This week, October 25 – 31, is National Pro Bono Week 2015: a time when our great nation acknowledges the professionals who give their valuable services away freely for a good cause.

At the core of Darkly’s foundation there is an extreme desire to make a positive difference in the world. Weather it’s in the form of donating design time, branding a nonprofit for free, doing a 24-hour design-a-thon, or giving a percentage of our profit to charity, we can think of no better way to put ourselves to use than by helping a nonprofit organization.

In May of this year, we rebranded the nonprofit Helping Hands for Freedom, and its annual fundraiser event Route for the Brave. Their efforts are geared toward helping the families of fallen or critically injured war veterans, and we were eager to pitch in when we heard they wanted to revamp their image. At no cost, we created logos for both HHFF & RFTB and solidified a much more professional and cohesive image for the organization.

Learn more about this charity and its fundraiser here:
helpinghandsforfreedom.org and routeforthebrave.org

Last month, Phoenix hosted a Create-A-Thon calling all creatives to come together for a full 24-hours and donate their services to participating nonprofits. The work ranged from basic flyers and social media campaigns, to complete rebrands and marketing strategies. Darkly Cofounder and VP of Creative, Alexis Quezada, joined this incredible test of commitment and design stamina. She was teamed up with Oh My Ears (OME), a local nonprofit geared towards bringing musically engaging experiences to the community. What makes OME so unique is that they bring new music to the community by audience participation. For example, you can attend one of their Musical Maps events and draw how music makes you feel. Read more about OME at www.ohmyears.com.

Alexis sums up her experience: “I didn’t realize how long 24 hours actually is. I wasn’t one of those students who pulled all nighters in school because I love my sleep. The day started at 10am on a Saturday and everyone was in good spirits eating the muffins they provided for breakfast and listening to music. There were even yoga sessions and chair massages to help keep us going. This was enough to carry me through dinner until about 11pm where I was getting tired of staring at my computer screen. I was really struggling to stay awake and finish everything at this point, but then again this is also when our team got the most work done. At around 8am, after a protein shake, I got my second wind and was able to finish everything up before meeting with the nonprofit at 10am, an entire 24 hours later. After making through the 24 hours, I was extremely tired but knew that it was worth it after the nonprofit saw what we had created. It was a lot of fun to spend a whole day and night with creative people giving back to the community. I think that is what graphic design and marketing is all about. We are in the industry of helping people and to be able to set aside time to help someone who really needs it is a privilege.”

Learn more about the Phoenix Create-A-Thon here:
ow.ly/TYm2m and createathon.org

In June of this year, we picked up a nonprofit by the name of Second Saturday, an organization dedicated to empowering and educating women who are going through divorce. This organization was founded by wife.org and franchises their locations out to passionate women who want to help others navigate this process in the best way possible. We manage their Facebook page completely free, providing social calendars and analytics every month. We do charge them a small fee of $100/mo, in which 100% of that fee goes to paid Facebook advertising on their behalf. Darkly is a woman-owned and operated organization, so we feel it’s important to help other women in any capacity we are able. This is why we jumped at the chance to help Second Saturday establish a larger brand presence in the greater Phoenix area, as well as increase attendance to their educational divorce workshops.

Learn more about Second Saturday here: secondsaturdayaz.com and spread the word about this incredible organization!

Lastly, we here at Darkly LOVE animals. We donate 10% of our total annual gross profit to a different local animal charity every year. Our goal is to increase this annual donation to 20% of our gross profit in the near future. This year our selected local animal charity is Friends for Life, based out of Gilbert AZ.

Learn more about Friends for Life here: azfriends.org.

It is one thing to donate money to a good cause (which is still great), but donating your valuable time and talent is a much more rewarding experience. We encourage all fellow professionals of any industry to donate their skills to something that they are passionate about. And if you’re an entrepreneur – you can make the biggest impact imaginable.

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