Welcome…

Welcome to the Social Velocity website, I’m glad you’re here. I’m very passionate about using innovative thinking to transform nonprofits, their boards, their donors and ultimately the communities they serve. This is exactly what I set out to do when I created Social Velocity in October of 2008.

After a 15-year career in the nonprofit sector (see my bio), working my way up through nonprofit organizations large and small and around the country, I saw the same vicious cycle over and over again. Nonprofits were trying to achieve more with fewer resources, wrangling ineffective boards, putting out fires instead of planning for growth, and chasing low-return fundraising activities. All resulting in less social change, more frustration, diminishing returns.

While nonprofit leaders struggle in this vicious cycle, three trends are emerging with the potential to completely transform the nonprofit sector:

1. Increasing Challenges: The problems nonprofits are working to fix are growing. As a nation, we see increasing poverty, hunger and homelessness, deteriorating public schools, unaffordable healthcare, threatening climate change, and mounting childhood obesity, to name a few.

 

2. New Approaches: There is tremendous energy, excitement and ideas around the growing social innovation movement, where the normal lines between government, nonprofit and private sectors are blurring and new models for creating social change are emerging. But because the nonprofit sector was working on social change before it became cool, they could be left behind if they don’t adapt to and embrace these trends.

 

3. Lack of Resources for Smaller Nonprofits: There is growing interest, among philanthropists and policy makers, in the top 20% of nonprofits, those with the most money and other resources. Organizations like Teach for America, College Summit and KIPP are achieving amazing results, attracting resources and attention. As a result, they are enjoying tremendous growth and sustainability. But they are the lucky ones. Small and medium nonprofits are being left behind.

In order for the vast majority of nonprofit organizations, who are on the frontlines of the growing problems facing our country, to grow their impact and become more sustainable, they need help. If these nonprofits could become more strategic, finance instead of fundraise their social impact, get their boards engaged and invested, build their organizations, and articulate the value they provide, the nonprofit sector could be transformed. And ultimately the critical solutions they provide our society could spread far and wide.

That is why I created Social Velocity. To help those nonprofit organizations who are solving problems do so better, bigger, more effectively, and more sustainably. There is a tremendous opportunity to remake, rework and re-envision our great nonprofit sector.

And that’s what we are doing at Social Velocity. We are giving nonprofit staff, board members and donors the tools, skills, experience and insight to grow their solutions, use their limited resources more effectively, and sustainably finance their social impact. We do this as a consulting firm that works with a nonprofit to create a growth or strategic plan, determine how to bring more money in the door, get their board engaged and invested, or secure capital to build and grow their organization. The organizations we leave behind are more strategic, more sustainable, more engaged, more invested and above all, creating more social impact.

I invite you to learn more about Social Velocity. Check out our client case studies to see how we transform nonprofits and explore our consulting services to see how we could work with your organization. On our Tools page you can download step-by-step guides, tip sheets, webinars and white papers to get your organization moving in a new direction. And you can read about new ideas and approaches at our blog, in our monthly e-newsletter (sign up at the top of the page), on our Facebook site and via our Twitter feed. If you find our approach intriguing, and you’d like to learn more, contact us at info@socialvelocity.net.

There is a better way. We’d like to help you find it.

Sincerely,

Nell Edgington
President, Social Velocity
nell@socialvelocity.net