In today’s complex and comprehensive business world ingenious minded individuals are relentlessly thinking of ways to serve the publics needs while decreasing or even eliminating the consumers cost. These cost are reduced through a business model called a non-profit.

The term “non-profit” is used rather loosely to describe groups that come together to achieve an overall joint mission, rather than to make a profit. The United States allows any group of people to create a non-profit organization specializing in anything they wish as long as their actions are put into place to serve the publics good.

Serving the public some good is exactly what, Stephan A. Wainwright had in mind when he formed her non-profit business SeeSaw Studio in 1998. Wainwright formed SeeSaw Studio to address the lack of opportunities for career training in art, design and entrepreneurship for the under served low-income youth of Durham.

Wainwright’s SeeSaw Studio is one of many organizations across the country pulling together to increase the representation of minorities in the fields of art and design. SeeSaw has stood tall in the crusade to help detour the chronically high teen drop-out rates in Durham, North Carolina while serving as design and business mentors to local youth in the community.

SeeSaw provides several youth based services for those twelve to eighteen years of age. Participants are presented with opportunities in design workshops, the arts, and trained apprenticeship and entrepreneurial programs.

However, the privilege of volunteering did not come as easily as many would think. The 3rd President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, felt the government should control nonprofits. But luckily many Americans including the Supreme Court, felt the right to create a nonprofit was the same as the right to assemble, believing that nonprofit boards would protect individual rights, and that they should not be preyed on by state legislators.

Today there are more than 1.3 million nonprofit organizations in the United States, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics.

For more information on SeeSaw Studio visit info@seesawstudio.org or call 919.794.8213.