With recent writeups about our friend Nelson's All Rivers project, we've also seen a considerable sales spike!
Since these projects are more of a hobby than our “real” work (involving clients), we thought that would be a good excuse to give away the proceeds. We're not particularly interested in becoming a poster company, but this provided a way to fulfill the many requests for posters that we'd received and a chance to take a break from interactive work and smell paper and ink coming off a Heidelberg.
We started with donating to Kiva and Donors Choose, but as the number of purchases continued to climb, we wanted to expand the list. So in the spirit of disclosure, here's a list of contributions we made last December (yes, that's correct—this post is eight months late). Everyone in the office pitched in with names of places they'd like to fund, so those are included here too.
- Science Club for Girls (Mark)
- Horizons for Homeless Children (Teri) This one's kind of a punch in the gut.
- Donors Choose (Ben) Another spending binge on books.
- Artists for Humanity (Ben) This was a cool Boston organization that I discovered when I attended a wedding that was held in their space.
- The State Organization on Artists and Disability (Andrés)
- Jean Appolon Expressions (James) A dance studio with family connections
- A “launch a small business” gift to the Heifer Project (Shannon). Having launched our own small business just a few years ago, we thought this was a cool idea.
- More Than Words (Katy) funds for "A month of wages for 1 youth to live independently"
- Somerville Homeless Coalition (Shannon) Half the studio lives in nearby Somerville, and the SHC does great work.
- Girls Rock Boston (Merrie) An organization with which she's volunteered. More on that below...
As you can see, we decided to focus on local groups in particular. And while not comprehensive, the result is a decent list of things we care about. We hope to repeat it sometime soon for the latest round of proceeds, perhaps with another theme.
In the meantime, our bookkeeper Merrie just finished camp with Girls Rock Boston, and sent this awesome photo (of a photo) of the team that she coached:
We're super excited to see where their careers wind up—whether they'll be playing stadium gigs or be the indie darlings of local venues—or just have used the opportunity to shake off some stage fright or feel a little more empowered. (Can we suggest graphic design? Coding? Information design? I wonder how they feel about offset printing...)
At any rate, thanks to everyone who's made a purchase! We look forward to adding more projects in the future.