Rockefeller Workshop

Photo Credits: Heath Fleming of Catapult Design

After an invitation last month from my friend Manuel Toscano, Principle of Zago Inc, this Monday I finally got to step into the beautiful Rockefeller building on 5th Avenue in New York to join Manuel and other design, business, and nonprofit thought leaders for a two-day workshop discussing business models to sustain design for social impact projects. 

Design for Social Impact and nonprofit partnerships have become an increasingly popular subject among designers with IDEO's work, and the workshop held by DContinuum in Bellagio, Italy last year. But the question lingers as to how to make this work financially sustainable?

This was the topic of discussion for the workshop.  

Attendees of the workshop included: 

Manuel Toscano- Principal, Zago LLc

Alexander Osterwalde- Ph.D in Business Models and workshop leader

Heather Fleming- CEO, Catapult Design

Deb Johnson- Director of Sustainability at Pratt & Design in Kind Founder

Danny Alexander- Method Designer, and soon to be BoPreneur in moving to Argentina

Bill Drenttal- Partner, Winterhouse Institute & Design Observer 

And myself!

This being the first stage in the process, we made a general matrix of design and nonprofit engagement strategies with variable spectrums looking at: 

• non-profits with and without funds
  
• non-profits who do and do not already believe in the power of design
  
• designers at the beginning of their career to the more experienced
  

All of these require a different model. With the sticky map created above, we hope to expand each note with a full on business model, written contracts for partnerships and case studies as proof of concept. 

Should be exciting and I'm sure you'll be hearing about it more in the near future!