Why It Matters

We believe everyone has potential to do more

In 2017, when SVP San Antonio began our investment with Youth Code Jam (YCJ), we provided its leadership with a strategic planning process targeting several areas where we could plug in experts to help them grow their capacity and reach more students.

SVPSA Grants provided:
  • Creation of data-gathering processes/reporting for impact measurements (2018)
  • Salary for part-time executive assistant (2018-2019)
  • Donor management software (2019 - 2020)
  • Paid sponsorships of Catchafire skilled volunteer tool (2020-2023)

Expert volunteers provided:

  • Executive Director coaching
  • Website user experience updates
  • Board training
  • Government grant writing strategy

Youth Code Jam has great leadership and with extra help, they grew exponentially.

Impressive Growth in 2 years:

  • Grew its operating budget from $127,000 in 2017 to over $500,000 in 2019
  • Expanded beyond weekend events to statewide training and coding programs throughout Texas in 2020
  • Went beyond Texas to a new nationwide online coding program
In 2 Years of active involvement, Youth Code Jam's Operations Budget Grew from $127,000 to more than $500,000
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"Youth Code Jam could never have grown and become nationwide so quickly if it weren't for the emotional support and help provided by SVPSA, especially our lead partner, Billy Cox."

- Debi Pfitzenmaier, Retired Executive Director, Youth Code Jam

Catchafire

SVPSA's Catchafire portal

Skill Based Volunteers

Many of us want to give our skills to help - marketing executives, CEOs, Human Resources managers, and so on. Catchafire is an online matching system for this type of volunteer - and it is all no cost to San Antonio nonprofits. We fund their annual subscription to use it.

The return is mind-blowing.

In the 3 years of SVPSA's skills based virtual volunteer sponsorship, we collaborated with 8 additional local funders to provide this capacity building tool to 150 nonprofits in and around San Antonio. Together, we invested $365,000 in sponsorships and at the end of the 3rd year, nonprofits utilizing skilled volunteers have received $1,927,000 in value from pro-bono expert support. This is money they could put back into operations, keeping their staff and recovering from the pandemic.

$1.9M = 6X ROI

Celebrate Dyslexia saved more than $110,000 with Catchafire

"Our volunteer, Emilee, gave Celebrate Dyslexia an incredible finished product that exceeded anything I knew was possible! A magician with Excel, she designed a dashboard allowing the board and funders to see the metrics we have collected. So grateful for her time and service!" 

- Jasmin Dean, Executive Director

 

" We used Catchafire to really help us think about a new strategy for the organization and also found volunteers to help us take those first steps. We would not know where we would be without Catchafire."

- Amir Samandi, Executive Director

Students of Service saved more than $47,000 by using Catchafire volunteers