Jason Coleman:
SVP Partner and Community Collaborator
Jason Coleman, executive director and co-founder of one of our first community partners, Project SYNCERE, recently decided to further build his relationship with SVP Chicago by becoming one of our partners! We met with Jason to learn more about his work with SVP as a community partner, and how becoming an SVP partner will help continue to develop his organization.
What is your organization and what work do you do in Chicago?
Project SYNCERE is an educational nonprofit organization focused on getting more young people excited and engaged in the engineering fields. We started back in 2008 to try and close the diversity gap within the STEM fields. Coming from an engineering background myself, I saw the lack of diversity within the engineering sector first-hand and decided change was necessary. In 2008, two friends and I decided to take a leap of faith and launched Project SYNCERE to ensure young people who come from communities such as I do have the opportunities to engage in engineering early on and can develop the crucial skills, knowledge, and confidence that is critical for them to be successful within those fields.
What has your support from SVP looked like as a community partner?
My support from SVP has really been crucial to Project SYNCERE’s growth over the years. We partnered with SVP early on during the start of our organization when we were new to the nonprofit sector. For us, partnering with SVP during that time provided a lot of the foundation that we really needed to thrive as a young nonprofit organization. Coming in from the corporate sector, we didn’t really know how nonprofits operated. Partnering with SVP allowed us to gain an understanding around fundraising, board development, and think about how to grow our organization. It also provided a lot of the tools that we needed and still use today to ensure our work continues and remains sustainable within the field.
SVP really took me and others in the organization on as mentees to help us think more broadly about the work that we are doing. The partners also did a lot of work with us around our board development and strategic plan to think about what our organization needed to look like in three years, and then provided the road map to help us get there.
Why did you decide to become an SVP partner?
Becoming a partner at SVP has allowed my experience with this amazing organization to come full circle. I first met SVP at our infancy stage as an organization, but also at a stage when SVP was first getting started in Chicago. The resources and experiences that were provided to us then has allowed Project SYNCERE to grow tremendously. As someone who is fully committed to making Chicago stronger, I’m excited about the opportunity to serve as a partner with SVP to pay it forward to others in the nonprofit space as well.
What is unique about being both an executive director of a nonprofit that SVP collaborates with AND an SVP partner? What opportunities do you see coming from this for you and your organization?
Being an executive director of a nonprofit that SVP collaborates with, and an SVP partner provides me with a unique perspective on how the “other side” operates. I think being in this role allows me to better advocate for the nonprofits that SVP is working with because a lot of the other partners come from a corporate viewpoint and may not fully understand the challenges of operating a nonprofit organization. I also think it provides me personally an opportunity to grow and understand how and why decisions may be made to support one organization over another.
I enjoy being able to learn from others and see the various perspectives and thoughts that others have around issues being discussed. Because I am always “in it” it can be hard to see an outside perspective on the issues, but I value the opportunity to be able to step back and see the issues from a different perspective. As a partner in SVP, I look forward to also being able to meet and network with the other partners. SVP is composed of individuals from a variety of backgrounds who are all passionate about making an impact on Chicago. I look forward to seeing how Project SYNCERE may be able to work with some of the partners as well to help increase our impact.
What are three fun facts about yourself?
I love to fish and be outdoors. During the summer, you can often find me driving around with my fishing gear looking for a nearby watering hole.
I’m always tinkering and building things in my spare time. So much so, that my son never thinks anything is broken as he believes his dad can fix anything.
Although I’m not a fan of heights, I once went “canyoning” in the Swiss Alps.
