Last week the PSVP Fast Pitch coaches met to discuss their game plan for this year’s event. This week they gathered again, this time to be introduced to the presenters they will be coaching in preparation for the March 1 event. The enthusiasm in the room grew as presenters and coaches shared stories and began to schedule independent follow-up sessions as small teams (consisting of one presenter and two coaches). Now the real work begins as coaches guide the presenters through the process of condensing their program goals, stories and their ask into a three minute pitch. We have a very strong field of nonprofit professionals this year, who by March 1 will be ready to convince three judges and an audience of several hundred that their program has what it takes.

With seven weeks until PSVP’s 2012 Social Innovation Fast Pitch, the coaches kicked off the preparation process tonight with their first meeting facilitated by the lead coach, Terri Glueck of Pittsburgh’s Innovation Works. Terri gave a wonderful talk highlighting methods used for delivering a winning pitch. The 10 presenters who will go on stage on March 1 will have three minutes each to convince the judges and audience of their program’s merit. The coaches will help them every step of the way as they develop and fine-tune their stories and selling points into concise and powerful pitches.

Terri Glueck gives her presentation on effective coaching.

Coaches share success stories of past Fast Pitch events.

Coaches pair up and review finalists.

We love seeing our Partners in the spotlight! POP City has published an announcement that the PSVP Partners who own Fitting Group, a branding and advertising agency, have been awarded a Gold Pixie Award by the American Pixel Academy. The award winning piece is our very own PSVP BrilliANT video. Congratulations Fitting Group and thank you for all your hard work to promote the PSVP mission.

Mark your calendars! PSVP’s 2012 Fast Pitch event is just around the corner. On March 1st, 2012 from 5:30-8:30 pm at the Fairmont Hotel, up to 10 innovative Pittsburgh nonprofit finalists  will  compete for $30,000  in  grants. More details to follow soon.

Find out more about the Fast Pitch

PSVP is proud of the young PSVP Kids volunteers, who Pittsburgh Cares recently were paired with GTECH, for their hard work harvesting sunflowers for a urban beautification project.

To learn more about PSVP Kids, contact PSVP at info@psvp.org or 412.441.0200.

Would you like to more actively involve your children in charitably serving Pittsburgh? PSVP Kids is a joint program organized by PSVP and Pittsburgh Cares that offers an unique opportunity to help grow our next generation of philanthropists. This video showcases 6th grade PSVP Kids in action during a leadership meeting with staff of Toys For Tots.

To learn more about PSVP Kids, contact PSVP at info@psvp.org or 412.441.0200.

There are two events relating to the Jail Collaborative that you may be interested in attending on August 31:

1.  The annual meeting of the Jail Collaborative will be from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. in the Regional Enterprise Tower, 425 Sixth Avenue–31st floor. The aims of the meeting are to review last year’s accomplishments and this year’s goals, and to highlight areas for improvement. You are welcome to take the survey in advance of the meeting:http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WD8LTMC

2. A brown-bag lunch & presentation by Claire Shubik-Richards will be at 12 p.m. – 1 p.m. that day at One Smithfield Street, lower level, Homestead Grays Conference room. Her presentation, which is part of the DHS Speaker Series, is entitled, Comparison of Trends in Jail Populations. Ms. Shubik-Richards will present her research into the decade’s long climb and recent drop in Philadelphia’s local jail population. Her research (conducted for Pew Charitable Trusts) investigated what was driving the change the jail population, the fiscal impact for Philadelphia, and implications for public safety. She will compare these findings and trends to what is happening nationally and here in Allegheny County.

If you would like to attend one or both events listed above, please rsvp to Kathy McCauley at mccauleyk at gmail dotcom

As a follow-up to PSVP’s 2010 partner learning and Fall Pitch investments, we’d like to share the just-published Annual Report of the Jail Collaborative of Allegheny County.

The Jail Collaborative is a large and broad group of people, all working to improve public safety by building a better system of reentry for people coming out of the Allegheny County Jail. Early in 2010, we embarked on a planning process to learn about the problems at the root of a too-high rate of recidivism and approaches that would work. We spoke with over 300 people in the area, including family members, ex-offenders, and people from faith-based organizations. We looked at other cities for models. And we studied the research to look for the strongest evidence of which programs actually reduce criminality.  From this we developed a three-year plan for reducing recidivism.

The first year of that plan ended on June 30, 2011.  This report summarizes the progress made and the work that lies ahead.

Download PDF: Jail Collaborative Annual Report 2010-11

Take a look at Thursday’s Post Gazette Business section  http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11237/1169695-28-0.stm — our own Todd Palcic is featured for his innovative business development downtown.  

Way to go, Todd!