Many progressive grass-roots groups know they need more artfully crafted messages and better designed materials, but they have neither the resources nor know-how to make good design happen themselves. Many creative professionals who churn out top quality stuff in their spirit-killing corporate day jobs would jump at the chance to put their skills to work for a project more in line with their progressive values. There’s a need and a resource that can’t connect—in business-speak, you would call it a “market opportunity.” Enter “Design for Good,” a hub that would traffic-cop requests from across the grass-roots to a national database of creative talent, and match them up according to skills, availability, issue-enthusiasms, etc. The hub would be a user-driven web 2.0-esque website (think: online dating meets voice123.com). Paid staff would monitor and trouble-shoot the match-ups, and, when necessary, step in and play producer.
Colleague Kavita Kulkarni (kava at nyu dot edu) is currently driving the effort and we’re hoping to have it resourced and rolling by early 2013.
