“Our work with the lab put us on the path to sustainability and scale,” Lowenstein says. More than 25,000 children and families from 92 percent of Chicago’s ZIP codes have participated in volunteer projects, with 75 percent of Honeycomb volunteers coming from low-to-moderate-income communities.
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Today, Honeycomb operates with a full-time staff of four, plus twenty-five freelancers who lead hundreds of projects each year in communities across the city. Kristina Lowenstein, Honeycomb co-founder and executive director Our team from the lab helped us find the confidence to make bold decisions that balanced building quality programs with long-term scale and growth.” “When you’re on the inside, it’s hard to see your organization’s challenges clearly - or the solutions. “They understood that we wanted to grow without losing sight of what makes Honeycomb so unique -providing meaningful opportunities for children to volunteer alongside their parents and develop a lifelong love of service.” The founders and their lab team worked on creating a strategic plan that included a fundraising strategy, a road map for staffing, benchmarks for the future, and recommendations for building the right board of directors to support Honeycomb’s growth.
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Lowenstein says the partnership with the lab team was game-changing for Honeycomb. Since 2009, the lab has helped more than seventy Chicago-area nonprofits and social ventures scale their work, improve their efficiency, and plan for long-term sustainability. Lab students get a deep understanding of the day-to-day operations of social ventures, and the nonprofits benefit from students’ input on how to solve real-life operational challenges. Hachikian teaches the Social Impact Lab course, which matches teams of students and faculty coaches from Booth, the Harris School of Public Policy, and the School of Social Service Administration with community nonprofits to provide free consulting services. All of our programs are so different: On a single morning, we might be facilitating a cleanup with eighty people at Rainbow Beach and hosting an intimate breakfast for guests at Sarah’s Circle shelter for women.”Īt just the right moment, Lowenstein says, she met Christina Hachikian, then executive director of the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “We felt incredible pressure to meet the growing demand, so we were putting all of our time and energy into scaling our programs in a small way, but that wasn’t sustainable. “It was just the two of us creating and leading all of these high-touch volunteer opportunities with multiple partner organizations,” Lowenstein remembers. Two years after launching Honeycomb, the co-founders were on the verge of burnout. In 2011, the pair founded the Honeycomb Project, a nonprofit that hosts hands-on volunteer opportunities to help families learn about and address social challenges facing Chicago. They found themselves brainstorming about restarting the volunteer work that had been important to them before they had kids - and involving their families in volunteering at the same time.
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And I eagerly wait what happens next in part two.” NYTheatre.Nearly a decade ago, friends Kristina Lowenstein and Catherine Tannen were both moms of young children. “Rogers’ writing is daring Jordana Williams’ direction is nothing short of fantastic. “Fascinating, suspenseful, and gripping Mac Rogers is one of the most intriguing playwrights working today.” Broadway World, Read More “CRITICS PICK! This effectual first part thrives in its persuasive entangling of science fiction with straightforward domestic drama.” - Backstage, Read More “If you want to make an argument for bringing science fiction to live theater, look no further than Mac Rogers’ Advance Man.” - Tor.com, Read More This is especially true when it is in the hands of talented artists like Mac Rogers and director Jordana Williams If the first play in the series, Advance Man, is any indication, Rogers has written another sci-fi hit.” - StageBuzz, Read More “It’s always nice to see sci-fi wrested from movies and TV and brought back to the stage.