Starting Gun for New Class of Social Entrepreneurs

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2010-01-21 12:41:00 UTC
Topics:

The innovative West Coast Village Capital fund has just announced its very first class of social entrepreneurs. These 22 young organizations range from tech to housing to employment, all of which share a concern not just with making money, but doing good. Now, they just have to convince their peers that they're the best choice for investment.

Organized by Gray Ghost Ventures and hosted in the Bay Area by the Hub, the West Coast Village Capital fund is an exciting part of a trend toward new strategies that offer seed funding to social ventures. As I wrote when I predicted that creativity in seed funding would be the top trend in social entrepreneurship this year, a lack of early money for for-profit social ventures has artificially pushed young entrepreneurs down the nonprofit route for too long.

The Village Capital fund -- running in slightly different versions in India, New Orleans, the Bay Area and soon at the Unreasonable Institute in Boulder -- is taking a stab at this problem. They're doing this by adapting the social support model of village-based microlending to the entrepreneurship community. Basically, Village Capital funds each use a model that involves entrepreneurs working closely in groups for a period of months, which each have the power to allocate the capital at stake among themselves. It's a fascinating experiment, and a promising approach to one of the key problems for seed stage deals -- the high cost of due diligence.

The 22 groups selected for the West Coast version of the program are now getting ready to coalesce into groups of five or six. The entrepreneurs will then spend the next eight weeks or so working on their ventures, while meeting to share tips, ideas, and resources at least once a week. At the end, each group gets to allocate $25,000 to another set of entrepreneurs, and then, internally, the groups will collectively determine who gets the other $75,000.

There are some great ideas among the 22 participating organizations. Catchafire is a company after my own heart, trying to connect nonprofits and volunteers based on their evolving assets and needs. I'm fascinated by WorkerExpress.com, which is trying to reinvent the way day laborers and employers connect, replacing waiting on the corner with the use of SMS messages. And I'm always excited to see groups like Performio trying to better harness web interfaces to improve student achievement and love of learning.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this program evolves. For now, you can read more about it on the West Coast Village Capital Fund homepage.

Photo Credit: Luxamart

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Buy An iPhone App, Help Save Lives
NEXT STORY:
Facing Forward: The End of the Social Entrepreneurship Blog on Change.org

COMMENTS (0)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.