ANNUAL REPORT
2017
OUR PURPOSE
Catapult Design believes that all people, everywhere, should have access to thoughtful and inspired goods and services that suit their needs and their wallet. Our mission is to ensure that products and services aimed at marginalized communities are forward thinking, accessible, and people-centered. We accomplish this through three main activities: DESIGN supports organizations developing innovative products and services for low-income and marginalized consumers with design and commercialization services. We help our partners explore, prototype, and realize great products driving social change. EDUCATION develops innovation capacity within organizations developing or supporting the development of products and services for low-income consumers. RESEARCH investigates and disseminates research focused on the acceleration and accessibility of quality market-based solutions to poverty.
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HELLO FROM CATAPULT
CATAPULT PROJECTS
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Change Labs
The Innovation Challenge
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Change Labs Popups
Tax Help Colorado
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ASME ISHOW
IEEE GHTC + SIGHT
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“HCD for KMC”
Pit Latrine Excavation
17 FINANCIALS, DONORS & FUNDERS
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HELLO FROM OUR CEO/CO-FOUNDER
This year we’ve laid the groundwork for significant organizational change in 2018, coincidentally Catapult Design’s 10th anniversary. We spent a portion of 2017 in reflection on the continuously changing landscape of the design and social impact sector. We participated in timely conversations about measuring and communicating the impact of design in the social sector. We celebrated our biggest achievements to date: a large collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the successful launch of our first Innovation Challenge competition on the Navajo Nation, and our first project within our local Denver community. Within the past three years, Catapult’s portfolio has shifted dramatically. We started the organization in 2009 focused on product design and development. However, as the market developed and shifted, our services shifted with it. This year’s portfolio features primarily original programming (our work on the Navajo Nation with the Native American Business Incubator Network) and design strategy work with US-based entities. Catapult’s mission to make design services accessible to global innovators remains constant, but the development of our industry makes as pause and ponder the role of design and design firms in the 21st century. We’re excited to continue exploring this question with our Board of Directors, Advisors, and team into 2018. You can expect some big changes from us next year as a result. We continue to feel love and support from our community as we venture into our 10th year of operation. We promise to continue to prototype and test how designers can have meaningful impact. Thank you for ongoing support of Catapult Design!
Heather Fleming
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Heather Fleming
Noel Wilson
CEO/Co-founder
Creative Director
Laura Markee
Jonathan Sabutis
Design Engineer
Product Designer
Karin Carter Senior Project Manager
Nadine Foik Designer & Studio Ops
ADVISORY BOARD
David Kaisel
Lauren Peters
Evan Thomas
DK Design Research
Salesforce
Portland State University
THE CATAPULT FAMILY
STUDIO TEAM
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Dawn Danby
Madiha Kotb
Spherical
ASME
Catherine Lovazzano Facebook
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OUR PROJECTS
Our projects span the water, sanitation, health, energy, agriculture, transport/mobility, food security, and entrepreneurship sectors across Africa, Asia, North and South America. In every instance, we study and immerse ourselves in local contexts to gain insight into how a product or service integrates into daily life. We then conceptualize solutions and create prototypes to test directly alongside users to inform the final design. Finally, we analyze the market systems and business models that enable solutions to thrive and evolve.
This year’s workshops included social media training, collective action, visual storytelling, money management, brand identity, graphic design basics, and franchising models. Panel topics included local food infrastructure and the Native Art industry. Select entrepreneurs also worked with featured Native artists to create
one-of-a-kind signage for their venture. The 2017 also featured the first social innovation challenge on the Navajo Nation, where six Native American entrepreneurs competed for $15,000 in cash prizes and $75,000 in business incubation. Location: Navajo Nation Change Labs catapultlabs.org
Change Labs 2017
Catapult Design and the Native American Business Incubator Network co-hosted the 4th annual Change Labs 2017 in Tuba City, Arizona. The local high school hosted the event in the largest town on the Navajo Nation with 8,000 local Navajos and 1,000 Hopis. Our first two-day event featured workshops, panels, a pitch event, and an intimate roundtable session to map the barriers to entrepreneurship on the Navajo Nation. The event attracted local youth, Native American entrepreneurs and small businesses, Native artists, and philanthropists.
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The Innovation Challenge 07
With support from National Endowment for the Arts and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, we hosted a competition designed to identify and support Native American social entrepreneurs with ideas to improve their local community. We launched the competition in January 2017 with an open call for applications. By March 2017 we had received 20 applications and selected 6 finalists to pitch their idea at Change Labs 2017. Each finalist attended a pitch training and publicly presented their idea to the local community and a panel of judges from Accion, New Mexico Community Capital, Navajo CDFI, and the Dine’ Chamber
of Commerce. The judges selected five winners to receive a $5,000 infusion of capital and all six finalists received oneyear of business incubation with the Native American Business Incubator Network. In addition to identifying and supporting local role models, the secondary intent of the Innovation Challenge was to track the successes and hurdles faced by entrepreneurs trying to establish their business on tribal lands. Location: Navajo Nation Native Innovation Challenge nativestartup.org
Change Labs Popups 09
In 2017 we launched a series of Change Labs Popups throughout the Navajo Nation. Popups are small communitybased events promoting innovation and entrepreneurship and featuring thought leaders, artists, and innovators. We hosted the first Popup in March 2017 in Shiprock, New Mexico featuring traditional and award-winning hoop dancer, Michael Goedel, and acclaimed and best-selling author, Robert Neuwirth. In September 2017, we teamed up with the White Cone Chapter House to host an entrepreneurship round robin Popup. The round robin featured four stations: a business model canvas station, business registration station, business card making station, and a sign making station. Twenty four members of the White Cone
community joined us for the evening. Popups will continue in 2018 with two events targeting the Western edge of the Navajo Nation. Location: Navajo Nation Change Labs Popups catapultlabs.org/popups
Colorado consistently has one of the lowest EITC participation rates in the nation and the Tax Help Colorado team wants to leverage their partnerships to decrease the number of Colorado families missing out on vital tax credits.
Tax Help Colorado
Denver-based Piton Foundation provides critical tax preparation services to working Colorado families earning less than $54,000 annually. Their program, Tax Help Colorado, trains an army of volunteers to prepare taxes and identify earned income tax credits (EITC) during tax season. Volunteers serve at local community colleges and high schools, with 95% of the volunteer workforce consisting of accounting students and educators.
Catapult and the Tax Help Colorado team worked together to map out the program, the taxpayer experience, and the known limitations to scale. Through interviews with program stakeholders, Catapult identified areas ripe for program innovation in order to scale up. In 2018 Catapult will observe taxpayers and volunteers at the tax preparation sites and continue to work with the Tax Help Colorado team on identifying areas for strategic change. Location: USA Tax Help Colorado garycommunity.org/piton/tax-help-colorado
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ASME hosted the competition in Washington DC, Bangalore, and Nairobi to raise awareness of hardware innovators, convene technical/industry experts, and build a pipeline of social entrepreneurs taking physical products to market. Entrepreneurs gain access to technical advice, seed capital, and in-kind product development services from Catapult.
ASME ISHOW 2017
This year Catapult continued its work with the American Society for Mechanical Engineers Innovation Showcase (ASME ISHOW), a global competition for hardware-led social innovators in North and South America, Asia, and Africa.
Three winning companies in each region shared the prize package and attended a global ISHOW Bootcamp in New York in Fall 2017. At the Bootcamp, the companies had critical time to network and connect as well as received further design and engineering critique from Catapult and select technical experts. The 2017 ISHOW marked our third year of partnership with ASME on this critical event highlighting the challenges of hardware innovation. We look forward to continuing work with ASME in 2018. Locations: Kenya, India, USA ASME ISHOW thisishardware.org
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IEEE GHTC & SIGHT
Catapult worked with The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to research and develop two pieces of communication for their work in the humanitarian technologies sector. Each year IEEE hosts a Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC) in the USA for members and practitioners. Since the inception of GHTC, numerous other conferences have emerged to follow the emerging markets trends. With the growth of the sector, IEEE has not had the opportunity reevaluate the GHTC conference, its changing audience, and content.
Catapult and IEEE prepared an analysis of their annual event, using Catapult’s experience at competing conferences and interviews with prospective attendees to make strategic recommendations for changing the scope of GHTC. In addition to this analysis, Catapult also worked with IEEE to rethink its communication materials for its Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technologies (SIGHT). IEEE’s SIGHT initiative attracts hundreds of volunteers around the world Location: USA IEEE SIGHT sight.ieee.org
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In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to engage in-country partners to research, design, and develop models for increasing the uptake of KMC in Ethiopia and India. The primary program objective is to develop a delivery model that will result in a high (80% or more) and effective (at least eight hours of skin-to-skin contact and exclusive breastfeeding) coverage of KMC for the target populations.
what was shared during a convening in Ethiopia and also India as well as ongoing conversations with local program partners. In 2018 Catapult’s team of designers, behavioral scientists, and user-experience specialists will work hand-in-hand with local health professionals to co-design a set of potentially scalable solutions for increased, effective practice of KMC. Location: Ethiopia & India
“HCD for KMC”
Evidence has shown that Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) is a safe and effective practice to reduce morbidity and mortality in low-birth-weight (LBW) infants as well as increase breastfeeding. KMC involves prolonged skin-to-skin contact between mother and infant and exclusive breastfeeding.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gatesfoundation.org
Catapult Design was awarded a grant from BMGF to join the program with the intent of infusing human centered design into local partners’ work. The Catapult team is assessing current challenges and opportunities for KMC uptake based on
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Pit Latrine Excavation 15
According to a 2013 study, an estimated 1.7 billion people, primarily in developing nations, rely on pit latrines for daily sanitation. A pit latrine is a simply a hole in the ground that collects feces and waste. While the positive health impacts of using a well-designed latrine are well documented, proper management of the resulting fecal sludge remains a persistent challenge in many developing nations. Consequently, an engineering research team at North Carolina State (NC State) University received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to improve a prototype and field test a novel pit latrine excavation technology that is capable of accessing remote areas. To advance the technology developed by the research
team into a commercial product, NC State and Catapult Design teamed up to improve the pit latrine excavation device from a human factors and manufacturing lens. Catapult and NC State began evolving the design from Nairobi, Kenya in late 2017 with the intention of testing a new prototype with fecal sludge management operators in select regions of Africa in 2018. Our goal is to develop a product that is intuitive to use, simple to maintain, and can be manufactured at an accessible price point. Location: Kenya North Carolina State University ncsu.edu
Earned Income Donations & Grants Event Revenue Total Revenue
$312,883 $921,121 $638 $1,234,642
2015
2016
EXPENSES Program Management Fundraising Total Expenses
NET REVENUE
$1,234,642
REVENUE GROWTH 2013 - 2017
$1,070,185 $1,170,162
REVENUE
$1,170,162
FINANCIALS
$347,813 $279,101 $0 $626,914
$607,728
$1,098,275 $119,846 $0 $1,218,121
LIABILITY Accounts Payable Payroll Liability Total Liability
NET ASSETS Net Assets (beg. of year) Net Assets (end of year) Change in Net Assets
$26,362 $0 $26,362
$404,500
Cash Accounts Receivable Donations Receivable Total Assets
$1,191,759 $609,145 $1,191,759 $582,614 2013
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$456,300
ASSETS
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2017
DONORS & FUNDERS DONATIONS
GRANTS
Anurupa Rao Autodesk Foundation Dawn Danby GUSTO Helena Meyer-Knapp Lauren Peters Michele Fleming Richard Flaster The Reis Foundation
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation National Endowment of the Arts W.K. Kellogg Foundation
A big thank you to all of our donors, funders, and general supporters!
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