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It’s getting colder, the colours are out and the air carries the crisp scent of CreateAthon.
Twelve organizations in Waterloo Region and the Guelph-Wellington County area are taking part in the local event Oct. 22. Now global in scope, the CreateAthon concept began in South Carolina in 1996 to give charitable non-profits with little money a lot of no-charge, high-quality marketing help.
Capacity Canada and the Department of Media and Design at Conestoga College are long-time CreateAthon sponsors in Waterloo Region. This year, Catalyst Awareness Inc., a communications agency in Guelph, adds the professional expertise behind CreateAthon 2015 Waterloo-Wellington.
Selected from 29 applicants, this year’s participating organizations are:
• The Centre for Sight Enhancement, based at the School of Optometry and Vision Science, University of Waterloo;
• The Children’s Foundation of Guelph and Wellington;
• The Community Resource Centre of North and Centre Wellington;
• Extend-A-Family Waterloo Region;
• JDRF (the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation);
• MennoHomes Inc. (a builder of affordable housing in Waterloo Region);
• Planned Parenthood Waterloo Region;
• Rare Charitable Research Reserve (a land trust in the Blair area of Cambridge and North Dumfries);
• Reception House Waterloo Region;
• The Waterloo Horticulture Society;
• The Waterloo Region Suicide Prevention Council;
• YWCA Kitchener-Waterloo.
CreateAthon to-do lists typically cover a broad sweep of marketing-and-design needs, including brochures, event material, logos and website updates. For graphic-design students at Conestoga College, these are desired creative challenges to overcome.
Organized into teams and guided by industry professionals, the students will spend Oct. 22 at Catalyst’s Guelph office in a design marathon to come up with effective concepts.
They finish by pitching their proposals to the organizations. The organizations get top-notch material and the students gain working-world, under-pressure experience serving clients.
The sponsors, meanwhile, always learn something new about promotion in the non-profit sector. Everybody walks away with something at CreateAthon 2015 Waterloo-Wellington.
