Social Venture Partners, an organization and global network of community leaders, business leaders and engaged philanthropists, partnered with Seed Spot for a pitch party on Friday, March 18, incorporating a multitude of nonprofit business ventures and social entrepreneurs throughout the Valley.
Sentari Minor, director of engagement and education at Social Venture Partners Arizona, said that SVP works solely with nonprofit organizations in support of their endeavors.
“Social Venture Partners is part of an international affiliate started in 1997 but brought to Arizona in 1999 and what we do is take a venture capitalist’s approach to philanthropy,” Minor said.
The SVPAZ Fast Pitch program is a two-month communication skills-building program and pitch competition in its sixth year that gives nonprofit leaders three minutes to present their stories to an audience. Winners of Fast Pitch are given awards including start-up funds ranging from $2,000 to $25,000.
“We saw a need through the previous years for really enriching these nonprofit ventures beyond our three-month program, and about six months before Fast Pitch started, we sat down with Seed Spot to see what that nonprofit would look like,” Minor said. “We thought we’d formalize that partnership this year by having the nonprofits go through a boot camp of Seed Spot’s.”
Seed Spot, a nonprofit organization housed within Mod Phoenix, reaches local social entrepreneurs by providing business ventures with a network for entrepreneurial opportunity, access to creative office space, business startup curriculum and mentorship.
Their mission is to educate, accelerate and invest in entrepreneurs who are creating solutions to social problems. To Seed Spot, social entrepreneurship pertains to those that create systemic solutions to social issues through the use of business principles.
Seed Spot’s five-day boot camp consists of 30 hours of training; business-model building; customer validation; network building; classes in Legal 101, Finance 101 and Marketing 101; pitch development; mentorship, access to investors and access to a $10,000 interest-free loan.
Lauren McDanell, Phoenix director of entrepreneur initiatives for Seed Spot, has worked firsthand to seek out and support Seed Spot’s ventures.
“Seed Spot offers programs that help support entrepreneurs as they are starting their business,” McDanell said. “We focus on entrepreneurs with a social impact at the center of their for-profit or nonprofit business meaning that they help people, the economy or the environment through their work.”
Mentorship, proprietary curriculum, introductions to capital and a peer network are some of the main areas in which Seed Spot provides assistance for startup companies.
“We are a social incubator meaning that we incubate young companies to increase their rate of success,” McDanell said. “We prepare entrepreneurs and their ventures for funding, and by the time they are through with our programs they are significantly more fundable.”
Seed Spot launched a summer program in 2015 which turned into a six-month pilot program for high school students, known as Seed Spot NEXT, in the spring of 2015. The program now runs on a year long basis offering proprietary curriculum and hands-on experience.
Lexie Priniski, special events and initiatives intern of Seed Spot, first started interning with Seed Spot in June of 2015 and partook in the first Seed Spot NEXT high school program.
“By getting involved with my own start-up, working with the mentors and going through the workshops and curriculum that Seed Spot provided it just really sparked my interest,” Priniski said.
Naketa Ross, founder of Resilient Me, a nonprofit organization aiding adolescents that are close to aging out of the foster care system, attributes Seed Spot as a primary network and educational resource.
She shared the scope of the nonprofit’s goals as they are created to be engaging, educational and empowering for youth allowing them to succeed in adulthood despite their circumstances.
“We took the construct of resiliency and developed a curriculum around it because, the youth that are in foster care, they have experienced one of the worst traumas you can experience being taken away from their family,” Ross said. “We teach them their individual traits and strengths so that they can utilize those to be self-sufficient once they age out of foster care.”
Seed Spot has played a vital role in assisting Resilient Me in reaching their goals and growing as an independent organization.
“Seed Spot brought in experts to teach us how to enhance our brand and how to market our selves so that our brand is better known out in the community we serve,” Ross said.
Seed Spot has actively been engaged in the community as a support system, an educational resource, a network and social incubator for a multitude of local small businesses.
“By Seed Spot helping out social ventures, that’s helping the community greatly in the Phoenix area alone, because 80 percent of the ventures stay in Arizona after they exit the program,” Priniski said. “They are really stimulating the small business economy here in Phoenix.”
Contact the reporter at brianna.bradley@asu.edu.
Editor’s note: Downtown Devil Director of Multimedia Sierra LaDuke is an employee of Seed Spot. She was not involved in the reporting or writing of this article.
