/ By Debra Rainey / Which city recently won the gold for use of data to help improve the lives of its residents – and also happens to be your destination city for Upswell LA? Yes, the City of Angels, Los Angeles, was the only city to receive a gold certification in January 2018 from…
/ By Robert Jones / Practically every city in America has a homeless problem, but nowhere is it more concentrated or more visible than in the 54 blocks of Los Angeles known as Skid Row. Experts say there are upwards of 10,000 people sleeping on the street here every night – the entire population of…
/ By Jackie Brennan / If you reach for studio material from Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale looking for something new, you might be disappointed. The two-man act known as The Milk Carton Kids doesn’t feign to be anything new. After all, they play folk music. By Ryan’s own admission at the 2013 Newport Folk…
/ By Robert Jones / If you’re flying from the East Coast to attend Upswell LA, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll be wide awake at 4 am in the Pacific Time Zone. But don’t worry, the perfect cure for insomnia is just four blocks away. The Original Pantry Café touts itself as “LA’s 24-hour icon.”…
Years from now, when we look back at how and why Upswell surged into existence, we’ll be able to point to people like Regeanie Corona as the reason. Regeanie, founder and CEO of California-based nonprofit Advancing the Seed, was both one of the first changemakers to sign up for Upswell and a high-energy collaborator at…
The “common good” is generally defined as what is good for all people. Point to any time in the history of human existence and we have often fallen short of true common good for all. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. In fact, that is the very essence of civil society – a group…
/ By Robert Jones / Drew Ferguson spent approximately 100 hours pouring himself into a three-page narrative about the nonprofit sector and its value to society. Then he watched, unfazed, as 15 sector leaders in Los Angeles tore it apart. After all, this kind of creative destruction was always part of the plan, and finding…
Have you ever come across a product or service that made you say, “Wow! That really works for me?” The reason why we feel this excitement when we encounter a well-designed product or service is because it was probably made with the end user in mind. This design method is known as Human-Centered Design—or HCD—and…
/ By Christian Clansky / Once we landed on the name Upswell, we knew the bar for the brand had been raised quite high. We would need a brand environment as energetic and moving as the name. It would have to be engaging, memorable, flexible, energetic, on-trend, evocative, consistent, emotional, lasting…basically, we knew we needed…
/ By Kristina Gawrgy Campbell / At this point, it should come as no surprise that Upswell has its roots in the Independent Sector Conference. What may surprise you is how much of Upswell harkens back to the very founding of Independent Sector and its mission and purpose. In 1979 when two organizations merged to…