Social Venture Partners Convene for Good

In late October, SVP Partners and Staff from all over North America and Japan gathered in Long Beach, CA for the annual Social Venture Partners Conference. The first night started off with a bang at LASVP’s Social Innovation Fast Pitch where 10 innovative nonprofit finalists made three-minute “pitches” to win grants totaling up to $20,000. During the conference we heard from thought provoking key note speakers David Haskell and Sean Stannard-Stockton who encouraged us to dream big and think outside the box to make a bigger impact. SDSVP Partners David Lynn, Sherri Neasham, Joyce Ross, Alan Sorkin and Duane Trombly led breakout sessions on topics such as board development, nonprofit capacity building, and new initiatives such as the Mezzanine Fund. On the final day of the conference, Mandy Sherlock represented SDSVP at the first annual SVP Idol Storytelling Showcase where San Diego’s story about Partner David Cornsweet and his taking the SVP model to India won a silver medal. As a result of our time together, the SVP network is re-energized and striving to bring big dreams into action!

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I Have a Dream...

by Alan Sorkin, SDSVP Partner and SVP International Board President

I have been involved with charity and philanthropy since high school. My work has been extremely rewarding and at times frustrating because there is a problem with the way nonprofits and philanthropy are working today.

Here are some of my thoughts about my frustration. I’m sure you have others:

1. There is no correlation between giving and performance.


2. The social sector is really good at innovation; but not so good at getting to scale. Size is critical to have real impact. 90% of nonprofits have budgets of less than $500,000.


3. Americans have been giving for hundreds of years and since 2007 we consistently give about $300B or 2% of GDP every year but not much has changed. Without a dynamic sector shift it is unlikely that much will change.


4. The current recession has left many people even worse than before and our growing deficit means social programs and dollars will continue to be cut putting more pressure on the nonprofit sector.


5. Washington is grid-locked and little or nothing is going to get solved so it behooves Philanthropy and Social Venture Partners (SVP) to take a more proactive leadership position.

It’s time for our entire sector to step up and SVP can lead the way. Here are my suggestions for how we can lead and connect various strategic partners to move the needle in our sector.

1. We need to move “Donors” from random giving to effective, strategic giving.


2. We need to move them from “feel good giving” to giving based on “rated” performance.


3. We need to move nonprofits from seeking funds for service delivery to more revenue generation.


4. We need to move Everyone from being competitive to being more collaborative.


5. Specifically for SVP, as said by Paul Shoemaker, we need to move from saving the whales (or nonprofits) to saving the oceans (the sector).

At the Social Capital Conference in San Francisco two weeks ago Stacy Caldwell from Dallas SVP, Lance Fors from SV2 and me along with 1200 Social Entrepreneurs declared war on previous philanthropic behavior. We agreed that we must think bigger, act bolder, adapt better and deploy assets more effectively. We committed to creating and measuring impact and moving the needle to change the status quo.

Several people I greatly respect told me that the SVP model is a game changer. I think they are right and I have a dream:

SVP will catalyze a movement that will bring hope to those at the end of the line.

There are many SVP affiliates focusing on early childhood and education so here is just one example of what success could look like if we can learn, connect and lead all the necessary organizations: Imagine a different world; a world with education reformed with no more achievement gap where the poorest child can get a quality education and every youth grows up with a sense of possibility rather than hopelessness.

Our original Venture Philanthropy concept was to build capacity in smaller organizations that if taken to scale would have significant impact in their community. Ten years later we now know how incredibly hard it is to scale nonprofits because there are so few vehicles for growth capital. The nonprofit sector is starved for risk and growth capital and that undermines their ability to grow and become sustainable. Only 144 nonprofits have reached $50 million compared to 46,136 for-profit companies. The private sector connects money to good ideas that can scale quickly; there is no counterpart for nonprofits.

To get growth capital, you need to communicate value to existing stakeholders. Nonprofits are not very good at this. There is a cry for accountability, but few measurement tools and even fewer ways to communicate effectiveness to donors. The Charity Navigator rating system focusing on the percent of overhead forces nonprofits to have almost all their money go to the cause leaving nothing to invest in infrastructure.

There are two types of funders: builders and buyers. Today’s capital structure has a few builders, like SVP who provide the talent and growth capital; most funders are buyers who provide money for services. SVP was the first to champion capacity building and only a few have followed our lead.

It’s fairly easy to get $20,000 but not a million. The average large foundation grant is risk averse and makes $50,000 grants on average as they are wedded to current solutions. Most funders avoid dealing with root causes because it is too hard for them to show results. They fund pilot programs, but what is needed is more money to show proof of concept, and then money to take organizations to scale. We have a burning platform issue: Year by year government funds are decreasing, while needs are increasing. For these reasons, I believe SVP with its emphasis on accountability is uniquely positioned to channel information to potential donors by championing our version of a Mezzanine Fund which will harness the power of our SVP network. SVP provides a vehicle for partners to accomplish much more collectively than we could accomplish individually.

Initially we will look to partners and our alumni partners to fund our Investees who have shown they can deliver the right intervention to the right party to achieve the right result and are capable and interested in going to scale. Once we have proven this concept, we will go to funders like The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, New Profit and donors everywhere.

Dream Big! Thoughts from SDSVP's Board Chair

I recently returned from my fourth SVPI Conference, held this year in Long Beach, CA. Hundreds of fellow SVP Partners from around the world gathered to learn, share best practices and, of course, have a great time. For me, the conference was especially poignant because of the keynote speaker Friday morning, David Haskell. David is the CEO of Dreams InDeed International. He spoke of dreams, not the kind of dreams when you sleep, but the dreams you imagine when you are awake. He spoke of big dreams like Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream.”

Coincidentally, at San Diego Social Venture Partners we have just begun a process of outcome planning where imagining a bold dream for the future is part of the process. I am so very excited that in the next few months, we will have settled on a dream for SDSVP’s future. We will be more than a great organization that cultivates philanthropists and helps San Diego nonprofits. We will be an organization that has a dream so big and so bold that we fundamentally improve the San Diego region. We will have a dream so big and so bold that philanthropists from around the world will look to SDSVP and San Diego for their inspiration. We will have a dream so big and so bold that we will attract the best, the brightest and most importantly, the most caring people to help achieve this dream.

What are your dreams? What should SDSVP dream of accomplishing? What do you want to accomplish? I hope something really BIG!

Mark Fackler

Check out Mark's Blog at http://facklerfamily.org

Learning BIG at the SVPI Conference

SDSVP Staff along with Partners, Alan and Louarn Sorkin, Mark Fackler and David Lynn attended the annual SVPI conference in Dallas, Texas. SDSVP enjoyed learning from SVP Partners from around the world. Many great ideas were shared through key note speakers, workshops and even hallway conversations. In addition, our own Alan was inducted as the Social Venture Partners International Chair!

Some Key Learnings:

• Stories are key: SDSVP needs to have stories. Andy Goodman suggested that we could build a story around each one of our Investees. Every staff member, board member, and key player should know 5-7 core stories about the organization, and be able to tell them passionately and effectively; take advantage of social media.
• Measuring outcomes is hard: Keep it simple: it’s nearly impossible to get to the point of causal relationships with any sort of outcomes, it’s hard enough just to measure if you’re having any short term effect.
• Venture Fund – create a leverage fund where others can invest in our portfolio of Investees; foundations who don’t have staff, could utilize SVP as a resource.
• Partner Advisory Board - Quarterly meetings open to all Partners to maintain transparency and distribute responsibility.

Philanthropy is HOT!

Well known author and philanthropist, Sean Stannard-Stockton, attended the SVPI Conference in Cleveland this year! Sean, principal and director of Tactical Philanthropy, reports on the Conference and shares his thoughts about the direction in which philanthropy is going.

Click here to read his article.

More Passion Than Ever!

By Mark Fackler

The model of San Diego Social Venture Partners is truly amazing. I hear the statistics of the incredible leverage that our dollars produce. I hear the feedback from the Investees about the amazing value of our time, expertise and recourses. I hear the stories from our Investees and how lives are being changed. Now multiply that by 25 cities and you get more than 2,000 dedicated individuals, giving more than $26.5 million in grant investments to more than 300 non-profit organizations. I just spent a few days at the Social Venture Partners International Conference in Cleveland, Ohio and I am more passionate than ever!

The night before the conference started, we partied at the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. The museum, in itself, was cool enough, but that was nothing compared to the live band that played for the guests. Our own SDSVP Partners Ray and Kim McKewon flew out to join in the one and only performance of Limited Capacity, a pick up band of SVPers. They ROCKED!

In addition to Ray and Kim, other SDSVP attendees were Alan and Louarn Sorkin, Peggy Kidd, and Mandy Sherlock. The conference started out with a keynote from John Wood. This former Microsoft executive founded Room to Read, an organization that has helped more than 1.7 million children across the developing world break the cycle of poverty through the power of education. He inspired the two hundred attendees from the US, Canada and Japan. Stephen Lewis, the former Special Envoy to the UN Secretary-General and current co-director of AIDS-Free World, provided the other keynote. He spoke about Africa, AIDS, sexual violence, death and luckily, hope. Simply put, he numbed the room.

There were breakout sessions ranging from how to measure, govern, plan and collaborate in the non-profit world. For me, the best part was hearing the innovative practices from other SVP chapters. The advocacy initiative in the Seattle Chapter is fascinating and makes so much sense. If SVP is going to create social/sector change, which is a fairly common vision for all the chapters, advocacy is a powerful tool to use.

SDSVP’s reputation is known throughout the chapters. Partners from around the SVP network wanted to know how we are able to continue to grow our organization. They wanted to know about our Environmental Accelerator Fund (EAF). They wanted to know how we get so many volunteer hours donated. They wanted to know how we have such great social events. My answer is always the same. SDSVP has smart, kind and great Partners who believe in giving back!

I hope to see at the 2009 SVPI Conference in Dallas Texas on October 16 and 17. I hear the first night might be a hoedown. Think the McKewons do hoedowns?

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