Park&Co

How we've helped elevate and differentiate Social Venture Partners by taking a different approach from similar organizations.

The problem with a lot of charities is that they're in the business of doing good, but they're not very good at doing business. Consequently, they often spend as much time raising funds to stay alive as they do supporting their cause. A group of motivated executives and professionals saw this problem and decided to create their own charity to help tackle it. Social Venture Partners Arizona takes the expertise, strategies and resources that made its members so successful in business and applies them to nonprofit organizations in order to make them more self-sustaining. We loved the concept and offered our services.

Already 117 members strong, SVP wanted to make more movers and shakers aware of how they could contribute their skills to the community in a self-fulfilling way. From a business perspective, they wanted to be known as providing the greatest return on philanthropic investment. We began by giving their branding some wings. Their new logo symbolizes their philosophy nicely: a whimsical character aboard a paper airplane that evokes SVP's creativity and flexible, entrepreneurial spirit in helping nonprofits take flight.

Next, we did not do feel-good ads. Something else was needed to establish SVP as a different type of charity. Instead, we created ads that were edgy (by nonprofit standards) in order to quickly distinguish SVP as a different kind of charitable organization and position them as an innovator in the grant foundation sphere.

A major part of SVP's communications outreach, both to its members and its charities, is its annual report. It details the strides made by SVP-supported organizations and keeps partners informed of goals, charities, finances and membership.

By completely revamping this piece with new branding and a fun, colorful emphasis on children, we turned it into the perfect recruiting tool for attracting new members.

Park&Co's work with Social Venture Partners has significantly upped the profile of these previously unheralded benefactors. It's also helped to illuminate how one of the best things you can give a person or organization in need is accountability. Now a more visible and visibly successful group, Social Venture Partners is proof that a for-profit approach can pay off handsomely for causes that are far more important than business. These are investments on which the returns are limitless.

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