Thrive Accelerator Learning Sessions
Over the course of nine weeks this fall, our team participated in the Thrive Non-profit Accelerator at the Spark Mill. This course is designed to “provide an opportunity to look beyond current challenges and obstacles and plan out a direct and streamlined path forward. Organizations will spend concentrated time planning and executing real-time solutions with guided facilitation.” Our leadership team took this opportunity to plan for 2023 and talk about some of the challenges we currently face in real-time.
“Really, we were seeing so much growth and support with volunteers and in the community that we wanted to turn some focus to our mission and make sure we were growing in a smart way,” says Beyond Boundaries Director Shep Roeper.
It was important to us that our team was involved in this learning process. Each week, we invited different members of our Board of Directors to join Shep and Katie (Program Manager) along with our marketing and branding partners at TrailHead Creative to the sessions to discuss how we could implement our learnings.
“I think the Thrive sessions have given Shep and the team the opportunity to slow down, step back, and take a deeper look at the organization. They’re spending valuable time looking at what we have been doing, where we are going, what challenges we face, and what the actual root problems are that we need to solve,” says Board Member Travis Kuhn.
By taking the time to talk about and address these problems and opportunities, we hope to offer an even more robust and organized program in 2023 and beyond.
“It’s been awesome,” says Shep. “Every week we’re looking at the framework of Beyond Boundaries and challenging ourselves to evolve and find new ways to engage.”
In a sense, we’re really getting back down to the nuts and bolts of how Beyond Boundaries works internally and engages with the community every week. This perspective has shed some light on both the many incredible successes we’ve had over the last few years, as well as some areas where we’re able to develop and do some work to improve.
“I think the work at Thrive will lead to a greater focus on the participants and what Beyond Boundaries does best. This may mean a change in the types of programs we offer and how many we do, but the end result is a better experience for the participants,” Kuhn states.
As we near graduation day at Thrive, we’re also excited to announce that we will be receiving a $1000 reward for completing the program, facilitated by The Collaboratory of Virginia at UTurn.