SocialVentureBank

ISSUE: The issue is how to establish what Barbara has called a "social venture bank" that could provide seed funding and planning support to help new, long-term, sustainable collaborations get off the ground.

CONVENER(S): Barbara Weaver Smith http://www.smithweaversmith.com

PARTICIPANTS: Phil Cubeta pcubeta@newyorklife.com Laure Dillon laure@pixi.com Clare Butterfield clare@faithinplace.org Lenore Ealy lenoree@thinkitecture.com Drake Zimmerman drake.zimmerman@verizon.net Julie Evans motivate@ mind.net Dan Bassill tutormentor2@earthlink.net Barbara Weaver Smith bsmith@smithweaversmith.com

SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION, KEY POINTS, CONCLUSIONS, ACTIONS:

Extensive and energized discussion trying to discover, collectively and individually, what IS the concept, why might it be important, who would care, and how could it happen.

Lots of conversation about the "social venture" venture language and whether it helps or hinders our mutual understanding. Barbara uses "social venture" to mean any big collaborative project involving many partners, intended to be socially beneficial and economically sustainable. A social venture may ultimately become a permanent collaborative partnership, a profit-making enterprise, and/or a new organization. Most important to Barbara is how to fund the planning phases.

We looked at the business incubator model and how it might work. We discussed whether the "investors" would get a financial return on investment or a social ROI or both. Both Phil and Drake emphasized the importance of a rigorous plan designed to appeal to entrepreneurial investors and a clear delineation of how the money would flow. Phil explained that we were coming at the issues from both supply side and demand side and that was confounding our discussion.

Julie and Laure offered great examples of grassroots organizing and collaborations to seek funding. Lenore helped to frame the questions strategically.

Clare offered a test case of her desire to help her organization create a for-profit entity (e.g. a bakery) that would provide a regular stream of profit to support the nonprofit's mission. Clare would need both financial support and entrepreneurial expertise--"just money" is not enough although money combined with the art of planning, designing, business modeling, and implementation assistance would be the way to go.

Dan gave us great examples of how Tutor Mentor aggregates information and connects donors to specific community needs and agencies that address those needs. Especially helpful was his advice as to how the "convenor" gets paid in the equation.

Lenore managed the flip chart. Our first page notes read as follows:

Social Venture Bank -- what is it? A response to the conservatism of established philanthropy (we discussed that but the group seemed to agree that many mainstream foundations, including community fundations, are risk-averse in their grantmaking. Ventures = risk. Ergo, where is the "deal flow market" where people with great social venture ideas can go for help in developing their business model and plan?

We listed some possiblities:

incubators networks -- what Julie calls an "augmented social network" clusters/diffusion differences between putting funds in an endowment paying out only 5% and putting an equal amount of funding into a "revolving fund" that could keep on generating new social ventures PRI--program-related investment is an option the audience for this kind of idea is an entrepreneur who wants to make his/her philanthropy more effective -- "efficacy"

On our second flip chart page, we attempted to "follow the money" from a "bank" (fund of some kind) through an "incubator" (of social ventures) to the ventures themselves--projects, programs, business etc. for "social good" [they may or may not "earn profit" but they would be economically sustainable through multiple income streams.

Lenore discussed the "art" or "process" of assisting the community visionaries in bring big ideas to fruition. It includes the following: angel investors scouts/analysts conveners space tools (office equipment, webspace, email capacity etc.) network(s) -- both f2f and virtual consultants/facilitators/project managers business plan/grant proposals governance plan, agreements, commitments

IF we had better ways to support the incubation process for "social ventures" we would expect investors to see better results and to have more involvement in providing expertise.

Action Items:

Barbara will further develop the business plan for a model social venture bank based on contributions from all of the participants today.

We will create another "open Space" on this topic, in Indianapolis at The Strategy Studio, and attempt to enlarge the circle of participants who can bring time, talent, treasure and/or other gifts to help us bring this idea to fruition.