It4Causes is excited to highlight Keith Reynolds. Keith is one of the co-founders of Synapse Hubs, a networking platform that seeks to create connections between small businesses and nonprofit organizations. We had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Keith and interview him on the amazing work that he is accomplishing in Richmond.
Keith never dreamed that he would end up where he is now; in truth, Synapse was a bit of a happy accident for him. After working ten years for BB&T, Keith was pushed into working in the business networking field. Keith discovered that this network held very valuable information and resources for his clients, and as result he set out to connect his clientele with the businesses that best reflected their needs. However, Keith, who has always enjoyed customer service, was never comfortable with being a salesman. He desired to do more than perform a selling method, but essentially wanted to find a way to use networking as a tool to not only celebrate the people that he was serving but also to potentially benefit them.
Therefore in December 2011 , Keith quit his job with no plan or itinerary but simply guided by his desire to pay it forward with the use of networking.
Keith started out with networking between corporate business, traveling daily to host meetings between different corporations in order to allow them to connect and work with each other. During his travels, Keith encountered a nonprofit at one of his meetings, and was completely blown away at the passionate work that they were doing. However, Keith also recognized that there was a misconstrued thinking describing nonprofit as charities that only needed money all the time. He thought, this mindset devalues what nonprofits actually bring to the community. In today’s culture, networking has been defined as sales platform, and the main purpose is to sale my product. Keith believes the true purpose of networking is for it to be a development resource tool for finding quality people in the community that do a variety of different work, whom you can trust and rely upon.
Keith decided to set out and equip small business and nonprofits with a community in order to introduce a new flow of support. This idea became the starting point for what is now known today as Synapse Hubs. The two main concepts for Synapse are to connect with nonprofits and small businesses, and become a resource hub for all members. Keith visions Synapse to be very supportive mechanism for passionate people of the nonprofit and small business community that allows them to cultivate valuable relations in the business community in order to produce a shared value for the nonprofit sector. In the end, Synapse would be able to create opportunities that could create introductions that could create greatness. Now, Synapse has been running for close to 3 years, has dozens of “hubs” meeting in RVA and Charlottesville, and has hundreds of members who are actively using the network to help the community while also growing their businesses. Keith hopes in the future that Synapse will be able to be a part of a variety of markets around the country in order to redefine our concept of networking, collaboration, and working with others.
Keith has done amazing work for a numerous amount of nonprofits and it is amazing to see his work continuing to growing. The ability to network with so many nonprofit partners was key to IT4Causes early success, and we are happy and thankful to know and partner with Keith Reynolds. To experience Synapse for yourself, contact Keith Reynolds or visit https://www.facebook.com/Synapsehubs/ and tell them IT4Causes sent you!