Meet SDSVP Investee, ARTS Founder & Director, Matt D’Arrigo!

By Paul Thiel

It took Matt D’Arrigo nearly a decade to realize his dreams of creating ARTS. Nearly another decade was spent establishing the organization as one of the most respected non-profits in San Diego. And, with the help of San Diego Social Venture Partners, the next decade will be spent expanding his mission and mandate.

“What we are really trying to do now is to strengthen what we have,” says D’Arrigo of ARTS, an acronym that stands for ‘A Reason to Survive.’ “But the dream is eventually to expand and replicate the organization.”

ARTS is D’Arrigo’s brainchild and passion. Children facing life’s most difficult challenges participate with ARTS to heal, inspire and empower themselves through art. Working in the field at places such as Rady’s Children’s Hospital or at the ARTS facility and headquarters in Point Loma, kids escape their circumstances by losing themselves in painting, music or any number of other arts forms.

ARTS is one of SDSVP’s newest Investees, having just begun working with Lead Partners Scott Tritt and Angela Hill.

D’Arrigo conceived the idea for ARTS in 1992, when his mother and sister were both diagnosed with cancer. A freshman in college in Alabama at the time, he returned home to Boston to help care for them, where he discovered the power of art. “I used to escape to my room to paint and listen to music. It was very cathartic. I thought that if it worked for me it could work for others, especially kids. That was the seed.”

Over the next nine years – while his mother died and his sister recovered – D’Arrigo worked in several jobs where he learned about running a business. In 2001 he founded ARTS, working out of his house and visiting kids at places such as the Ronald McDonald House.

These days ARTS has a budget of $800,000, a staff of eight and a beautiful 7,000-square-foot studio at the NTC Promenade on Point Loma, near his home. Since its inception ARTS has worked with more than 45,000 kids, and its mission has expanded from working with terminally ill children to working with kids facing many challenges, from abuse to homelessness to illness to foster care to the loss of a parent. Some kids participate with ARTS just once or twice, while others come for months or years.

The Pat D’Arrigo ARTS Center at NTC Promenade in Point Loma is named for his mother, Patricia, and provides a pleasing, peaceful place for kids to create. “It is important to take the kids physically and mentally out of their environment. The kids deserve to be at a nice place, and they love it.”

D’Arrigo had known about SDSVP for several years and was queued to apply once the focus of the organization was children. So far, he says, it’s been a great experience. “Money is one thing, and is great and needed, but there is a great need for human resources and leadership…people who know what they are doing,” says D’Arrigo, who is learning to live with SDSVP at the same time he is learning to live with a new baby. D’Arrigo and his wife, Hulya, welcomed Andrew in June. The couple also has a 2-year-old daughter, Tessa.

“A couple of current Investees told me it was a really intense process,” D’Arrigo says. “But SDSVP is very open to getting feedback and changing and adapting to what the nonprofit needs. That was a bit of a surprise to me, and it’s the sign of a great organization.”

Among the challenges D’Arrigo needs help with is the perception of affluence. Because of the facility on Point Loma and the press ARTS has received, people assume the organization is flush with cash. “We are struggling like everyone else,” he says. “One of the things we are looking at with [SDSVP Lead Partner] Angela [Hill] is how we re-position ourselves to show that we are not flush and we do need support.”

D’Arrigo also plans to tap SDSVP’s thinking on succession planning. “I don’t want ARTS to be so dependent on me,” he says, “I want to be able to spend time on replicating and expanding.”

Finally, D’Arrigo expects that SDSVP will help with earned income, through social enterprise – possible renting out the ARTS studios when not in use and other such potential revenue streams.

Like most fortunate non-profit leaders, D’Arrigo finds his work highly rewarding. “The best part of my job is working with the kids,” he says. “Seeing them having fun being kids again is great. Most of these kids have had their childhoods taken away from them.”


Quick 4 with Matt D’Arrigo:

What have you read lately?

9 Things a Leader Must Do (Dr. Henry Cloud), Managing Uncertainty (Harvard Business Review),

What's on your iPod?

Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews, Brett Dennen,

What do you watch?

The Office, Daily Show, News, Discovery Channel

If you could live somewhere else for two years, where would it be? Why?

Turkey. It’s where my wife is from. We have been there for vacation but I would love to live there to learn and live the culture a bit more. They have a house on a small island off Istanbul where there are no cars – just bikes and horse drawn carriages. It’s a very peaceful place to go lose yourself for a while.