What does Venture Philanthropy Partners
do?
What is VPP’s mailing address?
How do I order copies of your reports and
other publications?
Whom do I contact with permissions
requests?
What types of organizations do you support?
How do I get a copy of your grant application?
What is the average size of your grants (investments)?
How many grants (investments) do you make
in a given year?
Where does the money for VPP grants (investments)
come from?
Do VPP’s investors expect a financial
return on their investments in VPP?
Who started VPP, and when was it started?
What should a grantee (investment
partner) expect from a partnership with VPP?
What type of non-financial resources
do you bring to your grantmaking (investments)?
What is “venture philanthropy”?
What are the differences between “venture
philanthropy,” “high-engagement grantmaking,”
and “engaged, highly leveraged grantmaking”?
Why the regional focus? Why does VPP only
support organizations in the National Capital Region?
What does Venture Philanthropy Partners do?
Venture Philanthropy Partners is a philanthropic-investment
organization working to improve the lives of children from
low-income families. We do this by providing significant
money and management assistance to community-based organizations
in the National Capital Region and by working with others
at the national level to influence constructive changes
in the way our society supports nonprofit organizations
that are addressing core needs of children.
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What is VPP’s mailing address?
1201 15th Street, NW
Suite 420
Washington, DC 20005
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How do I order copies of your reports and other publications?
Please email Manon
Matchett
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Whom do I contact with permissions requests?
Please contact Suzy Twohig
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What types of organizations do you support?
We support community-based organizations in the National
Capital Region that have missions focused on or around the
educational, learning, and developmental needs of children
(infants through high school age) of low-income families
and are producing, or have the strong potential to produce,
meaningful long-term improvements in the lives of the children
they serve. Learn more about our current investment
partners (grantees) and our investment
criteria.
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How do I get a copy of your grant application?
We do not solicit or accept grant applications. Because
we make a relatively small number of investments (three
to five per year) and have quite specific investment
criteria, we proactively search for organizations in
the National Capital Region that appear to be a good fit.
We regularly reach out for insights from foundation program
officers, community leaders, nonprofit leaders, public officials,
and others who can help us identify high-potential organizations
serving children in the National Capital Region (Northern
Virginia, the District of Columbia, and adjacent suburban
Maryland).
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What is the average size of your grants (investments)?
Our major investments average about $2.3 million over three
to four years.
We couple our investments with significant strategic assistance, in the form of management guidance
and the leverage of our network of contacts and advisors.
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How many grants (investments) do you make in a given year?
We make three to five investments per year.
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Where does the money for VPP grants (investments) come from?
The capital for our investments comes primarily from 30 families,
with additional support from three other philanthropic institutions.
Learn more about
our investors.
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Do VPP’s investors expect a financial return on their
investments in VPP?
No. They have invested in the hope of benefiting children,
catalyzing social change, and joining a circle of engaged
givers. They have no hope or expectation of earning a financial
return on their investments.
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Who started VPP, and when was it started?
The inspiration for VPP came from years of private-sector
experience and nonprofit work by Mario
Morino, founder of the Morino
Institute and co-founder of LEGENT Corporation. In 1999,
Morino teamed up with Raul
Fernandez, founder of Proxicom, and Mark Warner, who
was later elected governor of Virginia, and the three made
the initial financial commitments to start VPP. They then
began sharing their vision for social change with some of
the region’s most respected business leaders, many
of whom joined VPP as founding investors. In 2000, VPP was
officially incorporated as a nonprofit public charity operating
as a support organization to the Community Foundation for
the National Capital Region. Read more about VPP's
origins.
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What should a grantee (investment partner) expect from a
partnership with VPP?
When we enter into investment partnerships with community-based
organizations, we aspire to serve as a combination of strategic
advisor, executive coach, change agent, funder, board member,
and consultant—with the goal of helping great leaders
build stronger, more effective, more enduring organizations
to better serve children. Our investments are not intended
to fund program costs. Instead, the focus of every VPP investment
is helping leaders build the strength of the organization
behind their programs. We support this strengthening of organizations
through large-scale, multi-year funding; through the expertise
of our in-house investment team; and through the leverage
of a wide network of outside contacts, resources, and professional
advisors. Learn more about our
approach.
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What type of non-financial resources do you bring to your
grantmaking (investments)?
In the commercial world, the work of the most successful
investors does not end with the funding; it starts there.
These investors develop relationships and build trust with
the people who run the organizations they invest in. They
provide management advice. They help managers recruit the
best executive talent and develop solutions that help them
achieve their missions. They make long-term commitments
that enable businesses to invest in capacity for the long
haul rather than simply surviving to the next quarter. More
than anything else, they help build great organizations.
This, in a nutshell, is the approach that we hope to bring
to our investments in the nonprofit world.
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What is “venture philanthropy”?
In the broadest sense, venture philanthropy is a relatively
new, largely unproven, and yet potentially powerful movement
in grantmaking that seeks to adapt strategic investment
techniques to the culture and needs of the nonprofit sector
and to serve as a complement to more-established philanthropic
models. Venture philanthropy efforts often share the following
key characteristics:
What are the differences between “venture philanthropy,”
“high-engagement grantmaking,” and “engaged,
highly leveraged grantmaking”?
These terms are often used interchangeably—and none
of them has achieved dictionary-level specificity. To describe
our own approach, we tend to use the slightly cumbersome
term “engaged, highly leveraged grantmaking.”
We feel that it comes closest to describing the kind of
investment partnerships we form, in which we provide major
funding as well as non-financial support and aspire to serve
as a combination of strategic advisor, executive coach,
change agent, funder, board member, and consultant.
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Why the regional focus? Why does VPP only support organizations
in the National Capital Region?
This region is where the vast majority of our investors
live and work. This is where these investors want to see
their financial contributions making a community impact.
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