How Sam Redesigned a Business Model for a Non-Profit
Sam is the President of AIGA Los Angeles, which is a non-profit, design community organization. In addition to acting as a professional design community promoting ethics and diversity, AIGA also aims to strengthen design’s impact on society through activism, advancing education, and the power of networking.
By Sam Cabrera, d.MBA alum, with contributions by Clare Goldblatt
As the president of AIGA Los Angeles, it was clear to me that our business model had become outdated, especially within the context of the pandemic. Our in-person events and sponsorship donations, a primary source of our revenue, had become increasingly difficult to come by as the world locked down. Furthermore, AIGA LA faced challenges convincing members the added value of paying membership fees as our events had to stop due to the pandemic.
Not only was the non-profit struggling in terms of revenue and proving itself pandemic-proof, but the organization also failed to live up to its members’ needs in terms of reflecting the diversity of Los Angeles, the community it aims to serve. I am merely the third person of color to serve as president in AIGA’s Los Angeles’ 37-year history, and former AIGA LA board members have described discrimination, micro aggressions, or lack of support on issues for BIPOC.
“I see these [racial] disparities and have seen how there’s been a lack of inclusion for people like me in the design profession.”
I decided to tackle these challenges by reframing them as an opportunity to evaluate and implement a new operating model, reflecting the community we serve and bringing greater value to our stakeholders.
“How do we make money as a non-profit by making design more accessible and by diversifying design?”
The first step we took was to take on this challenge culturally with the board. We did a lot of anti-racism workshops to better improve our own internal work. Additionally, we did a series of listening sessions with the community, admitting the fact that we hadn’t always been supportive of the community in its entirety since we didn’t reflect the community’s demographics properly at AIGA.
Next, I did a deep dive into AIGA’s competitive arena, which involved identifying our direct competitors, indirect competitors, and potential competitors, analyzing industry trends, and comparing us with premium design communities using the Strategy Canvas. I was able to use these tools to make a powerful new business case for AIGA LA.
“We’re making business decisions as designers and we need to start owning that.”
The insights from both the internal research and the competitive arena research showed a glaring paradox: AIGA wasn’t doing nearly enough to support the causes of racial justice and inequality as a design community, whilst aiming to attract the younger generation of designers, Gen Z. Seventy-Seven percent of Gen Z says that racial equality is the most important issue today (source). It became clear that in order to stay afloat, AIGA needed to attract a younger and more diverse design community.
One of the initiatives I highlighted in the new business case is to provide better value in continuous education opportunities. Through my initial research, I discovered that there are ample opportunities for designers to learn design in the form of online bootcamps, but that these are often prohibitively expensive and therefore, lead to an often less diverse cohort of design bootcamp graduates. This, in turn, adds to the glaring lack of diversity within the design community. AIGA LA aims to charge a lower cost for continuous education for designers in order to make design more accessible for everyone at every stage in their career.
Most importantly, AIGA LA aspires to embody the shared values of diverse, ethical, and inclusive design; setting itself apart from its competitors and serving as a bridge for its members to network within the nationwide design community.
The new business case also aims to bring in mentors to further support community members, while also focusing on advocacy by providing resources and support for members for topics on ethics and inclusive policies.
These actions serve to not just act as a design organization, but as a pillar of LA’s design community.