Ten years ago, San Diego–based designer Susan Wintersteen encountered a life-changing client—a 13-year-old girl suffering from rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer. Wintersteen reached out to the girl’s family with an offer to redesign her room. “This kid was going to be relegated to her room for a year, resting between treatments,” says the designer. “I just thought, there are so many ways that a designer can make a space more comforting and healing—I knew there had to be meaning to this line of work beyond just serving a certain kind of client.” She put in new flooring, added lighting and a comfortable new bed, and transformed the space into a cozy and functional room for the teen. Shortly after, she founded a nonprofit, Savvy Giving by Design, with the mission of creating interior spaces for families in medical crisis.
The organization has evolved in several ways over the intervening years. The first was the addition of chapters, which are designer-led and independently operated by a local board of directors. There are currently 11 chapters across the country, including Wintersteen’s original in San Diego. Local chapters are responsible for creating their own boards and doing their own fundraising, but the legal fees required to set up and run a nonprofit are covered by Houzz. The designers running these chapters all do so in addition to operating their own full-scale design firms, and Wintersteen estimates that each chapter completes between one to three Savvy Giving renovations each year, often including a sibling’s room as well.
Spurred by the number of designers who wanted to help but didn’t have the bandwidth to run their own chapter, Wintersteen came up with a pop-up option as well, where designers can connect with their nearest Make-A-Wish Foundation chapter and complete rooms on a one-off basis. “It’s time-intensive to get chapters up and running and to train designers on our organizational procedures,” she says. “We had 15 chapters at one point, and not all of them endured, because the designers were ultimately overwhelmed. Through this partnership with Make-A-Wish, designers can do a few of these projects and learn what to expect before diving into their own chapter.”
Poetically, it was another teenager who propelled Savvy Giving’s latest iteration—a room-in-a-box initiative conceived by 14-year-old Oliver Mayson, the child of a friend of Wintersteen’s. Oliver received a grant to create a philanthropic community program, and he approached the designer with his idea. Together they launched Go To Your Room Box, an initiative that supplies children in medical crisis with design-related comfort items like bedding and decor (or QR codes to redeem larger items like area rugs). In its first round, Savvy Giving sent out 10 boxes to families who had been nominated and were outside the service area of a local chapter. National donor brands such as Boll & Branch, Ruggable, and Serena & Lily contributed to the shipments, which went out in June. Mayson’s grant will allow the organization to operate the program for four years, but Wintersteen is hopeful that, with enough support from brands, the initiative can continue beyond that.
The room-in-a-box program also gave the organization a chance to bring in volunteers, something its core mission typically hasn’t allowed for. “A lot of people want to volunteer their time and help put these rooms together, but number one, we want to minimize the number of people coming into the family’s home, and number two, we want a really polished result for this child,” says Wintersteen. If a room needs to be painted, for example, she’s tapping a professional, not asking the neighbors to come over with paintbrushes. But the new initiative allows for boxing parties where interested volunteers can get together to prepare the packages for shipment. “It’s something tangible that people can help with,” says the designer. The first gathering took place in June at Santa Monica–based kitchen and bath showroom Snyder Diamond, where teams of volunteers packed the boxes and included handwritten notes for the recipients.
Wintersteen sees Go To Your Room Box as a unique way for brands in the home and design sectors to give back. “I’ve been surprised at how so few companies align with design-related charities,” she says. “Part of what’s special about this is that it gives brands a chance to make a difference with their product. There are so many things that these kids need. Something like the donation of a healthy organic mattress, or really good touch lighting that they can have on a bedside table, would be life-changing for many of these children. Even if a company just wanted to donate oversize boxes [for our shipments], there are so many ways to get involved.”
Looking forward, Wintersteen is hopeful that in 2025, Savvy Giving by Design will be able to send out a higher volume of boxes, and even sees a fundraising possibility of selling them at retail value in a “one purchased, one donated” model, similar to those used by brands like Bombas, Warby Parker and Toms. “I’m still really dedicated to our founding mission, but I’m excited about the possibilities that exist for this adjunct program to grow and develop,” she says.
To establish your own Savvy Giving by Design chapter or explore options to contribute to the organization’s initiatives, visit the website.
