Support Tiers + Benefits

“Design is powerful. Let’s use it for good. Let’s use it to be inclusive. Let’s use it to empower communities to make decisions about our own built environment.”
-Yin Kong,
Executive Director, Think!Chinatown and Design Sprints partner

Van Alen is a 130-year-old design non-profit that believes residents are experts in their own needs. As a driving force behind community-led design, we help people working toward a better future for their communities shape the places where they live. Our collaborative of supporters believe that good design must be accessible to everyone.

Your support creates access to resources like public space planning and advocacy tools that improve neighborhood spaces, restore resident agency, and build community power through vibrant outcomes like pop up activations and public space improvements.

Your contribution could support Van Alen’s designer stipends, which facilitate catalytic opportunities for emerging artists and early-career design professionals to participate in grassroots community-design projects.

• Community Design Ally recognition across Van Alen’s special event series convening collaborators in equitable urban design including:
  • The annual Bond Street Bash cocktail party with 200+ community leaders, designers, municipal agents, and other advocates for a more just public realm
  • The Fall Fest, featuring a public art resource fair and community workshop on space activation lessons, challenges, and best practices
  • The Design Sprints Summit, a celebration of fast-paced co-design projects that build trust between community leaders and designers and create community advocacy tools for shaping the public realm
• Inclusion in Van Alen’s design justice online directory of over 100 designers, firms, and community organizations 
• Invitations to all Van Alen special events and other engagements, including closed-door program briefings with Executive Director and invited speakers
• Recognition of support in Annual Impact Report publication
• Recognition of support across Van Alen’s social media platforms
• Year-round recognition of support on vanalen.org

Your contribution could support a two-way learning and knowledge exchange workshop bringing together community leaders and design professionals to imagine a more inclusive public realm.

All Community Design Ally benefits PLUS: 

• Public Space Supporter recognition across all Van Alen events, via social media, and on vanalen.org
• Opportunities to share inclusive design tools and knowledge at Van Alen resource sharing events
• Exclusive Van Alen merch and memorabilia like tote bags, water bottles, and prints from the archives

Your contribution could support one community organization’s 8-week collaboration with a team of design professionals uniquely suited to a local public space challenge.

All Public Space Supporter benefits PLUS: 

• Design Democracy Defender recognition across all Van Alen events, via social media, and on vanalen.org
• Site-specific volunteer opportunities with Van Alen’s network of community partners

Your contribution of could provide equitable artist fees for pop-up public space activations — from public art to small business markets — that engage residents around local priorities, inspire a shared sense of civic purpose, and lead to neighborhood investment.

All Design Democracy Defender benefits PLUS: 

• Groundbreaker  recognition across all Van Alen events, via social media, and on vanalen.org
• Opportunity to host an intimate gathering at Van Alen’s light-filled, industrial office at 303 Bond Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn
• Special access to a curated design-justice walking tour and dinner with Van Alen staff and project partners exploring how community-led collaborative design is transforming NYC’s public realm