Monica Hampton
Executive Director, The Furniture Society
I met Monica when I was on the Board of The Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) and she was our Director of Education. We worked together on several projects for SNAG and became fast friends. Nearly a decade later, she is one of my closest friends and someone I collaborate with on a regular basis.
Today, Monica is the Executive Director of The Furniture Society. She has an incredible gift for envisioning programs for arts organizations that are a perfect fit for their moment in time. She is thoughtful about content and audience, what the impact of the programs will be, and how to form meaningful and lasting partnerships with both likely and unlikely parties.
Monica is someone with vision; she can see how to create programs and experiences that enhance people’s lives and her programs always feel fresh and compelling. She has a dynamic energy and exudes likability. These qualities make working with her intellectually satisfying as well as a lot of fun.
In the last few years, we have worked on things like annual appeal letters, navigating the impact of Covid shutdowns on a member organization that was historically centered on annual in-person conferences, as well as Board dynamics/roles and responsibilities, but our biggest project has been securing grant funding for a truly visionary program of Monica’s design, called Craft for a Greater Good (CGG.)
The basic idea for CGG is that members of The Furniture Society (TFS) would partner with local organizations in the city where they hold their annual conference and take on a service-based project to give back to that community, rather than just blowing in and out of town for the conference. In its pilot program, TFS members worked with several local non-profits in Milwaukee and taught high school students how to build benches for a park in the city that had started to go derelict. Rehabbing this particular park was quite meaningful to the community as it was once an extremely violent part of the city - in fact, it is named Victory Over Violence Park.
The next iteration was in Asheville, NC where TFS partnered with UNC and a local non-profit called Be-Loved. Be-Loved builds tiny houses for the housing insecure. The Furniture Society has been helping to design and build furniture and objects for all of the tiny homes and has been teaching the community many of these skills through TFS sponsored workshops so they too can participate. It is an incredibly touching program that will make a real difference in the lives of anyone lucky enough to be chosen to live in one of these tiny houses.
Working on these projects with Monica has been, by far, the most involved consulting work I’ve done with anyone. The work has been intense with lots at stake for her organization but Monica and I have had a wonderful experience working together. I love her vision for her organization and programming and it brings me deep satisfaction to contribute to its success.
Challenge: Grant writing, crafting annual appeals
Jen Townsend is someone who knows and lives her values to the core; a rare quality that sets her apart from nearly everyone I’ve known both professionally and personally. She is intelligent and witty, dedicated and meticulous, empathetic and engaged. She approaches her life and her work with an absolute sense of joy and rigor and in so doing, brings out the best in her colleagues, friends, and family.
Her most sterling quality, however, is her integrity.
I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for her heartfelt insight.
Over the past ten years, Jen and I have come to know each other extremely well, working professionally on everything from website overhauls to visioning groundbreaking community projects and successfully procuring funding to guarantee their success. From the moment we met while working with the Society for North American Goldsmiths to my current work with The Furniture Society, we have enjoyed a true sense of collaboration and friendship.
It’s unusual to find someone who equally shares deep satisfaction in digging into the inner workings of ideas and projects and rolling around in the details to ultimately make order and sense out of chaos.
Jen’s voice and perspective have had a dramatic influence on the work that I’ve done. She picks away at ideas carefully and intensely and pushes me to do the same to the best of my ability. While working on the SNAG website, conferences, and promotional campaigns, she deftly asked questions that promoted discovery and insight, truly considering how an online portal or convening would be best utilized and experienced by a membership organization serving a broad audience. She created a collegial environment, encouraging me to challenge old assumptions, and ways that the organization had been doing things, and in a constructive way enabled me to help move the organization forward in the presentation of information and programs.
As I weighed the opportunity to move into a leadership position at The Furniture Society, Jen helped me to challenge myself, to push farther than I thought was comfortable. While doing so I always knew she had my best interests at heart.
As I stepped into this new leadership role, I had ideas for innovative programs I was eager to establish that were distinctly different from anything that had been tried within this organization and the field of craft. I naturally turned to Jen as a sounding board. She offered feedback in a way that opened alternative paths to consider, generating thoughts and ideas about these program ideas that were not just useful, but impactful.
As the program structure for this communities-based initiative, Craft for a Greater Good took shape, Jen drew on her innate ability to understand the emotions and feelings about the topic at hand and was able to help me hone ideas by asking questions, restating issues to confirm that her understanding was correct. From there, Jen worked closely with me to articulate the goals and scope of this new program and collaboratively author a program narrative and grant requests that have all been successfully funded over the past three years.
Jen has very high standards for herself and, in turn, is able to push others to higher standards. The work we did together to bring this important program to life was underpinned by structure, but not rigidly so the work flowed smoothly in both directions with neither of us becoming defensive about ideas or comments made. Because of this unique working style and her empathetic nature, she successfully helped to elevate the work that was produced collaboratively. Jen enabled me to feel supported and conveyed confidence in me, creating a safe environment in which the ideas could come to fruition in the best possible way.
Craft for a Greater Good and other initiatives developed with Jen’s input and counsel during my time at The Furniture Society including a professional development series, annual appeals, and online programming have helped to reshape and position the Furniture Society for future success. We have had increased membership engagement, individual support and unprecedented financial support from family foundations and granting institutions.
The most remarkable part of this is that her efforts and input have been given on a voluntary basis but with such professional capacity that is beyond impressive. It is moving.
Perhaps the best part of our fortuitous meeting through SNAG, however, is that I have found one of my closest colleagues, and friends. I can’t think of anyone whose opinion, work ethic, and sensibilities I trust more than hers. Jen is genuine, thorough, and thoughtful, giving as much attention to an anecdote about a family matter as to a grant that I’ve asked for her help with.
Jen is a trusted advisor, editor, sounding board, brainstorming compatriot, and valued friend. It is an honor to know her, and I am grateful that she has lent me her consistent attention, talents and expertise whenever I call on her. Jen Townsend is someone who lives her values through and through and those who know her are better for it.
Monica’s Testimonial
Craft for a Greater Good grant proposal
