Another Milestone...and we're just getting started!

I've got to say, as excited as I am about FFF's rapid development, I feel a little bittersweet as our pilot training program comes to an end with the conclusion of BGIA's "Global Social Entrepreneurship & Strategic Philanthropy" semester course. How can we be winding down? We're just getting started! The students have come so far in their study and practice of social investment. Now, all their hard work culminates this Thursday, May 14th, as the FFF Portfolio Student Directors (13 BGIA students from six countries) present the final youth-to-youth investment selections for their portfolio teams.

Seems like there've been weekly highlights and milestones:

• launching FFF w/former President Clinton at CGIU,
• visits to Acumen Fund, Echoing Green, the Action Center;
• inspiring guest speakers
• a NYC youth-to-youth Investor Pitch,
• a virtual investor pitch featuring entrepreneurs online from Ann Arbor, MI to my hometown, Portland, OR.

And it seems like every week, new potential partners emerge (from New Delhi to New York), new challenges surface (from capitalizing the fund to managing growth strategy), and we're figuring out ways to do things differently (and hopefully better, next time) as we develop and refine FFF's social investment model.

Throughout their semester-long academic training program, the Portfolio Student Directors have been considering 14 youth-led social ventures for FFF youth-to-youth social investment. Nominated by four of our Pipeline Partners (this round: Clinton Global Initiative, Global Engagement Summit, NYWomen Social Entrepreneurs, and Teach for America), these investment opportunities address one or more of our four portfolio global social priorities: Poverty Alleviation, Public Health, Climate Change & Energy, and Human Rights & Peace. I can't wait to see what they come up with Thursday. And can't wait to continue working together well beyond the end of this semester. As the poet Tony Hoagland says, "What I thought was an end, turned out to be a middle." And we've only just begun!

Launching FFF at CGIU with a push and a pull

Over President’s Day weekend, the Fast Forward Fund will be launched at the Clinton Global Initiative University, amidst a gathering of those people who most inspire FFF: young adults making bold “Commitments to Action” that tackle the greatest global challenges we face today. While CGIU promises to catalyze a new generation of social entrepreneurs, FFF promises to create a new generation of social investors directing philanthropic capital and partnership to youth-led social innovation. Arriving on the heels of the awesome TED conference and just weeks into the new Obama Administration, the 2nd annual CGIU heralds a historic moment of global social change, imperative, and opportunity. While times like these compel us to look at our leaders for inspiration, CGIU & the FFF remind us that we must also look at each other, and at ourselves.

Who inspires you? When we think about who inspires social change, great names come to mind: historic leaders and heroes, philosophers and visionaries, activists and martyrs, writers and artists. But when you consider who really shapes your personal approach to making a difference in the world, very often it’s someone far closer to home: a working mom or step-father, a 2nd grade teacher, a wise co-worker, a childhood friend, your first love. Someone who’s life has personally touched yours.

An old family friend and mentor of mine, Don Gould, “Uncle Donny” to me, was a huge figure in my young adult life, at 6’4” literally towering over my 5’1.75” frame (all people under 5’2” know their height to an eighth of an inch!). He used to talk about needing both “a push and a pull” to create real social change, whether that plays out in your personal life, your professional arena, or the wider world around you. The push for change comes from the challenges, trials, problems and unsolved puzzles that keep you up at night. The pull comes from the opportunities, dreams, visions, hopes, and possibilities that get you up in the morning. Of all the lessons he taught me, this “push-pull” dynamic is the one I keep recalling as I consider what it takes to be an effective social investor, what it might take to drive the global social agenda today.

I see this push-pull dynamic emerge as a common theme underlying the successful social change-makers profiled in Elkington & Hartigan’s book, The Power of Unreasonable People. These social entrepreneurs transform global challenges (that’s the “push”) into market opportunities (that’s the “pull”), corresponding to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. Looking through a Fast Forward Fund lens, these opportunities cultivate the field of social investments we’ll be considering as FFF builds up its portfolios this year in four areas: climate change and energy, global health, poverty alleviation, and human rights & peace.

As you consider social investment opportunities, ask yourself this: what is your push and what is your pull? What keeps you up at night, and what gets you up in the morning? Let us know! We want to hear from you. How you answer these questions may serve to guide you well in deciding where and how to direct your social investments, and guide us as we shape the Fast Forward Fund and prepare to launch at CGIU.

SRI: Integrity & The Unasked Question

Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) is a hot topic, made hotter by the vision of an Obama-inspired era of service coupled with the reverberating shock waves of devastating financial crisis. In case there was any doubt, the recent panel “Different Faces of Socially Responsible Investment” (presented by New York Women Social Entrepreneurs held at Columbia University) attracted a highly engaged, standing-room only crowd, even on an icy cold, January, NYC weeknight. Two thoughts linger from our discussion:

• there’s no substitute for integrity, and
• the best question was the one not asked.

Let’s start with the unasked question.
Funny thing is, while I loved participating as one of the “faces of SRI” on the panel, at times I wondered if I was in the right place, or if the panel had the right name. Why? Because our start-up, the Fast Forward Fund, isn't an SRI fund; FFF is a youth Social Investment venture. What’s the difference? SRI is a financial investment strategy; “social investment” is a philanthropic strategy. So, while I jumped in and enjoyed the provocative discussion swirling around the question of what is a socially responsible investment, here’s what we didn’t ask: what is a responsible social investment?

The distinctions between socially responsible investments and social investments may blur or overlap, especially as new investment models emerge and merge. But for now, I think the question of what makes a financial investment socially responsible is fundamentally different from what makes philanthropy responsible. It’s the latter that grabs me. How do you know if a social investment is responsible?

I suggest looking at three things: the soundness of social investment vehicle itself, compatibility with social investor profile, and (perhaps, most importantly and elusively) integrity.

First of all, know where your social investment goes. We have more capacity than ever today to assess the operational, financial, and social soundness of social investments. Online tools like Guidestar, Charity Navigator, and other hubs of nonprofit management information, offer good, though limited (and potentially contorted) snap-shots of organizations in the social sector. Responsible social investments consider available information from primary and secondary sources indicating how effectively the operation is run, how impact is measured, how finances are managed, how an organization is developed and how it is responsive to its mission and stakeholders.

Secondly, know who you are, or want to be, as a social investor. I say “social investor” rather than “philanthropist” here because I want to emphasize that the way we give, the way we direct capital to social causes, is a real investment with real returns and real impact. As social investors, we need to choose social investments reflecting our own investor profiles. Just as financial portfolios reflect investor profile in terms of capacity, style, risk threshold, financial goals, etc., so should social investment portfolios. Responsible social investments match investor interests, capacity, style, commitment, engagement, and philanthropic goals.

Finally, the heart of responsible social investment comes down to integrity. I raised this issue as the panel discussed governance and how we ensure that we’re doing the best work we can do as social entrepreneurs. While we talked about the challenges and importance transparency, leadership development, internal performance measurements, benchmarks and other governance metrics, I suggested there was another piece that may be even harder to address: we really need to talk about integrity. While perhaps immeasurable in quantifiable terms, integrity in governance is indispensable to doing your best work in social investment. Most of us recognize its quality when it is present, and notice when it is absent. Integrity is more than workplace ethics, though that’s essential, too. It’s about bringing a sense of wholeness to our work, and deriving a sense of respect, creativity, growth and fulfillment. The integrity of social investment establishes its reputation, enhancing its ability to recruit talent, attract investors, forge collaborative partnerships, and optimize social impact. Thinking about what is responsible social investment brings me back to my other key take-away: there’s just no substitute for integrity.