Speaker: Tom Darden, Executive Director, Make It Right Foundation

Discussion Topic:

Almost all of the world’s problems have been solved by someone, somewhere.  The challenge is identifying those innovations and bringing them to scale.  And increasingly the answers to nagging social problems – education, health care, affordable housing are being developed by non-profits. 

At Make It Right, for example, our work helping to rebuild New Orleans Lower 9th Ward, a low-income neighborhood devastated by Hurricane Katrina, has yielded a number of breakthroughs that have brought down the costs of building green homes.  At Make It Right, we refused to accept that building green was too expensive.  We created new applications for familiar materials, revamped traditional construction processes, implemented new technologies and products, and worked with manufacturers to improve their products, generating new markets and lowering costs.  Now we want to share what we have learned with other communities, other builders and community planners.

During this “Issues in Depth” call, Tom will lead a discussion about the challenges of taking nonprofit success to scale, including strategies for communicating lessons learned and sourcing capital to find ways to increase the impact and reach of innovations already proven to work.
 

About Tom:

Tom Darden is the Executive Director of the Make It Right Foundation. As Make It Right's first volunteer in December of 2006, Darden conducted initial due diligence efforts on the feasibility of Pitt's concept for building green, affordable housing on a large scale in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. Darden's report evolved into the strategic plan for Make It Right. In March of 2007 Darden became the first Make It Right employee, where he oversaw day-to-day operations and began to build a team. During the following eight months as Executive Director, Darden supervised the growth of the organization to 25 full-time employees, opened the Make It Right New Orleans headquarters, worked with the board to raise $15.5 million from more than 21,000 donors, managed the design process with 13 architecture firms and completed six LEED Platinum homes.

Prior to joining Make It Right, Darden received a B.A. with Honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He then worked as a development consultant in Washington, D.C., evaluating former manufacturing and mining sites in the D.C. metropolitan market, including the site of the discovery of the largest dinosaur bone unearthed on the east coast of North America. Darden focused efforts on reclaiming the mine while establishing a conservation easement in order to preserve the archeologically significant site.

In 2003, he joined a startup wireless telecommunications firm in Raleigh, N.C., which he helped grow from five employees to over 25 in two years. Darden left in 2005 to found Arbor Equity, a real estate firm committed to sustainable development. Darden has relocated to New Orleans to oversee the Make It Right project.

Registration (participation is a benefit of Global Membership)

Conference line and presentation link will be distributed via direct email following RSVP completion.

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