Intoxicating. Unifying. Inspirational. Rejuvenating. The 2013 Leadership Retreat, held in Philadelphia, brought together 68 chapters to collaborate and reconnect. But most importantly it brought us all together to take a look forward, encouraging us to keep the momentum going amongst our individual chapters and collectively as One AIGA. It is no surprise that the Design for Good initiative was at the forefront of this momentum, with a strong emphasis on the role design thinkers are playing in the community.

The Design for Good initiative is a movement to ignite, accelerate and amplify design-driven social change. As the initiative slowly unfolds amongst each chapter across America, the national board is taking great strides to improve relationships amongst the community and designers. AIGA is happy to announce their official partnership with GOOD. Good is a global community of, by and for pragmatic idealists working towards individual and collective progress.

So how can AIGA benefit from this collaboration and what insights can we share with our new partners? With the network and community base AIGA has and the amount of exposure to a greater range of disciplines that GOOD holds the possibilities are endless. Together, Design for Good and GOOD can use each other as a resource to reach a wider audience and also make an impact on a hyper-local level. GOOD has already started reaching out to connect with larger AIGA chapters and while the future of this partnership is still taking shape, the benefits of this relationship have already proven to be an ideal combination.

To help the formation of Design for Good in local chapters, AIGA is sharing some new and recently revitalized resources. The Summit Planning Guidebook, written by James Hersick, gives chapters the opportunity to learn success stories from summits in Alabama, Phoenix and DesignEthos. This guidebook takes on the ambitious task of laying out a planning process from start to finish and helps measure the impact past workshops have on their participants, planners and the community. This Design for Good guidebook is the first of many, in hopes to continue communication and collaboration across all chapters.

In addition, The Living Principles, or creative action for a collective good, is continuing to push forward to generate new content and resources for strategists of all disciplines. As we look towards the future of Design for Good in our own local Raleigh chapter, the Living Principles will be a powerful model for how we collectively view work and how we measure our impact in projects to come.

With the excitement around the GOOD partnership, the chance to collaborate with our neighboring chapters and the lessons we have learned from pas summit experts, the 2013 retreat sparked an intoxicating motivation across all chapter members. As we work towards a collective good in our own community, AIGA Raleigh will continue to grow our Design for Good reach and embark on some new paths of our own. Look for more to come!