GRAPHIC DESIGN, ILLUSTRATION, CREATIVE THINGS
Working w/some good apples
If you can, find a non-profit and give some time. Heck! give a lot of time. Non-profits and giving your time in service has been a value my parents have long instilled. As I grew in my career, I knew it would be important to continue to find time to volunteer and give in whatever capacity I could. Each year I put a focus on doing pro-bono work for non-profit organizations I am passionate about. I have gotten to work with several local, and international charities that are doing some stellar things.
Helping plan and organized fundraisers, create printed marketing materials, social media graphics, and everything in between.
Featured here are a few examples of some non-profit work. If you're a good apple in need of some freelance help Reach out and let's get started.
Non-Profit Work
Cause:
The Wild Animal Sanctuary
Roar for Wildlife Fundraiser
Part of a design for change program, one task required us to create a campaign that had real measurable results for a good-cause. As a Colorado resident and nature lover, I decided to focus my energy on raising funds for the Wild Animal Sanctuary of Colorado. After getting in touch with the Wild Animal Sanctuary staff and getting some perimeters and some of their fundraising goals for the remainder of the year.
The challenge: Create a fundraising campaign within a 6 week period that solicited to younger/new donors to help in their current (then) current campaign for purchasing land for the "Wild Refuge."
The outcome: From December 2017 - January 2018 I individually headed up a fundraising effort The Roar For Wildlife Campaign. Over the campaign, I created several dozen unique graphics, t-shirts, and other products and held in-person fundraisers. Raising a total of $10,579 dollars and got over 200 unique donors to contribute.
In approaching this campaign, I wanted to create several different avenues people could learn about, or get involved. One important component was to create a landing page for my campaign, to help legitimizize, measure my campaigns efforts. The website was created to directly link visitors to The Wild Animal Sanctuary in order to donate. This helped streamline the donations and helped me track the analytics of the campaign. The Roardforwildlife website became an instrumental resource allowing folks to visit and research the cause while saving me and the Sanctuary valuable time!
Leveraging some design elements I had been pushing on soical media, I also created custom screen printed tees to compliment the theme of the campaign. Folks either received a shirt as an incentive after donating a certain dollar amount. The tees are available for sale on the product page! Pick yours up today!
Social media played a key role in tracking the campaign's success. I created a variety of vibrant and illustrative FB and IG posts either directing viewers to the campaigns or Sanctuary's website, as well as posts that featured a "text-to-donate" option. The daily posts created measurable interest and became a widely shared feature.
Doing non-profit work in the past, I've learned that having a "Boots-on-the-ground" approach is always beneficial. Making physical posters, shown here, and other printed collateral as well as holding a few small in-person info/donation events really helped shares, donations, and awreness for the Wild Animal Santucary and my campaign. Overall, the campaign was a roaring success!
Cause:
Maji Safi
Clean water practices in rural Africa
Maji Safi, a Boulder-based non profit, works to build strong local programs in rural Africa to educate and build social confidence surrounding water and hygiene. The organization being primarily focused on promoting well-water use, cleanliness and health education, to stop the spread of disease.
Needless to say, the stopping the spread of Covid -19 became a key focus of Maji Safi. The organization got in lock-step with promoting community education in rural Africa to try to prevent even greater community spread. I was tasked to design and layout a brochure, that was to be distributed in mass across Tanzania.
The challenge: In March of 2020 the world was shaken by the explosion of Covid-19. The pandemic was an exceptional health-risk to many of the communities Maji Safi worked with. It was of upmost importance that the brouchure meet the stringent critera set by the government as well as be widely understood. Creating strong visuals and charts were key, considering the language and literacy barriers.
The outcome: Using both my illustrative skills and print layout background, I worked alongside the leadership to create an A4 8-page pamphlet. Each spread featured its own graphic and centered around areas of disease prevention and resources.
The brouchure was in Swahili and I had to pay close attention to notes the team was giving me to ensure the messaging was clear and accurate. Once the brouchure was approved by the Tanzanian ministry it'd be ready for wide-scale distrubtion. It was truly a humbling project to work on.
Over the years, I have helped Maji Safi with a few other small projects. Including posters for conferences and chart design. The experience has been educational and uplifting.
Maji Safis commitment to community stewardship and empowerment illustrates the power of an organization's ability to evolve. Visit their website to find out more and ways you can get involved: https://majisafigroup.org/