Richmond's nonprofit community finally has an acceleration program to call its own.
The Thrive program is the result of a collaboration between local accelerator The Spark Mill, nonprofit coworking space The Collaboratory of Virginia and The Community Foundation. While participating in the Thrive accelerator suite, Richmond nonprofits are guided by experts and mentors from across industries on the best path toward their own growth.
"Often, accelerators working with startups are focused on getting the company to the next round of funding or growth," said Chris Bennet, The Spark Mill's senior consultant and facilitator. "Acceleration for nonprofits is all about helping the organizations get to the next level of community impact."
The Spark Mill previously worked with both for-profit and nonprofit companies but wanted to provide extra support to the nonprofit community. Given the current social distancing measures being taken around the world, a virtual meeting space was the solution for addressing large groups of innovators at one time.
The team was able to collaborate quickly and put the program together in fewer than six weeks.
Bennett said what sets the Thrive program apart is its cohort-based nature. Nonprofit staff and board members come together to grow as a community, and the organizations help each other out along the way by sharing in the experience.
"It is a cumulative cohort-model, meaning that each session is building on ideas and work that they've done previously," he said. "At the end of the six weeks, they've got some great work and a path to move forward in terms of making value-based decisions about their strategic objectives and goals."
The current iteration of the program has 15 groups, with three-to-five members from a single organization making up one team. Each team receives a mentor from a variety of experiences and backgrounds with the common goal of seeing the nonprofits thrive and prosper.
Participants of the current round of Thrive include the Innerwork Center, Rebuilding Together, artspace, James River Writers and Nest Academy, to name a few.
"Nonprofit organizations spend so much time focusing on the actual work and serving their communities that sometimes they don't have the time to step back and work on the big picture," Bennett said. "During Covid or not, this sort of program is really valuable for nonprofits to really help them have that clarity around how they can make the greatest and best impact."
"The collaborations and the connections that accelerations offer both in the nonprofit and for-profit side really support such an abundance mentality, not a scarcity mentality," he said. "They recognize that we're all in this together and want the same thing even if we want different slices of the pie.
"I think that's one of the beautiful things about acceleration: you've got different people coming together saying 'Hey, we've all got something great here. How can we learn and benefit from each other?'"
