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THRIVE Participant Perspective: Yes Balloon/CSz Richmond Theater
Our Fourth Cohort of THRIVE: An Accelerator for Social Good, facilitated with our partners at The Spark Mill, began in early September. Each week, we'll bring you the perspective of a participating nonprofit and share a little about their organization.
About Yes Balloon/CSz Richmond Theater:
Yes Balloon is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity that is the driving force behind CSz Richmond Theater - Home of ComedySportz®. CSz Richmond Theater has been delighting audiences in the River City since 1996. In 2017, we founded Yes Balloon to further empower our theater to do even more of the Good Stuff for our community that drives us to do what we do.
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What are you hoping to get out of this program?
THRIVE Accelerator is providing the Yes Balloon team with a dedicated space for a focused and guided conversation, and the time necessary to identify, confront, and problem solve our biggest organizational challenges - both internally and externally. With the support of our mentors, our team is developing a strategic roadmap to grow our theater while understanding and addressing the root causes of our deepest challenges.
What did you learn or feel spoke to you about today?
In this week’s session, our team discussed Yes Balloon’s community impact and how to best demonstrate it through our mission statement, core values, and vision statement. Our discussions provided refreshing perspectives from multiple stakeholders, helping us to collectively determine our theater’s purpose and growth objectives.
Tell us about your experience in the program.
THRIVE has provided an excellent opportunity for us to engage board members, staff, and volunteers and to actually discuss our organization instead of simply focusing on the day-to-day tasks that keep our theater’s doors open. This has been an incredible revision of our purpose and understanding of our identity in the community.
How do you see this applying to your organization?
THRIVE has already been a unifying experience for our team. From learning the steps involved in narrowing down a concept, identifying core values, and avoiding pitfalls, to addressing issues while also remaining in a forward motion on a limited budget, we’re thinking it through together and working through the steps we’ve learned. We’ve been able to redefine our mission and we’re looking forward to taking the next steps - developing awareness, support, and a strategic plan to better define who we are, what we do, and what we hope to achieve.
Are you interested in applying for THRIVE Cohort 5? Complete our interest form today!
The THRIVE accelerator program provides an opportunity for nonprofits to look beyond current challenges and obstacles and plan out a direct and streamlined path forward. Organizations will tackle a specific hurdle they want to clear to get to the next level of impact with the community and will spend concentrated time with staff and board planning and executing real-time solutions with guided facilitation. We will utilize accelerator techniques to build a cohort-responsive program.
THRIVE was created through collaboration between The Collaboratory of Virginia and The Spark Mill.