Submitted by Lindsey Berry
Carmel-based The iTeam and CEO Thaddeus Rex has been helping make valuable connections and advance local nonprofit ProAct and its vision – raising over $2,000.
The fundraising event was held at Kennected in downtown Indy on Aug. 27 where ProAct Founder Derrin Slack shared the nonprofit’s model and services for social-conscious businesses by providing a platform and unique solutions for effective community engagement with Thaddeus Rex and The iTeam.
“One of the best ways to overcome problems is to help motivated people connect with better opportunities,” Rex said.
The iTeam is a network of CEOs and thinktanks who help each other grow their businesses. The goal of that growth is to help these businesses create a great impact for their owners, customers, team members and communities. The iTeam meets quarterly in an effort to support local charities and initiatives they care deeply about with advocacy, financial resources and a good dinner, during which the benefitting agencies are invited to showcase their organization.
ProAct is pioneering critical service-learning opportunities and is committed to stand in the gap for vulnerable populations. Empowering youth to actively transform their communities using businesses to help leverage social and financial capital to create a strong network of support and sustainability.
“Derrin led us all through an incredible demonstration of unconscious bias,” Rex said. “Finding someone with a vision like this, who’s figured out a sustainable nonprofit funding model by partnering with socially-conscious corporations is truly incredible. When we learned the scope of Derrin’s vision, it blew us away. It’s like iTeam for students. Grouping them together into cohorts and connecting the students with a mentor who helps teach them mindsets and skillsets for the future while the students build and execute a service project for a local nonprofit. We love ProAct’s ability to impact students and their communities while getting socially conscious corporations involved in the process.”
Rex said helping students learn how to connect with mentors, project partners, and new skillsets while improving communities together is something all the CEOs at iTeam are deeply excited to be involved with the opportunity. “We can’t wait to see it grow and scale,” Rex concluded.
The ProActive Community Model includes the following:
- Integrate the education, nonprofit and business sectors
- Cross groups of social, racial and economic boundaries to amplify youth voice and action
- Give youth a sustainable, supportive ecosystem to thrive through meaningful, human-centered service projects and social equity training
- Increase employee organizational moral and workforce stability, as employees who engage in community engagement activities feel more connected to their work and their colleagues
- Bring together diverse groups of people learning and engaging with each other intentionally and consistently
- Alleviate poverty in underserved areas and helping youth and communities to solve other issues faced in populations served
ProAct offers turn-key and solutions for businesses to optimize and enhance their corporate social responsibility and community engagement programs to innovatively invest in their employees, vulnerable youth and its communities. Partnering with a company’s HR Director, COO, Marketing Director, and/or CSR Team to customize unique programs to elevate a company’s brand in the community as a force for social good.
“Think of ProAct as an outsourced solution for any business ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ department,” Slack said. “Businesses who invest in the Proactive Community model are uniquely positioned to have a high-impact on vulnerable youth, their employees and the community organizations served together.”
Slack says he hopes to see more small and mid-sized companies begin to create corporate social responsibility programs, and prompts anyone with a desire to move away from a model of a single day per year company-wide service day and to move towards consistent, deeper engagement in smaller employee groups as well as a greater investment of time and money.
“They will have a partner in ProAct, to implement and manage that program for them,” Slack said, “and to amplify their brand in the community and maximize impact.”
For more information visit thaddeusrex.com and proactindy.org.