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"Tapping a New Breed of Philanthropists Through Venture Philanthropy"

March 16, 2010 - Program Summary

Danielle Boudreau, Director of Investor Relations at New Profit Inc., gave a fascinating presentation on venture philanthropy, using her company as a model to illustrate a very modern way for people of wealth to improve society.

New Profit, Inc. exists to help visionary social entrepreneurs and their organizations bring about widespread and transformative impact on critical social problems. 

How does New Profit fulfill its mission?  It makes a direct impact by providing financial and strategic support to selected social entrepreneurs and their organizations to help them create widespread impact.  As more and more organizations are added to the New Profit portfolio, New Profit is effectively leveraging their impact on all of these organizations to help build an environment that enables all social entrepreneurs to create widespread and transformative change.  New Profit is particularly interested in investing in organizations with powerful, broad-scale solutions to the problems effecting social mobility in America, most likely in education, public health and workforce development. 

Danielle was careful to say that not all venture philanthropists are interested in the same areas that New Profit is interested in, and not all of them work in exactly the same way.  New Profit works with investors who are passionate about creating the highest possible impact with their philanthropy.  It aggregates pools of "investments" from wealthy individuals interested in supporting organizations with potential for smart growth and high societal impact, and "invests" that capital in a select portfolio of nonprofits.  A nonprofit wishing to be considered for inclusion it New Profit's portfolio must submit itself to a careful vetting and evaluation process to make sure it is "ready" to effectively, and sustainably, use the many thousands of dollars that New Profit can invest to pursue the nonprofit's mission.

New Profit has a very focused investment strategy, and they invest a lot more than money. They spend a lot of time evaluating whether or not a nonprofit is right for their portfolio.  Once a nonprofit is accepted, a multi-year program is launched whereby the nonprofit not only receives financial help, but also many hours of financial, organizational, and professional advice about how to grow their organization in a sustainable way, so that the organization will continue to be attractive to "investors," or "venture philanthropists."