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FabMo, Jonathan and Hannah Cranch
“SCORE has been a very useful resource for us. John has been a great coach and mentor. Like all nonprofits, we’ve had a couple of rough spots and he has helped us through them.”
When Jonathan Cranch and his wife, Hannah, thought about the next phase of their life, a trip to the San Francisco Design Center made it clear. Here they saw new fabrics and realized that the old outdated fabrics would be discarded. This perfectly fine material would go into landfill. Being environmentally sensitive, they came up with the concept of repurposing the material. Thus FabMo was born1996. They started out using their home. Hannah had connections with teachers in Palo Alto and knew that the materials could be used with the children and teachers. That worked well until summer came and both realized that the concept needed to be expanded to include artists and events beyond just schools. They also realized that for the effort to be sustainable:“what comes in as surplus must go out with purpose”, or else a landfill problem just becomes a storage problem. FabMo officially became a 501/c3 nonprofit corporation on July 29, 2009.
FabMo, “rescuing designer materials for creative reuse”, is today an all-volunteer, donor supported organization in the San Francisco Bay Area. It diverts last season’s beautiful designer materials from the landfill to useful purposes. These materials, obtained from designer showrooms, are composed of samples of exquisite textiles, wallpapers, tiles, leathers, trims, etc., which are made available for creative reuse to all interested parties on a donation basis.
Community Outreach Events now happen throughout the year, but most frequently between April and December. ‘ Earth day’ activities in April, ‘Maker Faire’ and ‘Green Kids’ Conference in May, County fairs in June, art and wine festivals through the summer, Senior Center Fashion Show, leading up to their big Boutique event at the end of October, followed by Bazaar Bizarre and Renegade Craft Festival in December.
FabMo can now measure its success in many ways besides the many events listed above. This year more than 70 tons of designer material will not go to landfill. Rather, the material goes to artistic people that use it in their businesses for products they sell. They get the material for free and may make a donation to help sustain FabMo. In addition many school children have artistic material to create school projects and at the same time learn about the environment and repurposing.
SCORE became involved in several ways. Hannah had a catering company, which benefited from SCORE counseling. Later, when Jonathan asked for SCORE counseling, he met with SCORE counselor, John Edwards, for several counseling sessions at the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce. Since then Jonathan has continued to use his help with business structure, bylaws, and operational processes. In addition, John has also provided board training in areas such as project based budgeting and effective meetings. As a result, FabMo now has improved Board processes, including strategic planning, business planning, board recruiting, and succession planning. A video made by Game Changers Silicon Valley of community station KMVT15, titled “Building a Non-Profit Organization with SCORE” provides a 13-minute interview for more detail. You can access the video at our website under ‘Resources; Building a Non-Profit Organization with SCORE.
The next phase for FabMo is expansion. This year they moved into larger facilities in Mountain View with a 5-year lease, illustrating their belief in the sustainability and growth for the organization. A beta site satellite was established in Santa Cruz in 2015 as a model for expansion. Jonathan intends to utilize SCORE and his mentor, John Edwards, to help guide the expansion to serve larger segments of the Bay Area. A best practices manual will be developed to enable similar organizations elsewhere in the USA. Jonathan plans to use the valuable ongoing mentoring by SCORE as FabMo grows.
