Social Venture Partners Dallas
Non-Profit Management | Philanthropic Giving | Capacity-Building | Relationship Building
Design Challenge: How might we establish an environment of collaboration for Water Cooler tenants at Pegasus Park?
The Scenario
Case Study: The Educator Collective — OKR Report Development
The Educator Collective (TEC), a Dallas-based nonprofit dedicated to retaining exceptional teachers in the classroom, partnered with consultants to translate its three-year strategic growth plan into an actionable Objectives and Key Results (OKR) framework. Working closely with TEC’s staff and board, the project team facilitated a series of collaborative sessions to clarify priorities, define measurable outcomes, and align operational activities with long-term goals.
The resulting OKR Report outlined clear targets for network expansion, educator wellbeing, earned revenue, and regional scale—positioning TEC to double its educator network and establish itself as the premier professional community for Dallas-area teachers. By integrating strategic focus with a culture of accountability, the OKR process provided TEC with a practical roadmap for tracking progress and communicating impact across its team and stakeholders.
Case Study: Building an In-House Therapy Program for Bryan’s House in Partnership with Trigger’s Toys
Through Social Venture Partners (SVP) Dallas, Trigger’s Toys engaged in an appreciative inquiry process with Bryan’s House to explore a sustainable partnership addressing gaps in therapy access for medically fragile children. The collaboration identified a clear opportunity: while many children at Bryan’s House required speech, occupational, and physical therapy, existing resources and coordination systems could not meet the full scope of need.
Working together, the teams developed a business plan and implementation model for a comprehensive in-house therapy program, integrating multiple therapy modalities and parent engagement strategies such as filial therapy. The plan outlined a phased approach—first expanding therapy access to unserved children, then building data and diagnostic systems, and ultimately creating transition supports for families using external providers.
In addition to service delivery design, the partnership produced a marketing and sustainability framework encompassing digital outreach, donor engagement, and collective impact strategies. This work established a shared vision between Trigger’s Toys and Bryan’s House: to deliver holistic, family-centered care that enhances wellbeing and long-term outcomes for children with complex medical needs.
Case Study: Strengthening Governance and Staff Capacity for Primos Dallas
In 2024, Primos Dallas—a mentoring nonprofit rooted in the Pleasant Grove community—partnered with Social Venture Partners (SVP) Dallas to strengthen its organizational foundation during a period of rapid growth. Through a comprehensive Board and Staff Development Project, SVP Dallas consultants worked alongside Primos’s leadership to evaluate governance practices, clarify staff needs, and create systems to sustain the organization’s expansion.
The project began with stakeholder interviews involving board members, staff, parents, mentors, and funders, revealing both the organization’s deep community trust and key growth challenges: limited formal processes, staff capacity gaps, and an overreliance on volunteers. From this analysis, the SVP team produced actionable recommendations, including a streamlined board committee structure, an annual planning calendar, and a staff development framework to guide phased hiring and role definition.
Additional deliverables included new policies and procedures for board governance and volunteer engagement, as well as a 360° Executive Director evaluation model to strengthen accountability and leadership development.
Through this partnership, Primos Dallas gained the structure and tools needed to balance its grassroots energy with sustainable operations—positioning the organization to continue empowering Latino youth and families in Pleasant Grove with long-term impact.
The Prototype: Water Cooler Community LinkedIn Group
A digital community platform emerged as a promising solution that management could provide its tenants. We sought existing platforms that could seamlessly integrate into community members’ professional experience. We also were working with time and budgetary constraints from our client.
Ultimately, we utilized LinkedIn as our platform because our audience was professional facing and it was highly probable that most organizations and community members already had profiles, eliminating a key hurdle of account creation.
Our prototype consisted of two phases: digital and in-person. Our prototype focused on answering three primary questions:
Will people join?
Will it serve a baseline need to share information?
Will people use it to create new connections in person without nudges or facilitation?
We launched the LinkedIn group by promoting it across multiple communication channels throughout the Water Cooler.
We designed and tested content that aligned with what we heard in our initial community survey. Eventually, community members even posted their own organic content about upcoming organizational events.
01 Digital Prototype
After we launched the digital phase and started to see participation, we were curious whether this new digital experience could be leveraged to inspire in-person connections and relationship building. So, we added to our prototype by hosting an in-person Water Cooler Community Meet Up.
We promoted the Water Cooler Community Meet Up exclusively through the LinkedIn Group and hosted it on campus on a Tuesday morning.
While we had no attendees, we realized there were still learnings to carry forward:
Day of week and time of day are critical to driving high attendance
The Water Cooler needs to establish norms around programming expectations to increase participation over time
02 In-Person Prototype
