Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, blurb for upcoming event:
PAUL SHOEMAKER, executive director of Social Venture Partners Seattle and founding president of SVP International, notes* that today there are SVP’s in 23 cities, with 1,700 partners in America and a group in Japan. Members are asked to contribute a minimum of $5,000 each, but are also expected to contribute “human capital,” i.e., the members “are directly involved in deciding where grant money goes in the community. They are involved in lending their professional skills and expertise to nonprofits as volunteers to help them build their capacity,” as well as in “ongoing education to increase their knowledge about the nonprofit sector and about philanthropy.” Shoemaker notes that the SVP may have been distorted by some ostensible practitioners who “happened to be big-mouthed and suggested they were going to save the world with their great business practices.” Indeed, seasoned philanthropy observers like Princeton’s STANLEY KATZ argue** that, “whatever positive consequences [SVP] might have for grantees and their programs . . . this nominally new approach is not really telling us anything we didn’t already know to do.”
Is the SVP approach new? More like well-proven. The SVP movement has introduced many talented executives and entrepreneurs to high engagement, place-based philanthropy in concert with their peers. They have stressed longer terms grants, and funding for infrastructure as well as for projects. They have emphasized good business practices, and the importance of getting social results. Their donors learn by doing, getting engaged with the organizations the Partnership supports.
What is new, by contrast to the SVP movement (now ten years old), is social investing for profit, as well as for social good. Whether that new fangled money-making approach will "prove out" largely remains to be seen. I am not sure the SVP movement isn't better off bypassing social for-profit investment as an option. At Dallas Social Venture Partners we will probably educate partners about some of the for-profit social investment options, but will not likely embrace them as tools for DSVP to employ.
Three cheers for Paul and all he has done to advance, promote, and refine the best practices of social venture philanthropy. New or not, it works.
