Sari Miller: An Angel Investor Proving the “Goodness Factor” is Good for Impact and Returns

Posted on March 31, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

As an early impact investor, Sari Miller’s strategies, experience and perspectives on angel investments offer others in the market a wealth of insight and guidance on investing with purpose in new markets. For this reason, Miller is the focus of our weekly series on social entrepreneurship with Entrepreneur.com, in partnership with ImpactAlpha.

Sari Miller, CEO of Sarjay, Inc., is ushering through some of the biggest impact investment deals currently in the market. Miller is translating the hands-on style that earned her great success during her previous career in real estate, to her approach as an early stage impact investor. She is working to drive enterprises and funds to scale in the widely untapped social benefit markets and low-income services industries. Her business acumen and commitment to the groups she funds and their social impact have helped pave the way for some early successes. Her most notable successes came from angel investments in Leapfrog Investments and Grassroots Business Fund (both organizations were profiled previously on the Entrepreneur.com Impact Investing Topic Hub).

Miller’s impact investments are not limited to a single geography, socio-economic climate or social issue. They cover a range of countries and encompass a multitude of services and sectors, including employment opportunities and job training, education, civil rights advocacy, agriculture and artisanal business development and micro-insurance. As with any pioneering investments, not all of her experiments have realized the kind of market scale and impact that Miller is seeking. She was a founding angel backer of Nexii, the first ever publicly regulated impact investing stock exchange based in South Africa. Unlike her other projects, this was not able to gain the traction it needed, and was later merged with a Singapore-based, social enterprise transaction platform, Asia IIX.

Despite this setback, Miller continues to make strides in the market. Most recently she helped Gigawatt Global’s management team get a $24 million solar field, containing more than 28,000 solar panels set in the shape of the African continent, up and running in record time. Miller supported this effort not only for the potential financial returns an under-tapped market like alternative energy can yield, but also for what she calls “the goodness factor.” As part of her due diligence, prior to investing any time or dollars, Miller confirms that the companies and founders are passionate about social impact, stating that the goodness factor is critical and without it, founders can stray from their mission.

Gigawatt Global’s solar project is going beyond clean energy benefits. To install the solar panels, Gigawatt Global is leasing land from Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV), a residential community in Rwanda for individuals who were orphaned during the Rwandan Genocide. Lease payments from this solar project will support the ASYV school while the local residents are also trained in solar technology. Gigawatt’s focus on sustainable, local impact provides the good factor that has resonated with Miller and other similarly driven investors.

For more on Africa’s solar energy project and the range of social impact investments on which Sari Miller is making big bets, read the full story at Entrepreneur.com.

What’s So Wrong with Nonprofits Playing by Market Rules?

Posted on March 27, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

Here’s the thing about markets – they have this uncanny way of being candid, sending demand signals that companies need to pay attention and adapt to in order to thrive, if not survive.

So why is it that the nonprofit sector is uncomfortable with embracing more market-based approaches to its work? This week’s feeding frenzy of articles criticizing the Council on Foundations for its experiment to host a $40,000 pitch competition to identify new organizations and approaches to drive social change is an example of this discomfort. In fact, the frenzy was so severe, that the Council decided to cancel the pitch competition and instead host a discussion on the merits and drawbacks of new approaches to grantmaking.

One of the pillars of our work at the Case Foundation is “revolutionizing philanthropy.” We believe that the practice of mobilizing private capital for public good is in need of a major reboot. In order to keep up with the pace and scope of major social challenges, the resources and tactics going into addressing these challenges and the organizations managing those resources need to be more efficient and effective. And as a sector, we need more catalytic, collaborative and creative solutions.

That’s why we’ve tested programs like the Make It Your Own Awards, the first campaign to open up a part of the grantmaking process to an online public vote. Or the America’s Giving Challenges (in 2007 and 2009), which mobilized over 150,000 donors to give $3.8M to over 14,000 causes, most of which were small and scrappy. That’s why we created the Be Fearless campaign – because we believe that in order to create more innovation in our approaches to social change, we must all take risks, embrace and learn from failure and make big bets. And that’s why we consistently provide catalytic funding to partners that are experimenting with new approaches and hoping to find breakthrough solutions and collaborations.

We’ve long championed the potential for prize and challenge programs – including initiatives like pitch competitions – to discover breakthrough innovations. We know that sometimes the people with the most innovative solutions to big problems will be found in unlikely places – just take the wedding dress designer who played a critical role in helping to dramatically improve the design of the Ebola Protective Suit worn by health care workers treating the disease, thanks to a challenge hosted by USAID’s Global Development Lab. The U.S. government has broadly embraced the use of prizes and challenges, which kicked off with the Summit on Innovation that we co-hosted with the White House in 2010, leading to the creation of Challenge.gov, which hosts hundreds of prize and challenge competitions across 50 federal agencies. And we were proud to join some of the philanthropic sector’s leading innovators – Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Joyce Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Kresge Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation – in publishing a 2014 report on the ways in which incentive prizes are transforming the innovation landscape.

We love to see new practices for crowdsourcing ideas, pooling resources, disrupting old ways of doing business, testing new approaches and massively publicizing – if not competing – new programs. Why? Because, quite frankly, despite a massive amount of good accomplished with billions of nonprofit dollars, the evidence base for impact remains unsatisfying. We’re not saying that we should swing the pendulum completely toward prizes, challenges and other experimental approaches – but deploying tactics that can help us discover new ideas from unlikely places is desperately needed.

We have a saying at the Case Foundation based on an old African proverb – if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. What if, instead of trashing the Council on Foundations for trying something new, we embraced it as a fearless attempt to disrupt the status quo with the hope of finding a better way? Sure, we might each have our tweaks on how to make it better (e.g., having a panel of judges, not the audience, vote on the winner). But as a tactic, it brings a fresh market-based approach and has the potential to expose innovative people and ideas to a broad community of funders, who just might decide it’s worth pooling their resources for greater and faster impact.

We look forward to the discussion on the merits of new grantmaking approaches at the Council’s conference, but we’ll wistfully be wondering what it would be like with the pitch competition in full swing, tapping into the “wisdom of the crowd” and fully embracing of the idea of democratizing philanthropy, making it easier for anyone to participate in the efforts to solve big, hairy problems.

Want to continue the conversation? Tweet us @CaseFoundation with the hashtag #CFBlog!

The Future of Transportation: More than Just Convenience

Posted on March 25, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

I’d venture to guess that most of you reading this blog have used technology in some way to help us navigate our cars around town or make transportation from one place to another easier – from Google Maps or other online maps services (MapQuest, anyone?) to Uber or Lyft. Or you may have already started to get excited about the possibilities for self-driving cars. Perhaps you’ve watched the YouTube video on Google’s Self Driving Car Project or heard the news that Uber has partnered with Carnegie Mellon University to create the Uber Advanced Technologies Center to move this technology forward faster. No matter what your experience is with these technologies, you have probably sensed that there is a significant shift happening in the world involving transportation and consumer habits.

What does widespread adoption and acceptance of companies like Uber, or apps like Google Maps, mean for the future of transportation? And how will these technologies change how individuals and groups can safely, efficiently and happily get from point A to point B? The answer to these questions will ultimately define the future of transportation in the coming decade.

Technology Advancements

Services like Uber have been made possible because of the confluence of a number of factors: improved camera technology, street-by-street mapping, ecommerce and the ever present, always connected smart phone. The same will be said about self-driving cars as they ultimately represent a higher and higher percentage of cars on the road. Companies like Google are putting a tremendous amount of resources into getting the self-driving car right. While it may seem scary to give up control of the steering wheel to a computer, the reality is the self-driving car will be more self-aware, since it will be equipped with a 360-degree camera and it won’t be distracted by talking on the phone or handing an item to a child in the back seat. The car will recognize impending danger faster than a human, will use heat signatures to identify living things that have the potential to cross its path and it can’t panic or over correct in times of stress. In fact, Elon Musk believes that one-day human-driven cars will be outlawed, as they will be thought of as too dangerous.

A Transportation Future that Empowers All

These cars seem perfect for a new fleet of on demand taxis, shuttles and buses. Fewer cars on the road that are aware of each other means that accidents will likely decrease. We can imagine these cars in our cities, suburbs and neighborhoods, but what about the great potential for the developing world? Can this transform the way in which hundreds of millions of people move from point A to point B?

Like all new technologies and advancements, those individuals with the financial means will be the early adopters and will initially define what the opportunity means. Uber has expanded from young upwardly mobile Silicon Valley technology professionals getting around San Francisco to teenagers being shuttled to piano or soccer practice in cities around the country. This is a natural evolution of adoption as services like Uber become more mainstream and are accepted as the natural way to navigate a city. When this happens, we will begin to see a market form. There will be competitors, third-party applications and after market products that will help create new companies. In this not-so-distant future, the self-driving car will cross the chasm from the early adopters to the early majority. Prices will come down and these services will be accessible to the masses.

These cars of the future will revolutionize individual transportation, public transportation and the sharing economy of groups like Uber and Zipcar. Imagine how empowering it will be for those who have lost their ability to drive to be able to take themselves to work, and then take their children to soccer practice, with a quick stop at the grocery store on the way home. Existing services for these individuals is typically binary, where they get assistance from another individual or a support van takes you from point A to point B. Owning a self driving car will provide a new level of freedom and control.

The market will drive innovation, spur new industries, lower the cost of transportation, reduce carbon emissions, increase road safety and increase the opportunity for more people to move throughout their communities. Yes, people will be nervous – there is often anxiety around ambitious new innovations – and there will be bumps in the road, but the benefits will prove to be too great to stop us moving toward what will be a safe and interconnected world.

Want to continue the conversation? Tweet us @CaseFoundation with the hashtag #CFBlog!

Village Capital: Getting Startup Funding to Nontraditional Entrepreneurs

Posted on March 24, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

As part of our ongoing series on social entrepreneurship with Entrepreneur.com, in partnership with ImpactAlpha, this week’s spotlight is on Village Capital. This startup accelerator is banking on the idea that the best solutions to community problems come from local entrepreneurs who have firsthand knowledge of the challenges being addressed.

Village Capital is specifically focused on the difficulties facing the “unbanked” and “underbanked,” which are terms used to define an individual or household that has a bank account but also uses alternative financial services (AFS). Examples of AFS include: payday loans, rent-to-own agreements, money orders, car title loans, etc. While some AFS have been developed to help those who are underserved by traditional lending services, many are characterized by short-term repayment schedules and generally have very high interest rates. These qualities make them less than ideal lending options for entrepreneurs who are considered too risky for traditional bank loans and credit, thus leaving them with few opportunities when seeking startup capital.

To tackle this lending challenge, Village Capital is recruiting minority and women entrepreneurs from unbanked and underbanked communities. They are then exposing these entrepreneurs’ marketable ideas to venture capital funding—to which these nontraditional entrepreneurs would otherwise have limited access This allows for the development of businesses that are potentially both lucrative and effective at changing the dynamics around opportunities for people who struggle to access necessary financial services.

While many categorize these programs as impact investments, Ross Baird, executive director of Village Capital, explains that his organization’s investors do not usually self-identify as impact investors. A number of those whom they invest with believe that impact investments require conceding some financial returns for social impact—and that is not the case here. Despite the obvious positive social outcomes Village Capital’s entrepreneurs deliver, its investors first, recognize the fundamental value of exciting, smart investments with the potential for consistent and/or impressive returns. Through events like the FinTech Forum, Village Capital continues to introduce investors to opportunities that generate greater outcomes with their dollars. At these forums the stage is given to nontraditional entrepreneurs, like Brian Ferguson of Start Line, who translated a wrongful imprisonment that could have destroyed his professional future, into a powerful startup that has the potential to counter recidivism issues.

For more on Village Capital and the entrepreneurial solutions to the financial and community challenges it promotes visit the Entrepreneur.com impact investing hub.

Did Potato Salad Save or Kill Crowdfunding?

Posted on March 24, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

It started with a little campaign to raise money for making potato salad. It went viral, raising $55,000 and became one of the highest-viewed campaigns in Kickstarter history. Some rolled their eyes, thinking that this just showed all that was wrong with crowdfunding. Others thought this was a breakthrough moment – a crowdfunding campaign, albeit a silly one, was making national and international news and bringing the concept into homes everywhere. And no matter what their viewpoint, pretty much everyone was left wondering, is this a joke?

This is where we started the conversation at a panel I had the opportunity to moderate last week on the Next Stage at SXSW, featuring Zack Brown, the “Potato Salad Kickstarter guy,” Ryan Grepper, CEO of the Coolest Cooler (the second highest-grossing Kickstarter campaign, raising $13.3 million) and Gary Wohlfeill, director of marketing at Crowdrise, a crowdfunding platform focused on raising money for causes and nonprofits.

We had a fun conversation focused on tips and tricks for creating a successful crowdfunding campaign , how to harness crowdfunding for good and the future of the industry. Here are a few takeaways from our conversation:

• Content is king – For those of you who are familiar with the Coolest Cooler (which really is the coolest cooler I’ve seen), it seems obvious to us now that it would be a product in high demand. But what many don’t know is that the first Kickstarter campaign for the product actually failed to reach its goal. The reason? The lack of simple, creative and compelling content, according to Grepper. The second, wildly successful campaign for the Cooler featured a simple, straightforward video that captured the imagination of anyone visiting the site right from the start. Similarly, Zack Brown noted that his goal in developing content for the Potato Salad campaign was to keep it minimal and to the point. And while yes, the campaign was in fact designed to be a joke, the panel agreed that no doubt the nature of the language used in the campaign page drew people in and excited them about being “in” on the joke. Another proponent of good content and the importance of tone is Gary Wolfheil, who pointed out Crowdrise’s mission to “make giving fun.” And so it’s no surprise that the campaigns that do best on the platform are entertaining and engaging.

• Successful crowdfunding campaigns are based on equity – No, we’re not talking about securities-based crowdfunding here (we’ll get to that a little later), but rather a point that Gary Wohlfeill raised – successful campaigns make you feel like you have some sort of equity and stake in its success. This type of equity can be physical (i.e., receiving an actual product like the Coolest Cooler), community-based (like taking part in Zack Brown’s “Potato Stock”) or emotional (Wohlfeill shared an example of a young woman raising money for a family in Haiti who attracted participants in the campaign by promising video footage for every milestone reached – including the family moving into a new home).

• Wild success is a good thing – for the most part. In both the case of Potato Salad and the Coolest Cooler, the campaigns surpassed not only the initial fundraising goal but the organizers’ wildest expectations. Which is largely a good thing – but not without its pitfalls: from criticisms to how the money might be used to challenges in delivering product. In both cases, transparency and pivots were key to the success of the campaign – and the days that followed. On Brown’s side, as the campaign continued to blow through new stretch goals, he posted regular updates to the site to share new plans with supporters, which ultimately led to the development of not only the giant potato party known as Potato Stock, but a partnership with The Columbus Foundation, turning the energy around potato salad into a force for good. For Grepper, the campaign’s wild success meant manufacturing exponentially more Coolest Coolers than he had initially planned – which ultimately meant delays. Grepper has been incredibly transparent about the entire process – posting numerous lengthy updates to the campaign page and sharing with backers – giving them an inside view of the project and how it’s progressing (and rewarding them for their patience with even more features).

• Crowdfunding has unleashed incredible human generosity. At the Case Foundation, we’ve long known about the transformative possibilities of combining a large number of small gifts, having supported platforms like Network for Good and MissionFish, that have collectively raised more than $1.5B for nonprofits. And we’ve seen crowdfunding used in big ways to rally around individuals in need – $700K for a vacation for a bullied bus monitor, or $350K for the man in Detroit with a 21-mile walking commute (though it should be noted that these success stories are not without their critics and downsides). But, as Wolfheil pointed out, all you have to do is surf the Crowdrise site to see generosity on display at a smaller, but equally as meaningful scale. Brown and Grepper agreed that there was tremendous power to direct the energy that a crowdfunding campaign can generate towards making the world a better place.

• The future of crowdfunding is bright (but maybe a little complicated). In 2014, crowdfunding campaigns raised an estimated $10 billion, and the industry is expected to grow to $20 billion in 2015. My fellow panelists all seemed to agree that the industry is poised for continued exponential growth – pointing out that we’ve barely just scratched the surface when it comes to crowdfunding becoming a mainstream phenomenon. When it comes to new types of crowdfunding – and specifically securities-based crowdfunding for non-accredited investors (meaning anyone will be able to contribute to a campaign in exchange for a financial stake in a company), which is awaiting finalization of SEC rules – the panel was mixed. Based on his experience in managing a wide range of comments and criticisms in his product-based campaign, Grepper raised concerns over how company founders will effectively manage such a large pool of investors. But most were intrigued about the potential of equity crowdfunding if implemented right.

At the end of the discussion, we revisited the opening question: did the Potato Salad campaign kill or save crowdfunding? At the end of the day, we realized that it wasn’t really the right question to ask. Rather, it was how can we continue to unlock the power of crowdfunding to drive new innovations, advance game-changing projects and ultimately harness energy and dollars to change the world? Sometimes, it might take a little bit of humor and a lot of potato salad.

Measure What Matters: Announcing a New Partnership Between the Case Foundation and B Lab

Posted on March 23, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

This post was written by Andrew Kassoy, Co-founder of B Lab, and Kate Ahern on behalf of the Case Foundation:

The Case Foundation and B Lab are pleased to announce a new partnership called ‘Measure What Matters’ that will leverage the power of the B Corp community to help all companies use business as a force for good.

In February, the Case Foundation, B Lab, and a number of leading social entrepreneurs and impact investors participated in an event to talk about the need for business to join government, nonprofits, and philanthropy in solving social problems. We were fortunate to be joined by leaders from two certified B Corps—Warby Parker’s Neil Blumenthal and Happy Family’s Shazi Visram.

Warby Parker—which sells affordable, stylish prescription eyewear and incorporates a Buy One, Give One model—and Happy Family, which makes affordable organic baby food and other products, are two examples of the incredible power of business to do well by doing good. They are frontrunners in this growing movement because they are proving that they can solve problems and turn a profit.

B Lab, which certifies socially and environmentally responsible companies like Warby Parker and Happy Family, and others like Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, and Etsy (which just filed for an IPO) has built some of the critical building blocks of the social enterprise ecosystem. Measure What Matters builds on the momentum from the B Corp Certification program and marks a second phase of the B Corp movement’s aim to help all companies use business as a force for good.

How will this partnership help all companies to Measure What Matters?

We are thrilled that the community of Certified B Corps has grown to 1,200 leading companies globally. Remarkably, there are 20,000 more companies that have engaged with the B Impact Assessment to start to benchmark and improve their social and environmental performance.

B Lab’s newest initiative, Measure What Matters, builds on that momentum. It will provide easy-to-use online tools including the B Impact Assessment and B Analytics that any company can use to assess, compare and improve their impact. This initiative will adapt these tools so that they can be used by millions of companies around the world.

Earlier this month, these tools made it possible for the City of New York and the B Corp community to launch a new campaign called Best for NYC, which will inspire, equip and celebrate all NYC companies to improve social and environmental performance. Measure What Matters will be the entry point and first step for thousands of new companies in New York, across America, and worldwide to learn about how to evaluate their business practices, to compare against benchmarks, and to improve their performance.

The Case Foundation has long partnered with organizations like B Lab that disrupt industries and make markets for social good, and we are happy be able to continue that tradition with our support of B Lab’s newest effort.

We know that only a small percentage of the companies that use B Lab’s tools will likely become certified B Corps, but we also know that all companies—large and small, public and private—can benefit from measuring what matters to them and what matters to their shareholders and customers in improving social impact and sustainability. In a generation’s time, this work will help establish a culture in business where all companies measure and manage impact with the same rigor as they do profits.

Read more about B Lab here, and learn more about the B Impact Assessment. Read more about the Case Foundation’s impact investing work here.

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble

Posted on March 20, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

This post was written by Ross Baird on behalf of the Case Foundation:

This past Monday, I participated in the “Impact Investing Rumble” at SXSW, a, lively debate hosted by Jean Case and the Case Foundation. At the heart of the Rumble was the question: “Does ‘impact investing’ necessarily mean concessionary returns?” To some, it seems completely logical that there is a class of investors that would be willing to sacrifice a little bit of profit if it meant more impact in businesses.

But I think that argument is wrong. I believe strongly that people who invest in businesses that positively impact society will make outsized returns in the next decade. Why? On Saturday (also at SXSW), Steve Case provided an excellent framing for the panel proposing the concept of the “Third Wave” of the Internet. The “First Wave”—from 1985-2000—got people online, and Steve and Jean Case had a lot to do with that. The “Second Wave”—from 2000-2015—used the infrastructure of the Internet to connect people. Mark Zuckerberg, Google, and Twitter have evaporated the distance between us and anyone else in the world in a constant conversation. Steve proposed a “Third Wave”—sharing his predictions on how the Internet, over the next 15 years, will pervade the rest of our lives, from our health, to education, to how we power and feed ourselves as a society.

The billion-dollar companies of the next fifteen years will be found in the areas that have the highest impact on people’s lives.

As Steve outlined at SXSW, the Internet has poised to transform sectors from health to education to food/agriculture to energy to financial services. At the organization I run, Village Capital, we are seeing this every day. We have an investment in Salt Lake City called TruClinic that is powering telemedicine across the world. Another investment, Spensa, in West Lafayette Indiana, is dramatically reducing the cost of pesticide application through smart insect monitoring. eMoneyPool in Phoenix, Arizona, is targeting the billion Americans who use informal savings groups as their primary bank account worldwide to credit. And PearDeck, an Iowa City company in our current education program, is transforming how teachers interact with their classroom through real-time interaction. We’re seeing these businesses get significant traction in mainstream markets—most recently at SXSW, PearDeck won the “Rise of the Rest” pitch competition as the best startup from Steve Case and Revolution’s 2014 “Rise of the Rest” tour.

Businesses in these sectors have the ability to transform things that everybody does every day—not just build apps that make the lives of the best-off in society more convenient through live social media streaming or on-demand valet parking. And the single thing they all have in common is they are under-valued by the market. At SXSW, I met a venture capitalist from a well-known Silicon Valley venture firm and we were discussing our investments in common. When I mentioned the industries we work in—health, food/agriculture, energy, education, financial services, he said “oh, we don’t touch those—they’re regulated industries.” And when I mentioned the cities we work in, he said, “oh, we only invest close to home.”

While Silicon Valley is the most amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem on the planet, current Silicon Valley investment attitudes are undervaluing 98% of entrepreneurs worldwide. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this argument. The sectors that have the potential for the most impact on our lives, positive or negative, are usually regulated (and probably should be). And the entrepreneurs who have the most potential to transform core industries such as energy or agriculture are typically placed closest to energy and food production—and sometimes far from the most active entrepreneurial hotbeds.

The bottom line: the investors in the market who do not incorporate impact into how they invest, and look for the companies that are solving the problems faced by the most people, are missing the billion-person and billion-dollar opportunities of the “Third Wave” of the Internet. And investors who overlook entrepreneurs in industries that have the highest-impact, and in locations outside of the most developed entrepreneurial ecosystems, are ignoring 98% of businesses worldwide—and missing out on transformational opportunities.

In the Rumble, Sonal Shah, executive director of the Beeck Center for Entrepreneurship, said that regularly, entrepreneurs seeking an impact automatically relegate themselves to the “kid’s table”—looking for just philanthropy and concessionary capital. Jigar Shah, founder of SunEdison, pointed out the problem with this: real transformation (wireless power, thermal storage) requires in the hundreds of millions of capital—which only the mainstream markets can bring.

Yet the way the world is going, tremendous opportunities will only explode in the areas with the highest impact. To get there, though, impact investors—and entrepreneurs seeking an impact—have to identify, explore, and invest in the markets with the highest potential for impact—though they may be harder initially to develop. Entrepreneurs and investors will have to work at least twice as hard in more difficult to navigate sectors and ecosystems. The “train is leaving the station,” though, as Jean Case said at the end of the panel—and the payoff will be well worth the effort.

Ross Baird is the Executive Director of Village Capital.

The 5 Biggest Social Good Trends from SXSW 2015

Posted on March 19, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

For an update on social good trends in 2017, check out, “Biggest Trend in Social Good? Women in the Driver’s Seat!”

We came. We saw. We conquered.

In between the music, the parties and the Meerkat-ing, one thing was clear—SXSW was ground zero once again for new opportunities for cross-sector collaboration and innovation in the social good space. While previously left out of the festival all together just a few years ago, this year’s expanded Social Good Hub and Startup Village brought government, nonprofits, foundations, impact-driven startups and entrepreneurs front and center with a strong message: we can and should act on a level playing field with corporations and for-profit entities.

This year’s festival brought many newcomers, from impact investors to civic leaders. The DC government even hosted its own lounge—We DC House—across from the convention center. Tracks focused on industry verticals, like healthcare, fashion and education, instead of traditional skill-sets, causing a collision of cross-disciplinary attendees.

And come we did. This relatively new approach to format at SXSW has been embraced by both organizations and attendees alike, igniting several big trends that we at the Case Foundation are helping to spearhead:

1. Collaboration and Unlikely Partnerships Drive Success

 In the third wave of the Internet, big successes won’t come from isolated efforts, but rather unlikely partnerships will be required to accelerate growth and impact, said the Case Foundation’s Chairman Steve Case in his Saturday keynote. This sentiment was an undercurrent throughout SXSW. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, also speaking at SXSW discussed innovating in government as a multi-stakeholder process that can be driven by public and private sector collaboration. Even Yahoo’s Chief Information Security Officer, Alex Stamos, raised how the company was breaking down internal silos to create new partnerships between user experience and security to create new alternatives to passwords.

2. Social Returns are as Important as Profit 

It’s going to be transformative breakthrough businesses that come to the table to solve the world’s biggest problems, said CEO Jean Case at the Impact Investing Rumble, where two teams went head-to-head in a debate about whether one can earn financial and social returns on investments. This was one of many featured talks at the SXSW Social Good Hub. The concept of not only making a profit but having a purpose resounded everywhere—including startups looking to change their community through technology to energy efficient internet of things devices.

3. The Rest is Rising Through Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship provides the promise of economic mobility and the power to lift up communities. With nearly double the space devoted to entrepreneurship from last year, the startup community continues to grow in visibility at SXSW. From Colorado to Iowa, local innovators outside of Silicon Valley came out to learn, share ideas and disrupt their sectors. UP Global’s Startup Oasis was bustling with pitch competitions and community-centered happy hours.

4. Diversity and Inclusion are Still an Issue 

Diversity has been an ongoing challenge in technology, but many at SXSW are actively calling for inclusion regardless of culture, race and gender. A female founders panel on accelerators and investors noted 88 percent of venture-backed companies have no female leadership. There is a business reason to have diversity and inclusion in entrepreneurship, to bring all voices to the table, said the Case Foundation’s CEO Jean Case at the Kapor Center Diversity Lunch and Pitch Competition. Entrepreneurship shouldn’t just be for the privileged. One way of policing panels for inclusion was the Gender Avenger app that allowed attendees to shame panels that didn’t have any marginalized voices represented.

5. Big Data and Measurement are Driving Innovation  

In the push for impact and transparency, data, metrics and measurement are becoming critical in aiding experimentation and rapidly assessing success. When evaluating our metrics, we see “failures” as a red badge of courage and experimentation, said Tom Nelson, president of Share Our Strength at the Case Foundation’s Be Fearless session. Many other organizations participating at SXSW such as USAID’s innovation lab, which leveraged health data to inform the fight on Ebola; and the ASPCA, which utilized adoption data and visualizations to identify gaps in their adoption programs are actively engaging on the data front as well. Increasingly, more organizations, such as Open Supporter Data Interface are working to form standards for open data and APIs to streamline integration of multiple data sets and development so measurement and evaluation can be easier and more accessible.

Did you spot any other trends from this year’s SXSW? If so, please share with us on Twitter using #CFBlog! See you at SXSW next year!

Changing the Demographics of Investments

Posted on March 17, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

Recent developments in international aid, education and business development are creating significantly positive outcomes for disadvantage women in less economically developed countries and regions. During the last few years in particular, large-scale human rights campaigns and commitments to do more, including: The Millennium Development Goal – Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women; Girl Up; and the US government’s initiative, “Let Girls Learn” have dramatically helped to bolster attention on this issue and increase investments in opportunities for women.

Root Capital is one such investor that has thrown its cap into this arena in a big way, and is the focus of this week’s Spotlight on Social Enterprise from the Case Foundation and Entrpreneur.com, in partnership with ImpactAlpha. This nonprofit is proving the business case for gender equity by capitalizing on loans to farmers associations and agricultural businesses in Africa and Latin America—that empower and promote women in roles traditionally held only by men.

Root Capital directs its investments according to its “gender scorecard,” which uses eight different metrics to measure a borrower’s gender inclusiveness. This organization is also doubling down on returns, both through improved female representation and empowerment in the farming cooperates where they invest and through improved loan repayment rates and more innovation. This nonprofit impact investor values the potential for sizable financial returns in untapped industries and markets that are designed to empower women.

The loans made by Root Capital in farming co-ops and associations are effectively empowering women to take greater ownership over their work and earned income, and allowing them to take over work traditionally assigned to men. However, social and cultural barriers continue to hold these women back, and therefore Root Capital is increasing investments in education programs. The goal here is to ultimately increase female representation in tangential work, including accounting, agrodealing and field inspecting.

The kind of barriers that are supported by tradition can be very difficult to break down or mitigate. One woman, who is making the case for greater gender parity in small farming is Odalis Noeme Guerrero, featured in this week’s Entrepreneur case study. After convincing her father to break tradition and give her a plot of the family’s least productive land, she earned a degree in agronomics and put it to good use first on her slice of land and then eventually on the entire family farm. Guerrero’s agronomics degree helped her family’s coffee farm increase production by approximately 900 percent.

For more on how Root Capital is changing the demographic of agricultural associations and co-ops to empower more women through nontraditional roles, to the betterment of crop yields and investment prospects, see the full case study on Entrepreneur.com.

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Month: March 2015