Living our values at Social Venture Partners is a continuous effort. This latest series of blog posts highlights our commitment to the community and our commitment to each other. I have the privilege of sharing some reflections on the value and importance of trust.
One of the perks during my time as board chair is being one of the first people to meet our incoming members. The public presentation of our values allows SVP to solidify our purpose and process, giving our newer Partners important guideposts for expectations. Our values also illuminate SVP’s promises to them: what they may be asked to do in service of San Diego's nonprofit community and how they might grow and learn along the way.
When we trust one another, a culture of mutual respect and accountability is created. This shared culture then translates into the ability to focus on bigger goals and higher purposes, making our Partners confident that their daily efforts in service will unfold smoothly. Trust also allows Partners to have questions along the way and the confidence in the knowledge that those questions will be heard and considered before a solution is offered.
In our collaborations with the local nonprofits we serve, our values provide clear accountability for how we operate and what we expect. Equally important, our trust of one another allows us to come to the table as peers, each with a unique ability to enrich the conversation.
SVP's choices to support our nonprofit partners with multi-year, unrestricted grants are examples of this broad-based trust. We are committed to long-term engagement, confident our dollars and time will be invested wisely, so we may learn from and strengthen one another. As our engagement with nonprofits grows deeper, we can go beneath the surface, to explore and perhaps to begin to address the root causes of some of the challenges they work daily to solve. As SVP Partners carry out their work, we move closer to our mutual goal of learning how to be more effective, all the while building a stronger San Diego.
Thank you for your trust as this effort continues.
Scott Tritt, Board Chair, Social Venture Partners, San Diego
Social Venture Partners allows the unique opportunity for caring and informed San Diegans to give in a strategic and highly skilled way. Our Partners not only donate money that is pooled into unrestricted grants for multi-year support, but they also donate their time to help nonprofits develop their infrastructure. This assistance gives nonprofits a higher level of capacity to deliver on their own missions. Both kinds of Partner contributions support each other, allowing for SVP to increase our impact by leveraging our collective skills, networks, and dollars.
Interested in joining? Email our Executive Director, Sierra Visher Kroha at sierra@sdsvp.org for more information.