From Pitch to Pitch - Our Work with Three Day Startup
In the last 10 years, Austin has changed dramatically in regards to workforce, events, and culture. However, one key part of Austin that has stayed the same is its place as a leader for innovation in impact. Philanthropitch is a pioneering educational program that culminates in a social impact fast-pitch competition for innovative and scalable nonprofits, and they recently hosted their 10th Philanthropitch Austin in October of 2022. It was a huge success, raising over $142,000 for the 7 nonprofit finalists.
As a Philanthropitch Austin Community Partner, SVP Austin offered pro bono advising services to all finalists, including 3 Day Startup. 3 Day Startup (“3DS”) creates opportunity and builds community through entrepreneurship education that is dynamic and inclusive. Their in-person, hybrid and virtual programs build the knowledge, skill, and entrepreneurial mindsets necessary for young people to start new ventures and thrive in entrepreneurial careers. Through SVP Austin’s workshops, 3DS was able to plan strategies around board member retention and creating a sales funnel.
Recruiting a board is one of the hardest things a startup nonprofit can do - recruiting the right board members can be taxing on both time and relationships. A good board is diverse, has different skillsets, and is motivated to do good in the organization. SVP Austin’s first goal was to identify current gaps in leadership and ideate on the best people to fill those gaps. No team will succeed without a good plan, and the next course of action was to define board engagement and how they would interact with the organization. Often times, board members can be a great leader on committees, fundraising teams, and champions of the organization.
“The session with SVP allowed us as a board not only to confirm the efficiency of some of our planned strategies but also identify gaps and areas of opportunities that otherwise could have gone unnoticed. The discussion was strategic and thought provoking and allow us to prepare next steps and action items to address current and future challenges. SVP’s advice came across as extremely experienced and founded on the recognized needs of an organization like 3 Day Startup, making all guidance very relevant. There’s definitely a word to describe our conversation: ‘Impactful’” - Rafa Barroso, 3 Day Startup Board Member
Board recruiting is not the only thing nonprofits struggle with. All too often they’re lacking resources, talent, time, or capital to effectively create strong sales funnels or fundraising cycles that allow them to reach their impact goals. In the case of 3 Day Startup, COVID determined a new product and service model was needed. They knew how to position it and who to sell it to, but didn’t have the infrastructure to handle it. How does one figure out which touchpoints are important to record? How should this be put into a CRM tracking system? How does one build a CRM?
During an advising session, Social Venture Partners tackled these questions and came up with the following recommendations:
Find out what the important touchpoints are for your existing clientbase, then document and create classifications based on this
In sales team meetings, make sure to discuss milestones for your funnel and be prepared to change based on new findings
Identify both red and green flags and how to document those in your CRM
Find the Champions: partners that help you understand the time required and the necessary strategies to make the sale
As a leader, I found our team in a place of needing very specific, technical or tactical guidance from corporate experts to move the mission of 3 Day Startup forward. In this particular case, we knew we needed to build and maintain stronger business development systems; we weren’t going to be able to leverage insights from our existing networks or previous experience - plus we wanted an outside perspective involved in our problem solving. - Erika Haskins, CEO, 3 Day Startup
