Welcome to VPP News, the monthly electronic newsletter of Venture Philanthropy Partners. The new format reflects our redesigned website and our efforts to reach more people with information about our work. Subscriptions are free and available through our website.

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Chairman's Corner: Sharing What We Learn

Since the inception of VPP, we have believed that we had more to offer than money alone. We believed we could bring value to promising nonprofit organizations by sharing with them the management experience, insights, and other non-financial resources of our team. Similarly, we believed that many funders and nonprofits had a treasure trove of experiences, observations, and knowledge to share.

In line with those beliefs, one of the overarching goals of our work at VPP is to share with others what we’ve learned and accomplished and to learn from them as well. Since our inception, “knowledge capture and dissemination” has been a mantra for us. Our initial effort in gathering and sharing information was to publish studies about social conditions affecting children in our region. We then commissioned reports to help us learn about building capacity in nonprofits and to track developments in the emerging field of venture philanthropy.

While selecting organizations to support and making investments in them, we have tried to take good notes and have rich discussions with our staff members and our investment partners so we can capture, interpret, codify, and share those experiences with others. We have also looked to others for ideas about how to do this effectively. At the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, knowledge sharing has become a core element of the way the foundation pursues its field- and institution-building goals. The organization is currently developing a series of papers that will soon be published on its website. Tim Wilmont, the chief knowledge and evaluation officer for the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, assigns “knowledge coordinators” to gather and organize information that is shared among teams in each program area. We are encouraged by these activities and hope that others will make similar efforts.

I have been working closely with members of the VPP team to define and illustrate our investment process and develop points of view on key aspects of our model, such as strategic planning. Victoria Vrana, our chief knowledge officer, has worked closely with staff members to weave this information and knowledge into a new VPP website that we have just launched (see story below). We are excited about this next step in the evolution of our knowledge-sharing efforts and hope that you will find the information helpful. We believe that the philanthropic, public, and nonprofit sectors will benefit from the learning and discovery that we and our partners gain through our work together. If giving other funders and organizations serving children a window into our world provides them with new information, or spares them from reinventing a wheel, we will be pleased.

--Mario Morino

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VPP Launches New Website

You are just a click away from the new and improved website that we have built over the last year. We have designed the site to provide detailed information about VPP and its approach, including an in-depth look at our origin, mission, goals, investment strategy, investment criteria, and partnership model. The site prominently features the work of the community-based nonprofit organizations in our investment portfolio. The site also calls attention to the many people who make our work possible—investors, board members, staff members, advisors, and our network of contacts. Perhaps most important, on this site we have combined information with our day-to-day experiences and observations to create a means for sharing with others the knowledge we are gaining through our work. This is just the beginning of our knowledge-dissemination efforts.

“The most valuable resource we have at VPP is the network of dedicated, knowledgeable, and inspired people created through the connections of our investment partners, advisors, board, investors, and staff,” says Victoria Vrana, VPP’s chief knowledge officer. “So we decided to make people a central theme of the website. In the end, it’s most important that we are getting our users what they need quickly and easily. We tried to build a simple framework to which we can add new information. This redesign is just a start.”

• The “About Us” section provides a detailed look at the origins of VPP, the rationale that guided our thinking, and descriptions of our investment strategy and process.
  
• The “Investment Portfolio” section highlights the work of the community-based organizations in whom we are investing money, human capital and other non-financial support to help them strengthen their organizations and reach their goals for providing more and better service to children and families in need. Within this section you will find links to detailed information about the nature and stage of the partnerships we have formed with these organizations.
  
• The “Learning” section is where our efforts to share knowledge with others in the nonprofit and philanthropic worlds are most evident. This section includes published reports, opinion pieces, speeches, archives of VPP News, and links to other useful resources.
  
• The “Investors” section introduces you to the generous individuals and institutions who have provided capital to support our vision for helping nonprofits and improving the lives of children.
  
• The “Network” section provides information on the people and organizations in our broad network of support for our investment partners, including our staff and board members, our advisors, and consultants and contacts who can help VPP and our investment partners.

We at VPP extend a special thank you to Victoria Vrana, who has worked diligently over many months to oversee the development of a site that is attractive, engaging, informative, and user-friendly; to Lowell Weiss, director of the chairman’s office, and Sandra Gregg, VPP partner, who worked with many colleagues to develop the content for the new site; and to Suzy Twohig for editing the site and preparing it for its debut. Please let us know what you think about the site.

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Shirley Marcus Allen Joins VPP Team

We are pleased to announce that last month Shirley Marcus Allen joined us as a senior partner. In that role, Shirley will manage a portfolio of VPP’s nonprofit investment partners and help them strengthen their organizations and increase their positive impact on the children in their communities.

Shirley brings to the team an in-depth understanding of the issues facing children of low-income families and a wealth of executive and managerial experience, as well as great contacts and expertise in advocacy. Most recently, Shirley served as vice president, membership services, for the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA), the oldest and largest national child advocacy organization. She has 14 years of experience in child welfare services, with ten years specifically focused on providing a range of services to public and private child welfare agencies throughout the United States and Canada.

Before her tenure at CWLA, Shirley was the director of the Baltimore City Department of Social Services. She was responsible for a workforce of 2,500 employees and a $400 million budget to serve 200,000 city residents.

Shirley has a bachelor’s degree from Morgan State University and a master’s of public administration from the University of Baltimore, and she has participated in the Executive Management and Leadership Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She has enjoyed a range of appointments with the Morgan State University Board of Regents, serves on the Associated Black Charities of Maryland board of directors, and was the chair of the advisory board for DC’s Child and Family Services Agency and the chair of the board of the African American Family Services Consortium.

“I’m excited about the opportunity to learn from our community-based investment partners and to use my years of experience in child welfare and human services to impact the field of philanthropy and outcomes measurement for children’s programs,” says Shirley. “Given the opportunity to capture and share what we learn through our work with our investment partners, we will touch the lives of thousands of children and families. There is no higher calling.”

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See Forever Completes Plan

The See Forever Foundation, which operates the Maya Angelou Public Charter School in Washington, DC, has completed a three-month planning process to map the organization's future direction and needs.

In its four years of existence, the charter school has made remarkable strides with a difficult population of at-risk students who have failed in other educational settings. In preparation for opening three new campuses over the next seven years, the See Forever team will continue making improvements in key organizational areas. The new plan calls for continued strengthening of their senior management team, revamping the curriculum, and recruiting additional experienced teachers. Greater focus on providing more and better training for those teachers to improve performance and retention is also a priority. In addition, the management team has decided to develop a pilot academy program to prepare youngsters with marginal academic skills to attend one of See Forever's schools.

"Coming out of this process, it's clear that the commitment of the cofounders, David Domenici and James Forman, to the future of this organization and these kids is stronger than ever," says VPP Senior Partner Fred Bollerer. "There's been some tremendous learning and growth for everyone involved, and today I am more excited about See Forever than ever." During February, See Forever and VPP will be working to develop milestones for implementing the plan. In addition, the VPP team will draft an agreement for its multi-year strategic investment in See Forever.

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Advocacy: An Essential Tool

Mario Morino’s column last month, which challenged funders to understand and support the advocacy needs of their grantees, generated several email exchanges. Paul Shoemaker, executive director of Social Venture Partners Seattle, noted that his organization is encouraging its investors to become much more knowledgeable about the advocacy needs of its grantees. While SVP Seattle “does not explicitly fund advocacy activities,” Paul says, “we fund organizations that do advocacy work as part of their mission. We are also doing more and more work to educate partners (investors) around policy issues. We believe that policy and advocacy work by individual partners is a logical next step in supporting the nonprofits we work with. This year we are exploring ways to collaborate with nonprofits to do this.”

There are many strategies that nonprofit organizations can employ to get their message out. Those range from hosting community meetings to inform constituents or organize them to take specific action, to building coalitions that engage in limited lobbying activities. While taking on a legislative committee may seem daunting, it is important for nonprofit leaders to remember that there is safety and power in numbers.

The Institute for Family Development, which receives funds from Social Venture Partners Seattle, embraces the coalition approach. Charlotte Booth, the Institute’s executive director, says she finds that her efforts are taken much more seriously by legislators when she is speaking on behalf of a number of child-serving organizations. The Institute, which provides family support services and develops child abuse prevention programs, also does advocacy work on behalf of 16 small family counseling organizations around Washington state. She also works closely with her board of directors to educate them about protecting funding streams for family preservation programs, and she takes them on visits to meet with key state legislators. She assures board members that once they understand the issues and know how to discuss them, their advocacy role is “easier than selling tickets to their big auction.”
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Children of War Grabs Headline

This week, The Washington Post Magazine published an article about the powerful play, Children of War, that was sponsored last December by the Center for Multicultural Human Services.

The story was followed by an online interview with the playwright and director, Ping Chong.

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Community Wealth Ventures Provides
Link to Social Enterprises

Community Wealth Ventures (CWV) has launched an online database of business ventures run by nonprofit organizations. The new database tracks the burgeoning number of entrepreneurial nonprofit organizations that have responded to their fiscal challenges by creating new sources of wealth.

CWV, a subsidiary of Share Our Strength, is a consulting firm that works to generate new resources for the social sector using business ventures and corporate partnerships. Congratulations to CWV Chairman Bill Shore, a VPP board member, and his team for sharing this valuable information.


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