The CO+HOOTS Foundation hosted a gallery event Friday night at Treeo to display their project from Pro Bono Week. The Impact event showcased the infographics made for 10 local nonprofits by 10 local graphic designers.
“One of the biggest needs that nonprofits have is that they need their information to be presented in a way that funders or businesses or volunteers can be able to understand their story and what they do in the community,” said Kristin Romaine, CO+HOOTS Foundation co-founder and executive director.
For Pro Bono Week, the CO+HOOTS Foundation paired 10 nonprofits with 10 graphic designers to create informative and professional infographics depicting each organization’s community impact.
Phoenix’s Pro Bono Week took place Oct. 19 through Oct. 25 and included different types of pro-bono work throughout the week, from graphic design to law.
“What we wanted to do during Pro Bono Week was to be able to provide smaller nonprofits that don’t have access to (professional design) resources with a way to really tell their story in an impactful way,” Romaine said.
Designers and nonprofits were paired based upon their interests, Romaine said.
Jenny Poon, founder of CO+HOOTS, said Romaine worked with each nonprofit to help them consolidate their information in a way that allowed the graphic designers to present accurate and aesthetically pleasing information.
Poon also said that one of the biggest challenges for nonprofits is to communicate their mission, and design is one way to be more successful.
“All of these nonprofits have great impact. The problem is they haven’t been able to communicate it and that’s our job as designers,” Poon said. “I’ve done a lot of nonprofit work and it has always been hit or miss because there hasn’t been the person on the other side that has been able to consolidate information in a way a designer can understand it.”
Poon said that she thinks the infographics helped each nonprofit realize a new way to communicate their own impact and goals.
“You are so close to something as a nonprofit, I think you look at your data or you look at your information and you think ‘Yeah that makes total sense.’ But then you give it to anyone else that hasn’t been through the trenches that you have and they are not going to understand it,” Poon said.
Romaine said she thinks this project has given each nonprofit a larger sense of pride in the work they do.
“I think what a lot of the nonprofits got out of this experience was seeing their impact presented in such a beautiful way that it made them also feel a lot more pride in the fact that they are having such a great impact on the community,” Romaine said.
Stacey Champion, whose Champion PR & Consulting is one of Treeo’s three tenants, said she was glad she could host an event that is doing so much for the local community and she found each of the infographics to be very interesting and educational.
“I think this show will be a lot more educational and informative for people and I think that’s really important,” Champion said. “(The infographics) are all really interesting and I am familiar with some of the nonprofits, but I wasn’t familiar with all of them, so it was kind of cool to find out about some other local nonprofits.”
The Impact show will be on display at Treeo on Sixth Street just south of Roosevelt Street for the rest of November.
Contact the reporter at taylor.brightwell@asu.edu
