Just as nightclubs started kicking people out Friday night, an impromptu dance party was getting underway inside the former Santa Ana City Hall building.
This was no underground, after-hours club. It was a quick break from more than 12 hours of writing code, editing video and launching social media sites aimed at helping Orange County’s homeless.
It’s called Forge54.
For 54 straight hours this weekend, 120 area professionals and college students are volunteering their talents to create half a million dollars in custom marketing materials for the nonprofit Illumination Foundation.
Between working and scarfing down donated burritos, some volunteers will crash for a couple hours on couches in the Main Street building. Some will zip shut bright pink Privacy Pop tents that are scattered throughout the basement. And some, like veteran photographer Reggie Ige, will sneak home for a few hours of sleep before diving back in.
It’s all building to Sunday evening, when the team will hand a brand new website, mobile app, logo, commercials and more to Illumination Foundation, which provides healthcare and housing services to hundreds of local families each year.
“We don’t have 100 people in our entire organization, and we run 24-hour shelters in eight or nine locations,” said Sinae Bang with Illumination Foundation. “So to have more than 100 people working on this, it’s like our dreams are coming true.”
THE SPARK
Forge54 is the brainchild of Torrey Tayenaka.
The 29-year-old entrepreneur volunteered to serve Thanksgiving dinner for the needy at the Honda Center one year. But it didn’t take him long to realize he wasn’t a particularly good server.
“I thought, if I could have used my skills and helped them with marketing, I would have made a much bigger impact on their organization as a whole,” Tayenaka said.
He and some friends had tried to do marketing work for a charity throughout the year, but it was hard to match up schedules and build any momentum. That’s when he thought: “What if we could do this all in one weekend?”
Tayenaka organized the first Forge54 in 2013 at Sparkhouse, the video production agency he founded in Newport Beach.
He enlisted friends who built websites, did public relations and worked in video production. And he promised to pay for all the food and energy drinks.
“I thought I might have eight good friends show up. Instead, 47 people showed up,” he said. “We were blown away by the support.”
They worked late into the night that first Friday. Some volunteers started leaving, telling Tayenaka they’d get some rest and come back.
He walked outside just as the sun was starting to rise, hoping at least a few volunteers would return. But as he looked around the parking lot, he realized it was still full.
“No one had left. They actually just slept in their cars so they could come back in to finish their work,” he said. “Once we saw that, we really knew we had something cool.”
THE IMPACT
After sizing up the organization, the Forge54 team approached OC Food Bank to participate that first year. Then they spent a collective 1,833 hours to give the nonprofit a new logo, videos, website and more.
“It was eye-opening,” said Doug Vogel, fund development manager for OC Food Bank, “and really allowed us to come together as a team to learn more about ourselves and what our strengths are and how to reach out into the community in a way that we’ve never done.”
In 2014, they helped Playworks Southern California, a nonprofit that helps children learn to play in a safe and inclusive way. And last year, nearly 100 volunteers donated $574,725 in services to Wells of Life, which drills wells to bring fresh water to rural communities in Uganda.
Illumination Foundation was chosen from more than 70 applicants.
Though the nonprofit has grown tremendously since Paul Leon launched it in his garage 10 years ago, he said they’ve kept administrative costs low. That means they haven’t had resources to market the way they should to be competitive for grants, donations and volunteers.
Leon admits he didn’t entirely understand Forge54 at first – or believe they’d accomplish all they promised in one weekend. But after seeing the passion of the team the first day, he’s just anxious to see what they’ll create.
Eight developers are building a mobile app that will help the nonprofit’s caseworkers use GPS pins to better track and monitor their clients.
“There’s an energy you get when you start building a project,” said Geoff Nori, 27, a designer who’s doing his second Forge54 weekend. “This way, you get to harness that energy all at once.”
Chapman University sophomores Jasmine Han and Christina Cherekdjian are helping create Facebook, Twitter and Instagram sites for the nonprofit, while also learning from veteran marketing gurus at the table.
“There’s a ‘Forge family’ that’s created from working, eating and sleeping next to each other for an entire weekend,” Tayenaka said. “We’ve even had some romances blossom.”
Rachael Parker-Chavez, who runs a company that helps businesses give back, was already dating her boyfriend when they came to Forge54 in 2015. This year they’re volunteering as a married couple.
“If you can make it through Forge,” she jokes, “you can make it through anything.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-7963 or bstaggs@ocregister.comTwitter: @JournoBrooke
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