Empowering Nonprofits to Share Their Stories: Behind the Scenes of Social Venture Partners Fast Pitch with Director Brittany Battle

This week, we’re going to speak with Brittany Battle. She’s the director of the Social Venture Partners Fast Pitch, and they just recently held their main event at UArizona. That 2023 cohort of eight local nonprofits are currently engaged in some deep dive learning to be even more impactful in our community. We’ll get the story in just a moment.

Today is May 14th, my name is Tom Heath and you’re listening to “Life Along the Streetcar”.

Each and every Sunday our focus is on Social, Cultural and Economic impacts in Tucson’s Urban Core and we shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about. From A Mountain to the U of A and all stops in between. You get the inside track- right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on DowntownRadio.org- we’re also available on your iPhone or Android using our very own Downtown Radio app. Reach us by email [email protected] — interact with us on Facebook at LifeAlongTheStreetcar and follow us on Twitter @StreetcarLife

Transcript (Unedited)

Tom Heath

Good morning. It’s a beautiful sunny in the old Pueblo and you’re listening to KT DT Tucson. Thank you for spending a part of your brunch hour with us on your downtown Tucson community sponsored rock and roll radio station.

Tom Heath

This week, we’re going to speak with Brittany Battle. She’s the director of the Social Venture Partners Fast Pitch, and they just recently held their main event at UArizona. That 2023 cohort of eight local nonprofits are currently engaged in some deep dive learning to be even more impactful in our community. We’ll get the story in just a moment.

Tom Heath

Today is May 14, 2023. My name is Tom Heath and you are listening to life along the streetcar. Each and every Sunday, we focus on social, cultural and economic impacts in Tucson’s urban core. We shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about, from a mountain to the University of Arizona and all stops in between. You get the inside track right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on downtownradio.org. We’re also available

Tom Heath

on your iPhone or Android. If you head over to the respective App stores and get the Downtownradio Tucson app, then you’ll be with us wherever you go. And if you want to get with us on the show, we can interact with you on Facebook and Instagram, Life Along the Streetcar. And then we also have our website with information on our book, past episodes, and even a little contact button there. And that is lifealongthestreetcar.org. Of course, you can listen to our podcast on all kinds of platforms spotify, itunes and you could also just simply ask your smart speaker to play the Life Along the Streetcar podcast, what is the second Sunday in May, which means it is Mother’s Day. So happy Mother’s Day to my mother and to all of the mothers out there. And I always think about on this day, not just the biological mothers, but those that have had an impact in our lives. And on this show, we’ve been very fortunate to feature a lot of women who have been very powerful forces here in Tucson. Some as mothers

Tom Heath

and some as entrepreneurs, developers, and also just all around strong leaders. So if you ever want to learn more about those, head over to our website, lifelongthstreetcar.org. You can look up stories about CL Peterson, Louise Fukar Marshall, the Flynn family of Monica Flynn, and now Carlota Flores. Taking that on. And you have the modern versions of some of these strong and powerful people like Randy Dorman in the development world, just really fascinating women shaping Tucson. And on Mother’s Day, I thought we’d give a shout out to those. And you can listen to all those past podcasts or shows on the website Lifealongthstreetcar.org. And today’s show features another woman here in Tucson making a difference. And her name is Brittany Battle. She is the director of the Social Venture Partners Fast Pitch Competition, which I learned is much more of a collaborative long term training session than just simply a one time pitch competition. But they just recently had their main event at the

Tom Heath

U of A campus, and I wanted to learn more. So I got connected to her through a mutual friend, Enrique El Donna, who’s been on the show a few times, and he connected me with Brittany. I had a chance to talk to her by phone earlier in the week and got the really interesting story behind Social Venture Partners and the Fast Pitch Program. Today we are joined by the perfectly named, I think, Brittany Battle, as she oversees a competition of sorts that pits nonprofits against each other. Of course, I’m taking a little bit of liberties with that, but the Social Venture Partners Fast Pitch Competition, it’s an annual event happening since 2015. Brittany, welcome to the show.

Brittany Battle

Good morning. Thank you, Tom. Thanks for having me.

Tom Heath

Of course, because it’s a competition, I kind of put that out there as sort of a battle between these organizations. But I think Fast Pitch is more of a collaborative effort. Am I right in that?

Brittany Battle

You are absolutely right. We really believe in camaraderie over competition because the cohort we bring in every year really comes together united in their efforts to support Southern Arizona and those that live here. So while it does have a fun approach, we really believe that what we’re doing is strengthening our entire community by directing resources into the nonprofits that are on the front line of building community change right here.

Tom Heath

So let’s take a step back and just sort of explain what we’re talking about. The fast pitch program. It’s an annual event that involves months of training and then culminates with a big event, which you just recently had here, I think, at the end of March, right?

Brittany Battle

Absolutely. We have a big event in the end of March each year. And the way this process works, fast Pitch is it’s an annual training program for nonprofit organizations, and it’s specifically designed to help them increase their fundraising and messaging skills. And it’s free to nonprofit organizations over the course of five months, they learn the art of storytelling and pitch development. They learn the importance of building relationships with donors and building those connections, and then they learn the power of a really good marketing strategy. And the centerpiece of this training program is what we call the Fast Pitch main event. And this is an incredible night where eight nonprofit organizations, they showcase their three minute Fast Pitches so audience members can come in person. We had our event at the University of Arizona this year, but we also have a global audience that tunes in to listen and to hear stories and to hear about the critical issues that are happening in our community.

Brittany Battle

And then they realize where they fit in and how they can give back and how they can support these organizations. So it’s extremely powerful. We’ve heard people say this is the event that stirs their soul. And it really does.

Tom Heath

The five months of training for these eight organizations, they have three minutes to put all that together. But really, that’s designed to give them a lifetime of skill sets to really go out and find the resources and the people they need to support the mission that they’re doing.

Brittany Battle

That’s right. It is five months. The first part of it is pitch development and then, of course, that main event. And then it continues on to what we call donor connections and marketing strategies so that they can learn really critical skills, not only as nonprofit leaders who move about the world and may move about different career paths, but also we really help the entire organization learn these skills. So we allow them to bring in colleagues in the second part of our training so that their whole organization is getting these skills, so that people within the work that they do can also take these skills with them and learn about to communicate, share their mission, their impact, and how to be better.

Tom Heath

Fundraisers overall, if I remember correctly and I don’t have my notes right in front of me, but as I was doing a little research, the fast pitch competition, the main event itself, there was like $100,000 of grants and equivalents available for these eight groups to kind of go after.

Brittany Battle

Yes. Even as I hear you say that, I get excited. And I know this. This year we gave out over $208,000. And I want to be clear that that number is growing day to day because we’re still in our training for 2023 and we’re still hearing about great donations and support that is getting directed to the class currently. But the way this broke down for 2023 is we had $121,000 in on stage awards, and those are sponsored awards selected by the organizations that sponsored each award. We had a $40,000 matching grant that was sponsored by the Connie Hillman Family Foundation. And that night at the end of March, right here in 2023, our community that was there in the audience and around the world donated $47,000 to our Cohort. So really just incredible impact. And while we know that there is tremendous benefits in the financial contributions, we continually hear about the non financial support that nonprofits receive, which can be equally impactful, which is they receive new board members, they get

Brittany Battle

new volunteers, they find that they have greater visibility in the community, that those that need their services are finding them quicker. They are really building a greater community to support their mission and strengthen their mission. So it is a win win.

Tom Heath

Yeah, absolutely. That’s a very powerful evening for any organization to go through, let alone eight. Where are we in the Cohort then? So the main event is not the end of the program. So you said they’re still in the 2023 cohort is still working with in the five month program.

Brittany Battle

That’s right. So in the past, we began in 2015. In the past it looked like this organizations would come in, they would learn pitch development, the art of storytelling, and we would have our main event. It was a beautiful community event. And then that was the end of our program. And while that served us really well from 2015 to about 2021, we continually heard from nonprofits that they felt like they wanted more. This big pitch showcase would happen, all this awareness and visibility and support would come in. But they were longing for more training, more education, more support. And so we listened. That’s a big part of what we do at SVP is we really deeply listen to what the nonprofit organizations need, and we’re consistently evolving with those needs. And so in 2021, we innovated and we extended our training program, which now includes Donor Connections, which is really helping organizations and nonprofit leaders connect, come together. We teach our nonprofit leaders how to make major

Brittany Battle

gift asks so they get really comfortable with understanding the art of making asks and building relationships. And then we wrap up the training program with what we call marketing strategy. And so this is taking everything that they’ve learned so far and helping them build a strategy for telling their story and what they do and how they can create impact in the community. So right now, we just wrapped up Donor Connections. We had the Alexander careo consulting team, experts in fundraising, come in and work with us and to teach our nonprofit leaders how to make major gift asks. And we brought donors together in a training exercise where they got to make asks to donors and give feedback and get feedback. Really powerful training. And now we’re about to move into marketing strategy. Really excited about this. We’re going to have Arizona Public Media come in and teach our marketing strategy portion of our training. So it’s really a three segment training program, if you will, pitch development

Brittany Battle

that includes practice sessions where we really put the lights, the camera action right on them so that they get comfortable on stage. We have that big main event that we’ve been talking about. Then we move into Donor Connections and then we wrap it up with Marketing strategy.

Tom Heath

We’ll be back to the second half of our interview with Brittany Battle, the Fast Pitch director from Social Venture Partners. But first, I want to remind you that you’re listening to Life Along the Streetcar on Downtown Radio 99.1 FM and streaming on Downtownradio.org.

Tom Heath

Welcome back and the lovely voice you just heard of Paleo Dave. You can hear him every day, Monday through Friday at 07:00 a.m.. He is my morning coffee. I get to wake up listening to the Scrambled Sunrise, and I do enjoy his show, because not only is it good music, he has some very good ramblings, especially when he’s under or over caffeinated. When he’s perfectly caffeinated, it’s a good show, but when he’s overly or under caffeinated, it’s a great show. All right, well, back to our show. We’re in the middle of our interview with Brittany Battle, and we’ve been talking a lot about the Fast Pitch program that she is the director of, and it is a subset of the Social Venture Partners here in Tucson. I wanted to get more information on that and what they do in our community and actually learning myself that they do this around the globe. And you threw out some initials in there, SVP, because Fast Pitch is part of the Social Venture Partners. Can you give us kind of that brief overview of

Tom Heath

that organization? Because Fast Pitch is just part of what SVP does, correct?

Brittany Battle

Yes, and thank you for expanding that question and helping your audience understand. So SVP is Social Venture Partners, and we are a network of engaged philanthropists really dedicated to building the strength and capacity of nonprofit organizations right here in Southern Arizona. And we do this by investing in collaborative solutions. We connect and engage individuals to help them make their greatest impact, and we fund and strengthen nonprofits so that they can reach that next level of support for their mission. And like I mentioned before, we really listen to nonprofits. We are actively involved in the nonprofit community to determine what it is they need and how we can help support them. And at the end of the day, we really believe in trust based philanthropy. And what this means is we provide unrestricted grant funding so that nonprofits can use it wherever they want, however they need. We trust them to utilize their resources in a way that is impactful to their mission.

Tom Heath

I’ve worked on a few different nonprofits, and having unrestricted funds means so much to an organization because having any funds is important. But when some of those funds are tied to specific aspects of your operation, it kind of limits what you can do. So the unrestricted is extremely important.

Brittany Battle

It’s so important. And that’s one of the things we love to do at SVP, is we’re not only supporting the nonprofit community and helping educate, train, provide resources, but we are the bridge between philanthropy and nonprofit. So a lot of my passion, both personally and professionally, is learning how to work with donors foundations to help them understand how important this trust based philanthropy is and how moving forward in that direction really will strengthen Southern Arizona because nonprofits are on the front line. They’re doing the work. They’re out there making a difference, and those unrestricted funds really matter.

Tom Heath

And as social venture partners. Is this a Tucson organization? Is it a national organization?

Brittany Battle

This is a global organization. It was founded in Seattle by a gentleman named Paul Brainerd, who sold his company Adobe and could have just sailed around the world in a yacht, comfortably in retirement, but decided he wanted to do more engaged philanthropy. And so he started SVP in Seattle in the it was uniquely designed right there in Seattle to help support their community, and then it took off. So we now have nine countries that have SVPs with over 40 affiliates, and we all share resources, and we are a global network of engaged philanthropists. SVP Tucson specifically funds and supports organizations right here in our backyard. So it’s a really beautiful system where we’re a global network, but each of us in our own affiliate network are really supporting the nonprofits within their region.

Tom Heath

Yeah, that makes sense then, because you mentioned at the main event, you got a global audience. So that’s recognition of SVP Tucson is focusing on the Tucson organizations, but you have a global audience of individual philanthropists that might want to support something happening here in Tucson.

Brittany Battle

We do, and people really care about what’s happening in Southern Arizona. And so as they’re tuning in around the world, they’re learning about the critical issues that are in our community, and they’re funding nonprofits that are helping support those issues. And so every year, we have audience members from Southern America, Asia, all over the world tuning in to see what is happening right here in Southern Arizona.

Tom Heath

And you said your personal and professional passions sort of aligned with this. How did you end up as the Fast Pitch director?

Brittany Battle

Oh, I love that question because I love being the Fast Pitch director so much. As a matter of fact, someone called me Mrs. Fast Pitch the other day, and it melted my heart. I felt so honored. I just love it. I’ve always been working in nonprofits, and I’ve always been an eternal optimist, but someone who really liked to challenge what’s possible. I’m a community connector, and I love to bring people together. So I found Social Venture Partners about three years ago, and I just had to be a part of it. I just knew that this was my next move, to just be part of an organization that cared so deeply about nonprofits, nonprofit leaders, and creating community level change, because that’s what we believe in at Social Venture Partners, all of us, our team, we come together, we’re ready to take on the challenges. We’re ready to support and put our nonprofit sector first and foremost. So when I found Social Venture Partners, it felt like I found my purpose, my path. So I’m really blessed in that

Brittany Battle

way.

Tom Heath

Wow. I want to thank you for your time today. It’s Brittany Battle, the director of the Fast Pitch competition, which I have now learned is a part of the social venture partners effort. And they are a chapter of a global effort to connect philanthropists, nonprofits, and just really strengthen communities through this collaboration. Wow, that’s a pretty impressive stuff we do here in Tucson.

Brittany Battle

It is. And I know that you know the power of helping people share their stories in authentic and impactful ways, and we’re lucky to do this, Tom. And I know that you’re doing it each radio show you have, you’re helping people share their work, their heart, their purpose. Just a big thank you to you and for your audience that’s listening today, who really cares about the city and the efforts that are being made right here. So thank you.

Tom Heath

Well, I strive on every show to end with a compliment of me. So since we’ve done that, I think we will wrap up today. But, Brittany, I really appreciate your time for this interview.

Brittany Battle

Thank you. You as well.

Tom Heath

That was Brittany Battle, the director of the Fast Pitch Program with Social Venture Partners here in Tucson, and very complimentary of what we do on the show. But honestly, I think all of you that have listened for a while know that we’re just fortunate enough to talk to really wonderful people and share their stories. My name is Tom Heath, and you’re listening to Life Along the street car on downtown radio, 99.1 FM and streaming on downtownradio.org.

Tom Heath

Thank you very much. Enjoy your evening. Bye bye. Well, Brother Mac, another one of our fabulous volunteer DJs putting out just quality programming seven days a week. Sunday is a little bit of an alternative music day. We also have the talk shows, so we’ve got Life Along the Streetcar, which is followed in just a few minutes here by Ted Prazelski words and work as he interviews members of the labor and the labor movement. And he also interviews writers at the top of the hour, ty Logan with Heavy Mental, and then back into some fabulous music to round out the day. And of course, our Sundays start with I know I’m a little biased, but I think Sundays just I love our lineup because Mr. Nature little leaf. Radio 07:00 a.m. I dare you to listen to that show and not just be in a good mood. He’s just wonderful programming for the entire family. I often will take my dog for a walk at 07:00 a.m. And then we’ll walk for an hour or so and I call it Mr. Nature’s walk with my pup. And then the art of

Tom Heath

easing, which leads us precedes us immediately with Ben DJ Bank. They’re just doing a great job of easing you into a Sunday morning or easing you onto a couch so that you don’t do anything for the rest of a Sunday, which is cool too. And then if you head over to our website Life Along, I’m sorry, the Downtown Radio website, downtownradio.org then you’ll see all of the programming throughout the week. We have a rock mix pretty much the rest of the week except for Sunday. So Monday through Saturday there is a rock mix. And hard to pick a day without a fabulous show. Mondays, you got Jim and Dave’s roadside rest stop. This is on at 05:00 on Mondays. Love this show. They’re musicians, they’re so knowledgeable about what they talk about as all of our DJs are. And you know, this shows playing songs, you know, from all the way back to the 60s but, but recent releases as well, you know, and they they’ve got that unique way to find these undiscovered artists or, or these artists that have been playing

Tom Heath

for years that just haven’t made the mainstream and it’s super exciting. And that’s just one example. Brother Mock, he does the club Crawl, which we’ve talked about. You get to hear about all these fantastic bands coming to Tucson in the coming week and he also does the music invasion. Spends a lot of time Brother Mock does, building out his programming. Arizona four one one. He’s all local music, all Arizona music, man. And look, I could name every show on the station because they’re all fabulous and they’re all done by really dedicated and talented volunteers. If you’re interested in learning more, head over to Downtownradio.org, check out the schedule. There’s an opportunity to purchase some merch there. And also there’s a donate button. Because we are a volunteer run radio station. Everyone that manages the logistics and the equipment, all of the DJs, the show hosts, all are volunteers. So it’s a labor of love and that means we need you to show a little love with the dollars here and

Tom Heath

there and set up a donation. Ideally you’d set up a recurring donation so every month we know what we can count on for budgeting purposes. But even a single one time donation is helpful. Please consider that when you’re heading over there to check out all the cool programming. Hit the donate button now. Here on our show, we’re always taking requests for new stories. The bulk of our show is what we call a community conversation where we’re trying to engage Tucson to talk about Tucson and the urban core. And we do that by sharing stories and hidden gems that are brought to us. Sometimes we find them, sometimes we discover them and sometimes they are discovered for us. If you ever have one of those shows, one of those topics, best ways to tag us on Facebook or Instagram and connect us that way. You can also head over to our web page, lifelongthstreetcar.org. There’s a contact button there. If you hit that, you can fill in some details about what you would like us to talk about or just get

Tom Heath

in touch with you. And you can always email us. Our email address is [email protected] and always excited to learn more about our community because we’re approaching here our six year anniversary. We haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s happening here in the urban core. But thank you to Brittany battle of the social venture partners. Pitch fast, pitch program. We’re honor of her going to leave you with a little music today from the Beat generation. This is a song off of a 2015 album and I love the name of the album. It’s called the Beatnik Lounge. Way out. Retro Lounge grooves. And you’re listening to Venture Capital. My name is Tom Heath. I hope you have a great week and tune in next Sunday for more life along the streetcar.