Duet Design Group Foundation

From Start Up Experimentation to Purposeful Growth

Duet Design Group Foundation’s mission is to donate interior design services to Denver nonprofits providing residential space and supportive services for youth, adults, and families who require a healing environment. The Foundation was founded by Duet Design Group, one of the largest interior design firms in the Denver region. 

Co-founders Miranda Cullen and Devon Tobin created the Foundation because they want to help others and believe in the difference trauma-informed design can make. A thoughtful and pleasing environment can improve wellbeing, emotional and physical health, reduce stress, and promote self-worth.

Foundation Executive Director Lezlie Goldberg was at a crossroads. She did not have a roadmap to guide her. Lezlie experimented with different partners to test service models. She had success working with Brent's Place to design 15 apartments to house and improve the quality of life for children and families living with cancer and other immunocompromising conditions. Another project was not able to go to scale because of lack of funding.

After that first success, Lezlie was approached by more nonprofits than she could manage. And though the Foundation donated the design costs, the furnishings were not, which limited impact and required fundraising. She knew that there was real potential for making a big impact, but was overwhelmed, unsure how to assess and select partners, and uncertain of next steps for raising money. 

Unleashing New Resources Through Strategic Alignment

Lezlie reached out to me for help. She needed a road map. I began by analyzing their progress and listening to the founders’ and Lezlie’s vision for the future and the challenges. I probed about the end users they sought to help and their needs, revealing that they wanted to focus on families with children especially but not exclusively. 

We mapped their assets. In-depth interviews unearthed many underutilized resources and the need to narrow their focus and specialize, working with nonprofits that were closer to home whose mission resonated. New criteria for nonprofit partners’ readiness created clarity. Refining the mission, adding values, and a long-term vision grounded the process. 

We discovered new ways to involve hundreds of untapped design and construction vendors, suppliers, other designers and their clients, and craftspeople to donate soft and hard goods, unleashing more resources for nonprofit partners, lowering the need for fundraised dollars. Leveraging their relationships created new in-kind donations from vendors eager to help  others while helping the Foundation serve more nonprofits.

Next, we went to work together to design an overarching strategy to support growth with specific goals, outcomes and tactics, by quarter, for three years. And measures of success for each.

The Impact: Smart Growth 

Now Lezlie has the strategic plan she needs, both high-level and specific—from vision to action—guiding her week-by-week, quarter by quarter, year-over-year. The detailed work plan and metrics to assess impact have enabled her to truly mobilize the interior design community for good and offer more to her partners at a lower cost.