It started with a broken lamp and three kids.

In the fall of 2011, Gus Halloran was a shop teacher on leave and Yolanda Pierce was a school counselor who had just quit. They lived four blocks apart on SE Hawthorne. Gus had a garage full of tools and a broken lamp. Yolanda had three kids who needed somewhere to be between 3 and 6 p.m.

The first afternoon, the kids took the lamp apart. The second afternoon, they could not get it back together. The third afternoon, they got it back together and it worked. That is, more or less, the curriculum to this day: take it apart, fail to reassemble it, reassemble it, turn it on.

1. 2011

   The garage

   Six kids, one lamp, no insurance, no nonprofit status, and a sign made from a cereal box. The sign said STENCH because Gus thought it would keep the wrong people away. It attracted the right ones.

2. 2012

   Incorporation and the first real room

   A donated classroom at a church on Hawthorne, 22 kids, and a 501(c)(3) determination letter that arrived eleven months late. Yolanda became the first executive director. Her salary was $0 for two years.

3. 2014

   The ratio rule

   After a bad afternoon with 31 kids and two adults, the board adopted a hard 1:8 ratio and a rule that no site may exceed capacity even if the waitlist is screaming. It is the most expensive policy we have ever passed. It is also the reason families trust us.

4. 2016

   Haircuts

   A kid cut another kid's hair with craft scissors during open studio. Instead of banning scissors, we hired a licensed barber named Antoine Duval for eight hours a week. The salon opened in a converted closet. It now has six chairs and a two-week wait for a Saturday appointment.

5. 2018

   Nothing

   During a grant interview, a funder asked what the N stood for. Gus said 'Nothing.' The funder laughed. Gus said, 'No, really,' and then had to invent a rationale on the spot. The rationale turned out to be good. The Void opened the following fall.

6. 2020

   The porch year

   Sites closed for fourteen months. We handed out 1,800 take-home kits — seed starts, hand tools, clay, a soldering project with a very serious safety card — and ran 400 phone check-ins a month. We did not lay off a single program staffer. We did burn through the reserve.

7. 2022

   Deb

   A retired plumbing van, donated, repainted, named Deb. Deb carries a mini workshop, a pop-up salon chair, and a surprising amount of sand. Deb has done 96 neighborhood visits.

8. 2024

   Six sites

   St. Johns opened in a former laundromat. It was the first site we built from scratch rather than inheriting, and the first with a door wide enough for a wheelchair and a fourteen-year-old carrying a bicycle frame.

9. 2026

   This year

   1,240 kids, 41 staff, 611 on the waitlist, and a strategic plan that is mostly about opening a seventh site in East Portland. Also, the lamp still works. It is on a shelf in the Hawthorne office, labeled 'LAMP (DO NOT FIX).'

What we got wrong

We publish this section because every nonprofit has one and most of them leave it out of the history page, which makes the whole thing read like a pitch deck.

• The coding bootcamp (2017). We tried a twelve-week web development track for 8-to-10-year-olds. It was boring, the kids hated it, and half of them quit to go back to Crafts. What we learned: kids do not want to build a to-do app. They want to build a thing that moves.
• The $20 deposit (2013). We tried a refundable deposit to reduce no-shows. It reduced no-shows by 4% and reduced enrollment by 31%. We refunded everyone and apologized in writing.
• The Cully HVAC (2023). The Cully site had no air conditioning for an entire September. We knew in June and did not fix it in time. Families told us. We now have a maintenance calendar that a board member actually checks.
• The site we closed (2021). A satellite in outer SE never got above 14 kids a day and was 40 minutes from the nearest staff member. Closing it was right. Doing it by email was not.