The Designing for Community Well-Being Signature Projects

Signature Projects are multiple-week endeavors where we use human-centered co-design processes to deeply understand a challenge facing members of our community. Working closely alongside community members, we co-create solutions with community members to address these challenges. We do these projects in collaboration with nonprofit and social sector partners so that they may quickly use the learnings and prototypes developed during the process.  

The Columbus Foundation Community Well-Being team leads the Signature Project process and facilitates tasks ranging from community member recruitment to project finding, development, and storytelling support. Signature Projects also enable us to bring in top social designers from around the country who are interested in working in this way and who can cross-pollinate their own best practices as we advance the field of what partnering well with community can look like. 

What makes a good Signature Project? A good Signature Project… 

• Focuses on an issue that matters deeply to our community
• Will yield learnings that could be shared across nonprofit organizations or even sectors 
• Is focused on an issue where we have significant unknowns (i.e., why a program is not working or how a particular group would like to be served) 

Here are some past examples.

We invite social sector leaders to share ideas for Signature Projects. Is there something you’re grappling with where you think using this process would be helpful?  

If you have a project idea or want to learn more about our Signature Projects, please reach out and tell us more using this form.

We are eager to hear your insights and explore how we can work together to cultivate well-being in the Columbus region.