AIGA Heart Art:

Giving a cause with a heart, a brain

Heart Art is the premier annual fundraising event for AIGA Colorado. For 14 years, the design organization has invited Colorado artists to donate their original works for two great causes: AIGA Colorado and Project Angel Heart, a nonprofit that delivers meals to people living with HIV/AIDS. The artworks are then auctioned off during an advertising and design industry–wide party in Denver.

The brand's heart wasn't in it

The Heart Art cause is something everyone can get behind, but the brand surrounding the event had become watered down over the years. After a bit of marketing research, we uncovered the core issue. Everyone got behind the cause. From advertising, design and fine art professionals to students and teachers, AIGA invited them all to submit artistic creations for auction. Many of the participants weren't artists at all. In turn, the pieces for purchase were less than stellar and so were the resulting proceeds from the event.

Giving the brand its pulse back

Denver–based advertising agency, LeeReedy, recommended that only professional artists who had donated pieces in the past be invited to participate in the 2007 event, along with a select group of other creative minds who we knew would deliver.

Then, we developed an unforgettable invitation that was hand–delivered to the artists — a box wrapped with a jarring image of the human body. A note was contained inside asking each artist "What's beating inside you?" Accompanying that intriguing question was a web address driving people to a microsite. At the website, people discovered the details about submitting their work to the show by placing their art inside the box they had received — tying the Heart Art concept up neatly.

A beating heart ensued

The results of the 2007 Heart Art event, both in terms of the artistic output and the money that followed at auction, were at a significantly higher level compared to years past. Proving even a nonprofit out to save the world needs to step back sometimes and consider not inviting the whole world to help them achieve it.

Want to fire up fundraising for your nonprofit to a place you never thought possible? Let's talk shop sometime kreedy@leereedy.com.