Our Mission

Our Mission

TYTHEdesign is a mission-driven, social venture that focuses on supporting the needs of agencies working in the social sector. We use design innovation to increase the impact of these groups serving the public good. By drawing on our multidisciplinary team we work in a collaborative and iterative process with the partnering organization to generate strategies and solutions that match the long-term needs of their community. We work every step of the way until a project is complete or fully implemented.

The services we offer strive to increase the impact of an organization’s work by streamlining their potential for service delivery, community engagement and workplace efficiency. Our services fall into four broad categories of consulting including communications, workshops, systems and spaces. Each service and project is customized to the specific needs of the partner organization and project. Follow this link to find out more:

We enjoy working with organizations that are committed to making their community a better place. Let us help you expand your impact.

Our Name

TYTHEdesign's name comes from the historical practice of "tithing", the idea of contributing a tenth of a harvest or a tenth of the products of a workshop to support the community. Although tithing has a religious history, our name draws the work of Victor Papanek (1927-1999) around social design tithing. He was a social designer and educator who strongly advocated the social and ecologically responsible design of products, tools and community infrastructure. He wrote about the design industry that “we can pay by giving ten percent of our crop of ideas and talents to the seventy-five percent of mankind in need” (Design for the Real World, 1992:68). In this tradition, TYTHEdesign routinely contributes work on a pro bono basis as an integral component to our portfolio. To reinforce this commitment we selected a corporate name that articulates our mission to help address social need.

See one of TYTHEdesign’s most recent pro-bono case studies: TARPguide

Our History

Social entrepreneur, Kristina Drury, founded TYTHEdesign in 2010 after years of experience volunteering and working within the social sector throughout the US and Canada. She and a group of colleagues, many of whom became TYTHE’s initial team of consultants, had observed several organizations struggling with challenges based often on unsustainable organizational structures and/or inefficient communication strategies. Through engaging with these groups, Kristina and her colleagues discovered the value of their design background when approaching the organizations’ respective challenges. Recognizing the current underuse of design innovation in many organizations, Kristina decided to create a consulting service to support social sector ventures.

Find out more about Kristina Drury and the TYTHEdesign consultants.

Our Process