Pro Bono Market Overview

The pro bono marketplace harnesses millions of skilled professionals (“suppliers”) through different distribution channels to deliver them effectively to a diverse set of clients. Use the diagram below to learn about the state of pro bono happening by each group within the market.

Supply

Suppliers:
Business Professionals

Distribution Channels

Marketplace

  • Assess professional's expertise
  • Assess client needs and readiness
  • Match/Access
  • Oversight/Management
  • Quality Assurance
  • Knowledge management evaluation
  • Celebration

Demand

Clients

State of Pro Bono: Design Profession

Opportunity

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are over 286,000 graphic designers in the United States.

Community Need

  • In the competition for visibility, support, and funds, well-designed programs, products, and collateral can set nonprofits apart. Key areas of nonprofit need for design expertise include the design of informational, event-based, and fundraising collateral, programs and campaigns, as well as branding guidance and implementation.
  • Over 45% of nonprofits report that increasing their visibility in the community is one of their top priorities for the next two years, according to a 2009 Taproot survey of 238 nonprofits.

Distribution Channels

  • Professional Services Firms – Most design firms donate at least 10% of their time to pro bono service and many advertising firms also engage in pro bono projects.
  • Corporations – Most pro bono work done through companies is done by individuals on an ad-hoc basis due to a low concentration of design talent in many companies.
  • Professional Schools – Nearly all design schools have some pro bono service programs available to their students.
  • Trade Associations – AIGA is setting the standard for pro bono service among designers by launching their Pro Bono Design Program in 2010 challenging all designers and design firms to donate 5% of their billable hours to pro bono service
  • Intermediaries  – The Ad Council serves as the largest intermediary organization for the design profession, but other regional intermediaries also exist.
  • Direct Service Providers – Pro bono design work is most commonly provided by individual designers and, in particular, freelance designers

Common Design Project Models

Learn more about this categorization of pro bono service models by reading the whitepaper: Making Pro Bono Work: 8 Proven Models for Community and Business Impact.

  • Marathon – A company pools human capital resources on a pro bono project within a short, predetermined timeframe (usually 24 hours) to deliver a mass volume of deliverables.
  • Standardized team projects – Individuals are placed on teams, each with specific roles and responsibilities. Each project is scoped and structured around a standard deliverable based on the needs of nonprofit partners.
  • Open-ended outsourcing – A company makes its services available to a specific number of nonprofit organizations on an ongoing, as needed basis

Trends

  • Over the next few years, individual designers and design firms are expected to norm around AIGA’s 5% pro bono service challenge.
  • Increasingly, designers are not only engaging in pro bono service around visual design but are also using design thinking to enhance program and product design. 
  • Long practiced in the design profession, pro bono service is becoming increasingly transparent and widespread amongst design professionals.

Leaders

  • AIGA – In June 2010, AIGA launched its Pro Bono Design Program which challenges all designers, design firms, and in-house design programs to devote at least 5% of their billable hours to pro bono service.
  • Aspen Design Summit – As a partnership of AIGA and the Winterhouse Institute, this is an interdisciplinary, global workshop of designers, NGO decision makers, corporate leaders, and experts who come together to design projects – that will later be executed – to solve global challenge.
  • Change Observer – This leading international design blog focuses on how design work can drive social change. It began as a collaboration between Winterhouse Institute partners William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand, Pentagram’s Michael Bierut, and eight contributing writers. Change Observer ensures that designers all over the world are able to learn from one another.
  • CreateAthon – At this annual, 24-hour, work-around-the-clock creative blitz, advertising agencies provide services for local nonprofits in their area that have little or no portion of their budget dedicated to marketing. Since the program expanded to a national effort in 2002, 73 agencies have joined the network delivering 2,248 projects valued at over $10 million to over 1,000 nonprofits.
  • Creative for a Cause – This site is a collaborative resource for educators of Visual Communications whose aim is instructing their students on the importance of adopting a social and ethical approach to their work.
  • DesigNYC – DesigNYC works to improve New York City by connecting nonprofits, community groups and city agencies serving the public good with passionate, professional pro bono designers.
  • frog design – Frog design is quietly changing the way top design agencies are lending their expertise to drive social innovation. Supported by senior leadership, each frog office identifies one major pro bono project per year.
  • Pentagram – For decades, partners and their teams from Pentagram’s New York office have worked pro bono to enhance the design programs of cultural institutions and nonprofits all over the city. Today, many partners contribute 25% of their billable hours to pro bono service projects.

Case Studies

 

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