When you register for for the Boston conference (it’s June 22 to 25), use this code: HEPIC. You’ll get a $100 discount on your individual, full-conference registration.* In turn, HOW will donate $50 to EPIC.

Can’t beat that with a bat.

Register here. HOW Design Conference is four days of creative inspiration, from-the-trenches advice on growing your career and lots more. In fact, EPIC Founder/Executive Director Erin Huizenga will be saying a few words about our mission before the conference keynote. Don’t miss her.

Then stop by our table. So’s we don’t get lonely.

* IMPORTANT: Our friends at HOW have let us know that the discount can’t be combined with other discount offers, like student and group rates. It also can’t be used in conjunction with The BIG Ticket registration option.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Jonah Lehrer argues that everyone has the capacity to be the next Milton Glaser or Yo-Yo Ma. He says, “big breakthroughs often depend on the naive daring of outsiders. For prompting creativity, few things are as important as time devoted to cross-pollination with fields outside our areas of expertise.” This inspired me to ask our most recent EPIC clients what they learned from the EPIC rally experience and how these learnings have shaped their organizations for the better.

I spoke with Loren Linder, Development Director at the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, and Erin McPartlin, Executive Director of the Cabrini Green Tutoring Program, which our most recent EPIC team renamed “Tutoring Chicago.”

EH: Has your rally experience helped you share knowledge about what “can be” for your organization?

LL: At the outset of the rally, various members of the Alliance sat with EPIC team members to discuss details of our programmatic work to make schools and communities safe and respectful places. In relaying these details to the team, they were able to take the Alliance’s established logo and branding and cull out a deepened and refreshed perspective on our work. It captures the journey that is taken by youth who are both impacted by and leading the LGBTQ safe schools movement. More specifically, the Alliance logo depicted as an arrow has opened the door to exploring additional and expanded ways to talk about the directions and journeys people take with the Alliance. 

EM: This creative collaboration has been exactly what our organization needed, and at the right time. For many years, and more so recently, the issue of branding (rebranding, actually) was the “elephant in the room” topic. It elicited emotions and opinions not necessarily conducive to effective board meetings that stimulate change. Therefore, the process has been very important here—not only to communicate with the rally team, but also to allow the team to best understand our branding problem, get to know our organization and follow up with highly credible recommendations. Because the highly qualified team took such care with the process, I can confidently share their conclusions, perceptions and suggestions with our board and staff, allowing us as an organization to positively collaborate on the next face of our brand.

EH: Has being in on these conversations and working with the team empowered you to tell your story better or get people more excited about the future of your mission?

LL: The key deliverables for the rally will assuredly make a significant impact in continuing to tell the Alliance’s story. They will also be extremely useful in introducing the work of the organization. Of note, we are thrilled with the informational video that the rally team created, which will serve as an introduction to the work of the Alliance. There is nothing better than video to capture the emotion and impact that has been made by and in the lives of the young people, with whom the Alliance has been working in the safe schools movement over the past few years.

EM: Simply telling the team our story at length, being witness to their due diligence and creative process and getting involved in the final products—it has been a very healthy and somewhat cathartic process. Having been at the helm of the organization for nearly 11 years, these stories can get detailed and muddy as we are trying to show all the great things we do. Working with EPIC (and subsequently developing our next three-year strategic plan) has provided that necessary simplicity and clarity.

EH: Are there any anecdotes about your EPIC experience you’d like to share?

LL: I have continually shared with colleagues in the nonprofit sector and the Alliance Communications Committee how excited we are to be receiving the services from this EPIC rally. As a younger, growing nonprofit, the professionalism, service and expertise offered by the members of the EPIC team far exceed any expectations I had coming into the rally. We are confident we will walk away from this experience with marketing tools and materials that will serve us well in establishing the Alliance as the go-to resource for safe schools work.

EM: During our first meeting, I had an initial sense of the great power and collaborative potential with this group. I applied for this project a year ago, following a frustrating meeting about the topic of rebranding. When EPIC approached me in the Fall, I explained how we (the board) were getting closer to where I thought we needed to be in order to make the most of EPIC’s potential.

I so appreciated that EPIC heard me, understood and offered to take us on as a winter client instead. This allowed me to work with the board, getting their specific feedback and open our organization to the idea and process of rebranding. Having this group in our back pocket with a date on the calendar really helped propel the preparations. Sitting with the EPIC group on the first night, I was extremely confident that the work was worth it, and we were in a great position to move forward.

RSVP, Y’ALL.

This week, Rider Dickerson–an innovative, customer-focused printer in the Chicagoland area–digitally printed EPIC’s multi-page information kit on a probono basis. As if that weren’t enough, they also met our (truth be told) totally unreasonable deadline. The quality? Superb. Thank you to the entire team at Rider, including project manager Evelyn and driver Dominick, who battled downtown traffic congestion to deliver the box at 6:30 a.m., right when we needed it. (We mentioned they were dedicated to customer service, right?) Oh, and in case you didn’t know, this November, Rider Dickerson also printed our gorgeous, 100-page EPIC Book, a beautiful and important addition to EPIC’s materials.

Video by friends of EPIC, Matt Downe & Mike Eisenberg.

Mark your calendars. EPIC 20/20–an evening in which creative change-makers present stories of their work and impact–is coming to a bar near you. March 15, 2012, 6 to 9pm. The Darkroom, 2210 W. Chicago Avenue.

“EPIC gives creative people the raw, real exposure of seeing just how powerful they can be through their work,” says Mark Drozd, Partner/ECD, Simple Truth. “It restores to nonprofits some of that hope that they themselves so freely give their constituents. EPIC work comes from, and touches, the heart. How can you not support that?”

How could we not love Simple Truth?

Thank you, Mark and the entire Simple Truth team, for your silver-level sponsorship.

On the heels of announcing our partnership with HOW and Print, this is the first of more articles to come about our work and mission. Many thanks to senior and online editor of HOW, Jessica Kuhn, for so beautifully capturing the essence of EPIC. Check out her article below, which was originally published in HOW’s “Designing Change” column.
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EPIC EMPOWERS CREATIVES TO IGNITE CHANGE
Posted on January 12, 2012 by Jessica Kuhn

Everything about EPIC (@iamepic), an organization that unites creative professionals with a nonprofit client, truly embodies the powerful word that signifies heroism.

Since launching in 2009, EPIC has successfully united 170 volunteers from the advertising and design industries with 21 nonprofit clients dedicated to education, children and families. This equals about $2 million in marketing support—all pro-bono.

MAKING PRO-BONO AN EASY DECISION
EPIC board president Tiffany Meyers acknowledges that people are really busy, but have the desire to give back. EPIC helps make this desire a reality by adding structure and establishing a finite time commitment to these partnerships creatives enter with nonprofits. They do this by organizing creative rallies, or 8-week windows where selected creative volunteers join forces with the nonprofits to devise marketing solutions for the clients’ needs. With a distinct beginning and end to the commitment, creatives can feel good about lending their skills pro-bono for a predetermined span of time.

On average, creatives donate about five to ten hours per week for eight weeks, which includes a two-hour weekly meeting, plus three to eight additional hours of time. During these intense weeks of collaboration, a volunteer team leader (usually a creative director or studio principal) kicks the wheels into motion by directing the group to match unique skills to complete the client’s needs.

Are you interested in volunteering for an EPIC rally? Learn more.

“Epic is self-selecting. It attracts people with huge hearts and huge talent,” says Meyers, of those who apply to be a part of these rallies. “We’ve watched this mission we have line up with hearts and minds of creatives.”

EPIC 2010 from EPIC on Vimeo: Listen to founders, board members and participants talk about EPIC.

THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING EPIC
The seed for EPIC first started when Erin Huizenga, founder and executive director, studied at The Portfolio Center under the wing of Hank Richardson, director of design. “They built in ethos and [emphasized] how design can change the world. That kind of education that he [Richardson] built into people was a part of my thoughts,” says Huizenga.

That seed grew as she worked at SamataMason, currently called smbolic, for Greg and Pat Samata. The firm also is known for their dedication to the nonprofit sector (read about their nonprofit Evan’s Life Foundation, built to honor their deceased son, in the March 2012 issue’s Designing Change column in HOW).

As Huizenga’s career continued, she felt the pang to do something more in addition to her full-time job. She found that other creatives battled the inner question ‘how can I do both?’ Then, she started to imagine both groups—creatives with a desire to do more and nonprofits—coming together in a collaborative environment. The idea for EPIC took root and started to bloom in 2008 when Huizenga finalized her strategic model for EPIC and started to build a dedicated board of directors. That’s also the year that she recruited the ever-energetic Meyers to join the board.

“Erin called me out of the blue,” recalls Meyers. Huizenga had seen Meyers’ work in a design magazine and knew she was in Chicago, so the two met for coffee. Instantly, the duo gelled. “I knew that an HR person would tell me to sleep on it,” says Meyers. Instead she went with her gut and asked “when can we start?”

EPIC’s first client, a nonprofit called Girls in the Game, promotes the health and well-being of young girls. When embarking on this first rally, plenty of kinks were expected to arise along the way. But they didn’t. In fact, it went smoothly. “It was an important moment,” says Meyers, as they realized just how powerful their signature model could be.

For Huizenga, EPIC’s success instills a sense of personal and professional pride, a sentiment she’s sure that all those involved also walk away feeling. “It’s the professional love of my life,” she says.

In addition to fostering these rallies where creatives partner with nonprofits, Huizenga says EPIC also is helping nonprofits understand the value of good design in furthering their missions.

AND THEY’RE JUST GETTING STARTED
As word spreads about EPIC projects, so does the thought that the organization could be something more far-reaching. Meyers points out that a huge part of their success traces back to a local sensibility, which sits at the backbone of this venture. Chicago-area creatives are paired with Chicago-area organizations with big missions and small marketing budgets. Everyone is working to promote good within their own communities.

“As we grow, we’re interested in modeling what we’ve done in Chicago in other cities,” says Huizenga. Meyers adds that they want to keep that local sensibility at the forefront of any growth.

What does that mean for you? For now, keep EPIC on your radar and help spread the word to potential supporters. Because you never know if this organization that has proven successful in Chicago will be coming to a city near you!

You can look forward to hearing more about projects resulting from EPIC rallies both on HOWDesign.com and in the Designing Change column of HOW magazine. Read more about HOW and Print’s partnership with EPIC.