can look for a fiscal sponsor—a nonprofit that aligns with your mission and who can act as your nonprofit umbrella. Be sure to build into your funding model compensation for your time.
PERSEVERE
No one will care more than you do—nor should they. The road to developing any idea is challenging, with unexpected roadblocks and inevitable failures. This is where your passion comes in; if you are committed to your idea and believe that it has the power to transform lives your perseverance will pay off.
MEASURE AND SHARE
Define your goals; did it work?
At the outset, think about short- and long-term goals and develop a set of metrics to measure the impact of your project. Over the life of the project, gather qualitative and quantitative data and collect stories to demonstrate the emotional impact of your work. Documentation should not be an after-thought; it will give you the material to share the outcome through case studies and social media. You just might create a market for your services.
Using design to impact positive social change is not a new idea—but it is one that has recently gained traction. As methods and tools make the development of a business, program, or project more accessible, designers can actively use their amazing talents to educate and inform, fight injustice, build community, and make the world a better place.