AIGA Seattle Changemaker Series

Pairing creative professionals with nonprofits to unleash their creative superpowers

The AIGA Seattle Changemaker Series pairs members of Seattle’s creative community with local nonprofits and leverages Human Centered Design (HCD) to help the nonprofits tackle their hairiest issues. I’ve been involved since 2016 and served as the Director of the program in 2019 and 2020.

How we started

The Changemaker Series started in 2015 with the realization that there wasn’t an outlet for Seattle’s creative community to work alongside nonprofits within a committed and supported volunteer structure. There were hackatons, matchmaking events, and school projects, but nothing that stewarded and supported volunteers through the challenges they encounter with HCD. Thus, through the brainpower of Arnold Phommavong and the support of AIGA Seattle, the Changemaker Series was born.

Every May, we brought together 40 creative professionals, grouped them into six teams (each including designers from a range of disciplines), and paired them with one nonprofit each. From May to September, they worked through the HCD process to identify the needs of their nonprofits, research and prototype potential solutions, and produce a deliverable in September.

How we’ve grown

I joined the program in 2016 as a UX Designer. I partnered with an awesome team of creative professionals and supported the Downtown Emergency Services Center (DESC) in their challenge to improve the communication and delivery of in kind donations. It was a great experience, and I was hooked.

In 2017, I joined the Changemaker Series Committee to help plan future programs. Every year, we focused on a new theme, sourced from our community members. We knew that the program could thrive without the community’s interest and support, so we took every opportunity to collect ideas about what causes we should focus on each year. Over the years, we focused on:

My stewardship of the program

I’m passionate about the Changemaker Series and its impact. After becoming Director in Fall 2019, I led our committee to focus on five areas:

1. Continue to produce quality programming — Partnering and supporting our creative professionals and nonprofits during our four-month programming is the core of what we do. Our priority is to deliver high-quality structures and events that will lead our creatives to the best possible results for their nonprofit clients.

2. Begin measuring and assessing our impact — Until recently, the Changemaker Series relied on anecdotal evidence to understand our program’s impact. My background in nonprofit programming has given me a critical eye towards the importance of measuring impact in both qualitative and quantitative ways. As such, we’ve begun a process of collecting information through interviews and surveys before and after the program so that we can assess our short- and long-term impact on program participants.

3. Produce a toolkit that empowers other AIGA chapters to replicate the Changemaker Series in their communities — As the Changemaker Series has grown and developed, other AIGA chapters have reached out to us to learn how they can host a Changemaker program in their own communities. In 2020, we began work to produce a toolkit that will empower other AIGA chapters or design groups to launch similar programming in their community.

4. Become more thoughtful about diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout our program — Diversity is important on any team, but especially in design. We can’t build for marginalized communities unless those communities have a voice in our design and at our tables. With this in mind, we took a hard look at how we define diversity, how we articulate its value, and how we live those values throughout the program. Specifically, my goal was to increase the diversity of our planning committee so that the decisions we make will be reflective of the diverse communities we serve.

5. Create a community of Changemakers from across our cohort years — Over 200 creative professionals have been involved in the Changemaker Series over the last five years, yet hadn’t taken the opportunity to bring these individuals together as a cohesive community. In 2020, we experimented with ways to engage and excite our past participants to stay engaged with each other and with our current program.

These are the five pillars that guided my leadership through fall 2020. If you’re interested in being involved in the Changemaker Series—either as a participant, nonprofit, or committee member—shoot me a message at changemaker@seattle.aiga!