Unreasonable Institute Launches $150,000 "Village Fund"

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-10-30 10:08:00 UTC
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The Unreasonable Institute has just updated their website with an announcement that they are partnering with First Light Ventures to launch a $150,000 fund for participating entrepreneurs at the upcoming social innovation incubation program. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the money will be allocated not by the venture investors but by the entrepreneurs themselves.

I've been following UI for a while. They're one of the most complete social incubator models I've seen, explicitly taking best practices from programs like Y Combinator and TechStars, which use mentorship, training, and investment to launch new technology startups.

This funding marks a major milestone for the viability of this idea. After spending some time with the folks behind the project, I've been confident about their model of curriculum and mentorship for a while, but there is something fundamentally different about the value they can provide to their entrepreneurs, and in turn, the investment the entrepreneurs are likely to invest in their community.

And community is the operative word. The boldest experiment with this money is that it's to be allocated by the entrepreneurs themselves. The funding will come in a combination of forms from larger unrestricted monies to smaller amounts allocated throughout the program for things like building a website. The precise structures through which the allocation will happen are yet to be announced, but it's clear the emphasis is on putting the power in the hands of people who have intimate knowledge of their peers and their projects.

I think it's a big experiment. I resonate deeply with the notion of redestributing power in the funding equation, and the idea of building deeper community bonds. I also worry about how the introduction of financial resources and the power to allocate it brings out the more competitive, tenacious and destructive tendencies.

No matter what, it's going to produce an incredible amount of learning. I would venture that regardless of what happens, our field will be better off for having tried something new.

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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