OUR STORY
Pushing the field of social impact design forward since 2008
We're a nonprofit social impact design consultancy that puts the people closest to a problem at the center of solving it. We work through a network of local partners where the work happens to ensure sustainability.
OUR JOURNEY
In 2008, we found a gap worth building for.
When Catapult was founded, there was a structural gap in how aid reached communities. NGOs had ambitious visions for underserved communities around the world, but no system existed to bring in the designers trained to build what those visions actually required. Catapult was founded in 2008 to close that gap: to put design in service of the people those visions were meant to reach.
How we're evolving today.
Catapult helped create the field it now works in: social impact design. We've learned as much from the communities we work with as from the projects we've led, and the work now goes deeper: building lasting design partnerships, building local capacity, and doing the research that keeps the practice growing. The point was never to deliver a solution and leave. It's to build what lasts after we step back.
“Catapult has the innate ability to understand the needs of their clients, the expertise to provide impactful solutions, and the flexibility to pivot as need in real time [...] Catapult's breadth of knowledge and capabilities help deliver top-notch services to their clients.”
- JAMES CREEL, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS
What the work is built on.
HUMILITY
The impact world is littered with well-meaning solutions that serve the ego of the implementer, not the needs of the end-user. We prioritize community needs and put in the work to understand them.
COLLABORATION
Catapult was founded watching organizations recreate wheels and spend critical dollars on solutions built without the communities they were meant to serve. We co-create with experts, end-users, and implementers, because solutions capable of change are never built alone.
INTEGRITY
The organizations we work with choose us because they want results, and withholding honesty doesn't serve them. We give constructive feedback and protect the process to arrive at a better solution.
INITIATIVE
The challenges we take on often haven't been solved in decades. We seek out people who go the extra mile because they're driven to solve them.
DISCIPLINE
We don't apply a band-aid to wounds that require stitches. We bring meaningful order to the work in service of the result it's meant to produce.
OUR VALUES
NEW RESOURCE
Design with Us
Design is more than a process. It's human work, shaped by the people involved, the challenges they take on, and the emotions that surface along the way. It asks us to sit with ambiguity, question our assumptions, and examine our roles in the systems we participate in, and that kind of work calls for emotional awareness alongside everything else.
Design With Us is the open resource where we've gathered all of it, for clients, partners, and community members designing alongside us.