Reflecting on Seven Years of Chairity
by Brian Buhl
There's a special camaraderie that exists in the Bay Area design community; there's so much respect across the multidisciplinary design firms that we work with at two. Chairity, our annual fundraising event, builds off this community. It has become a platform where we come together around shared creative interests, local philanthropic objectives, and a hint of healthy design competition.
Since 2015, we’ve raised over $355,000 for mission-driven community partners dedicated to positive change.
Chairity 2016
Chairity 2021 - Image: Andrew McKay
What is Chairity?
Hosted by Two, Chairity brings together creative volunteers who auction their designs to raise money for local causes. There are two parts to the initiative. The first is about giving participants a local and trusted destination to make meaningful donations. It's also a creative outlet for the Bay Area design community to build something fun and unique. As each design team creates their piece, they simultaneously raise money online, similar to the structure of 5k charity races. It all culminates in a capstone celebration, the work is unveiled and auctioned off, all while we continue to strengthen our ties through drink and dance!
Chairity is not just an event. It’s an embodiment of who we strive to be at Two. In our work as designers, we value upcycling and using local materials while always remaining authentic. As a company, we value giving back in a way that connects the design community.
Every year, designers, makers, fabricators, suppliers, artists, and more join teams to make something beautiful out of a forgotten or discarded object. The design and construction process is documented online where each team also raises funds to support the selected charities. In November, participating teams display their work at an industry-attended event, where a fresh team of judges select winners and excited guests bid on the upcycled work, adding even more money to the fund.
Chairity 2020 - Left: Pair x BAR Architects | Center: OTJ + Uhuru | Right: O+A x Ohio Design
Every year, teams follow these steps:
Step 1: Each design team receives $100 to spend on sustainable and upcycled materials.
Step 2: Teams find a “forgotten item” and revamp it to give it new life.
Step 3: As teams build their creations, they fundraise for the general Chairity fund.
Step 4: Entries are revealed and auctioned at the annual event, adding more money to the fund.
Step 5: Winning entries are announced, and the honored design team chooses a local charity to receive a portion of the funds.
Judges make their selections based on four categories:
Integrity: How much of the original item is repurposed in the new design?
Sustainability: Were the added materials upcycled or sustainably sourced?
Usefulness: Can this item be used? Is it functional?
Novelty: How unique and creative is the final product?
In addition to funds raised by individual teams and during the event’s auction, we’re also grateful for the support of sponsors, including all Modular Systems, Skyline Construction, and Novo Construction.
A Local Destination to Give
One of the reasons we have the energy to keep this event going year after year is that we hear from people in the design community who want to give locally but don’t know the best way to go about making an impact. With hundreds of nonprofits out there, it can be challenging to figure out who’s being the most responsible and impactful with donations.
That’s where Two comes in. We do the research ahead of time to select a group of beneficiaries who work on issues like education, social justice, and animal rights. We look for groups born in the Bay Area that serve our population. We’re not raising millions of dollars—at least not yet—so we select charities that could use $15,000 or $20,000 to meet their goals.
Bay area initiatives and beneficiaries of Chairity fundraising efforts
At Two, our volunteer-based Chairity committee does the research and puts the event together. The committee is open to any employee. Hourly employees are paid for the time they dedicate to Chairity; salaried employees work on the initiative during regular office hours. Many committee members over the years grew up in the Bay Area, so they bring their personal connection and history to the brainstorming table.
In 2017, one of Chairity’s early years, we raised $38,000 for Project Color Corps, a nonprofit whose mission is to inspire and educate students to use the transformational power of color—via public murals—to infuse communities with hope, pride, equity, and empowerment. Funds were used to paint schools around the Bay Area. By 2021 we added four more local charities—Stop AAPI Hate, Muttville, Love The Kids, and Not In Our Town—and raised $93,000. All proceeds go directly to the nonprofit organizations.
Donors who participate in the event can either select a specific charity from the group or make a general donation that gets evenly divided between the five charities selected for that year.
How Chairity Started
Chairity started in 2015 as a collaboration between Two and Kriss Kokoefer, the founder of Oakland-based re-upholstery shop Kay Chesterfield. We both wanted to actively give back to our Bay Area community in a way that related to our industry and skills. But we didn’t want it to be an annual check-writing, check-the-box event. As creatives, we felt strongly about building a charitable design event that would involve the local A&D community in an engaging, innovative way.
So we asked ourselves, “What was the most common item left over from design projects?”
A chair.
If it could be upcycled and transformed into something interesting again, why throw away a perfectly functional chair? We started honing our idea around a competition where participants would take something discarded and make it useful, beautiful, and interesting again. We were also quite fond of the play on the words between “chair” and “charity.”
Chairity 2018 - BOOR Projects
Chairity 2018 - Nova Partners
Over the past seven years, Chairity has evolved and expanded beyond chairs. It’s still about finding something discarded to upcycle, but more recently, teams have used other items with interesting design aspects, such as old shopping carts, room dividers, and fans. Many teams still use chairs—though their final product isn’t always something you can sit on. In 2021, for example, one of the winning entries was a chair transformed into a rocking bassinet.
Chairity 2021 - O+A
Chairity 2021 - O+A
Chairity is an industry event that’s always on people’s calendars. Year after year, I am truly humbled by the amount of people who know about Chairity in the Bay Area. It's one of the biggest events of the year within our industry and community, and it continues to grow in attendance, funds raised, participating teams, charities added, and more.
Where Charity is Headed
We’re thrilled that starting in 2022, Chairity will officially become Two’s charitable arm. This formal designation will allow us to continue expanding how we give back in a way that relates to our skills. In addition to the annual fall design competition and fundraiser, through Chairity we hope to participate in more events and initiatives throughout the year, such as providing education and design mentorship projects that introduce design-focused career paths to local youth.
We hope to involve even more workplace teams in the design competition and fundraiser, something we started in 2021. In recent years, we’ve seen Bay Area companies—from Google to Salesforce to Rivian—grow their internal design teams with new hires that are coming directly out of the A&D community, including architecture firms, industrial design shops, and manufacturers. We could use their ingenuity and sharp minds to create an even bigger, more chair-itable event.
Save the date for Chairity 2022: October 13th.
To learn more click here.