Connecticut Creatives features The Pita Group as an agency that gives back

(Rocky Hill, Conn. – March 16, 2012) – Connecticut’s community of creative professionals, Connecticut Creatives, recently featured The Pita Group as one of the state’s agencies that consistently gives back to the community. Check out the full article here, or read Managing Principal Kim Pita’s interview below.

Interview with Kim Pita, The Pita Group:

How do you go about selecting the causes/non-profits you work with? 
As you can imagine, because we are a very philanthropic agency, we get approached by many non-profit organizations and causes for financial donations, as well as volunteer commitments. Our history of giving has been focused in several key areas — women, children, families, social services and the arts. Our new web site features an area where organizations can apply for grant funding from Pita.

How do you go about determining rates, either pro-bono or discounting your services?
In additional to our financial commitment, many of our team members — including Paul and myself — are active on boards and committees. For many of these organizations where we are involved at this level, we provide pro bono services. Hartford Children’s Theatre is a good example of this. We have donated creative development for invitations, pull up banners, brochures, ads, etc. With other organizations in the Greater Hartford community, we have built a partnership philosophy. This is where we get paid for some services and donate services in return for sponsorships or some sort of trade. This is a strategy that works very well. For all non-profits that we contract with, we always provided a discounted rate for our services.

Why do you think it is important for designers to “give back” to the community and to causes they care about?
Work for non-profits provides a much different level of fulfillment for creatives. Agency-wide, we encourage and applaud giving back. Many times work for non-profits allows creatives to be more creative in their work and they feel good about the projects they are working on. They can push their creativity more and most often are not restricted to rigid brand standards. In addition to doing the work, there are often rewards to our team doing pro bono or partnership assignments — they can attend events that they are helping to promote.