Creative Pitch

In almost all countries, the budget allocation for the creative industries is limited. As there’s often little money for art programs, teachers, art therapists and other creative professionals desperately need materials. They need the same types of materials that end up in dumpsters, tucked away in supply closets and studios, and lay unused in college lockers all over the country, every day.

Creative Pitch is a Chicago-area nonprofit that gathers these unwanted art materials and makes them available – free of charge – to the art educators, art therapists and other professionals who need them most. It is a low effort/high reward way for companies and individuals in the Chicago area to come together and make a difference.

“Creative Pitch goes along with supporting education and being sustainable,” founder Dian Sourelis says. “It gives the design community something to rally around – they really want to serve, and this way they not only can donate materials, but we do events where they get to take the art materials to the schools.”

Since established, the nonprofit has served more than 70 programs, which includes more than 100,000 students – tens of thousands of dollars worth of art supplies.

Sourelis’s design agency Brainforest has also established what is often called the “501(c)(3)” policy in the United States. This American federal tax code allows certain types of service organizations to function as non-profit tax-exempt organizations and accept donations. “BFriend,” as their community-service 501(c)(3) is known, eventually has become the driver behind creative Creative Pitch.