As (social) venture capitalists, a question we ask ourselves a lot here at Acumen is how we can go about nurturing and mentoring our investees. One of the challenges we face as a socially driven venture capitalist is how to act as an incubator for our investees that are usually in their early ‘survivor’ stages. Most of our investees are in this stage - usually because they are pioneering products and services that no one has had the audacity to explore before.

A few weeks ago, Acumen Fund Pakistan held an Investee Workshop on Leadership and Talent Building in Early Stage Social Enterprises in an effort to share ideas and creative solutions on one of the most common problems our investees - and indeed most resource constrained enterprises in their survival stages - face: attracting talent. The CEOs of our investee companies attended, along with some of their HR personnel.

The workshop kicked off with self-reflective note from our CEOs.  Many of the activities and group exercises in the early part of the workshop were very insightful in exemplifying the role the participants play as leaders and team players. For example, in one exercise, participants made repeated mistakes.  Their desire to avoid looking foolish led them to mimic those who went before, even though the first participants had not necessarily made the right choice. Realizing that mimicry is common in social and group settings, leaders become cognizant of the rule of ‘leading by example’. Living by your philosophy is the only way to see that culture permeates throughout your organization.

In another activity – this time a timed game of strategy – many of the participants admitted afterwards that they had a hard time relinquishing control. It was apparent how the (sometimes unconscious) reluctance to empower a team undermined the team’s authority, effectiveness, and efficiency and ultimately impeded team motivation and goal achievement.  Ramiz Allawala, our highly talented facilitator, also helped us recognize that there is an ‘internal’ and ‘external’ view to our companies and it is important to have a team member be able to step back and act as a ‘bird’s eye view’ when we are all too busy getting our hands dirty in order to assess the bigger picture.

Another common concern echoed by the CEOs was talent acquisition. Resource constrained social enterprises cannot compete with the compensation packages of larger for-profits, and attracting the right talent is largely a matter of finding creative ways in which to appeal to the social conscience of the talent pool while balancing their needs of professional growth. One of our CEOs added that the problem of talent acquisition is only likely to exacerbate once the economy turns around. Certainly many of us have wondered how instrumental the recession has been in helping social organizations (including Acumen) attract talent.

The ensuing discussion provided valuable insights into thinking how to creatively position the opportunities in an organization. Through shared stories, it became obvious that not only does one have to think of alternative, unorthodox channels to find the right talent, but also creative ways in which to appeal to the talent pool.

For example, Jawad Aslam (2008 Acumen Fellow and current CEO of Ansaar Management Company, a low-income housing development in Lahore) learned the necessity of networking and alternative channel hunting to find candidates that were suitably matched to his organization when he stumbled across a website called www.muppies.org for Muslim Urban Professionals living abroad. Here he had a pool of qualified individuals, who had a vested interest in giving back to their country. In order to appeal to not only their social conscience, but their self interest as well, he devised the position as a 2-year engagement with a high degree of responsibility during which they would be involved in the start-up of his company. In this way he ensured their professional interests were met, and kept it as a short term engagement to attract anyone who might be temporarily out of work due to the recession. In return, AMC will benefit from much needed expertise in its early, most crucial stage.

As the other CEOs chimed in with their experiences, we heaved a collective A-Ha! moment – one of the reasons why our investees have had trouble attracting talent is that the social entrepreneurship space in Pakistan has not found a place in the people’s consciousness yet. There is still ambiguity around it and the community here needs to understand the alternative between the NGO, traditional aid and CSR models of social development (Acumen Fund Pakistan hopes to be instrumental in perpetuating this paradigm shift).

Even as the day wound down, energies were high. We received an overwhelming positive response from the investees regarding their interaction with one another. As one of our CEO’s remarked, there is something great to be gained in hearing your concerns as a social entrepreneur echoed amongst a group of like minded people.

It is worth mentioning that the success of our workshop was largely due to the excellence of our facilitator, Ramiz Allawala of Gulfstone Training, himself an entrepreneur in his past career. Through his experience and background, he was able to relate to the discussion and offer insightful experiences and examples to draw from. A definite takeaway for us was that entrepreneurs appreciate communicating and consulting with other entrepreneurs as they have all experienced similar growing pains, and we should keep this in mind when thinking of the management assistance or mentoring we try to provide for our investees.

The agriculture industry employs 60 percent of the Indian labor force, according to the CIA World Factbook. The backbone of this sector is the small holder farmer, those living off less than five acres and earning on average about 160 INR per person per day (approx $3 USD). While the Green Revolution increased the productivity of the farming sector and helped alleviate some hunger issues in the country, it did little to increase the livelihoods of the farmers.

In fact, within the fruit and vegetable sector today, there is a post-harvest wastage of 20-40% due to many factors: a lack of storage facilities, poor transportation logistics, a complicated web of middlemen, a dearth of quality controls and other critical supply chain inefficiencies.  This means farmers are often unable to fully realize the value of their crops. These issues in the agriculture sector are further thrown into relief by the fact that while India is the second most productive country in the world when it comes to produce variety, quality, and quantity, its total fruit production represents 8% of the world market share and its vegetable production equals only 15%. Illustrating where the inefficiencies hurt India, the Netherlands imports mangoes from Chile, at half the price, despite the fact that Chile is twice as far away.

On the bright side, supply chain inefficiencies and a demand for innovation regarding sourcing are a cries for help - and for creative business models. With these motivations, the Acumen Fund India team has started to build out a strategy and pipeline for investments in the agriculture industry. As a Summer Associate, my first task is to build a detailed case for Acumen’s involvement in the fruit and vegetable market. After a week of office ramp-up (i.e., numerous hours of quality time with the computer), it was time to get on the ground and understand how the kilos of mangoes I’d be consuming since I arrived in India actually got from the small market to my plate.

I jumped into an autorickshaw and headed to Rythu Bazaar in Hyderabad, a government supported market that allows farmers to sell directly to the customer. These bazaars are still relatively new, created to cut through the complicated set of middle men who would eat away profits through commission and price gouging.

My trip to Rythu was a unique opportunity to converse with the farmers and understand better their daily activities. They were open and eager to share their different methods of getting their produce to market.  I was also incredibly humbled to see how hard each of them works. One farmer, selling a variety of greens, described how he starts his day at 4 AM, first harvesting and then bundling the 500 bunches of greens he brings into market. He then carries the large sacks of greens on the back of his motorcycle two to three hours to bring them from his farm to the mundi.

Other farmers bring their produce by local bus, or they rent autos. On a good day, the “greens” farmer – like many others – will have leftovers which either go to hotels or wholesalers at mass discounts or simply get dumped, due to lack of cold storage.  The fact that this food often just goes to waste is tragic considering the high rate of malnutrition in India - especially in many of the surrounding villages. Storage is limited to cheap tarps and large leaves, leaving a day or less before produce spoils in the heat and humidity of monsoon-season Hyderabad.

When pressed on whether they would prefer cold storage however, many of the farmers shook their heads and simply said “No, madam, who wants to sell old vegetables? That’s not how it’s done.” After reading report after report on how important cold storage was and then hearing their stories, this was a good reminder of the difference between understanding needs and wants.

After a little while in the mundi, I had accumulated a little entourage of young farmers who would take me from one friend’s stand to another.  I was handed samples of mangoes, posed for pictures and they answered my questions before I even asked, since they had memorized them.  Then the tables turned and I was grilled on my life in Hyderabad, what I thought of being here, and most importantly, more details on my iPhone, which I was using to take pictures. I left feeling re-energized and committed to helping these entrepreneurial, energetic people find a way to reap more of the fruits of their labor.

The field trip was also an important reminder of how important it is to reconnect with the client, and how much knowledge can be lost if you just spend time behind the desk. It is also clear to me that we have a long road ahead of us as we seek to make an impact in this space - but it is one that won’t be without its rewards.

Last week, I was lucky enough to be involved in a conversation about where Acumen Fund might be in 20 years. We discussed the potential for Acumen to move into new geographies, including potentially investing in the United States. During this discussion, CEO Jacqueline Novogratz made a comment about how “parts of the developing world would look like the developed world and vice versa” in the future.

This comment sparked my memory, and I recalled the Measure of America project, which disaggregates the Human Development Index calculations for the US by state and Congressional district boundaries.  This is an amazing, interactive resource using detailed data and new technology to increase awareness and, in doing so, drive change. Measure of America’s mission “is to stimulate a fact-based public debate about and political attention to human development issues in the U.S. and to empower people to hold elected officials accountable for progress on issues we all care about: health, education, and income.”

The New York Times Economix bloggers covered the project under the title, “Rich Country Within a Poor One“. If you have time, check out some of the interactive maps; you will see the story we all know, but in a much more granular level and with a slick interface that helps you really make sense of the information. What emerges of course is nuance – the US is a “rich country” where so many are poor, so many don’t have access to health care or a quality education.

A colleague of mine purchased the project’s book and sent out this jarring stat about the sharpest social gradient among congressional districts in the U.S.:  “On average, a resident of the Fourteenth Congressional District (Upper East Side) earns two and a half times as much, lives four years longer, is more than seven times as likely to have a college degree, and is four times less likely to be in poverty than a resident of Sixteenth Congressional District (South Bronx)”

The more data we have, the more clearly we see the there are shades of grey, and the better we can target solutions towards those shades of grey using new tools in the development toolbox and not just our old (and often) blunt instruments.  This resonates clearly in the development debate. When Jeffrey Sachs turn his attention towards Bill Easterly and Dambisa Moyo in the Huffington Post he writes about the shades of grey in traditional aid efforts:

“…most Americans know little about the many crucially successful aid efforts, because Moyo, Easterly, and others lump all kinds of programs - the good and the bad - into one big undifferentiated mass, rather than helping people to understand what is working and how it can be expanded, and what is not working, and should therefore be cut back.”

With more data and new technology, we can tell stories in new ways to help people better understand these shades of grey and better target the world’s biggest problems. This, of course, is the game of Hans Rosling, the TED dynamo and Jacqueline’s fellow speaker at TED@State. Every time Hans gets in front of a crowd, he uses the Trendalyzer to dispel our common myths about the developing world. His famous narrative of course is that the third world is on the same trajectory toward health and prosperity as the West was, and a host of countries are moving a lot faster than the West did. In his latest TED talk on HIV/AIDS he said:

“…So, when we look at the pattern, one thing comes out very clearly: you see the blue bubbles and people say HIV is very high in Africa. I would say, HIV is very different in Africa. You’ll find the highest HIV rate in the world in African countries, and yet you’ll find Senegal, down here, the same rate as United States. And you’ll find Madagascar, and you’ll find a lot of African countries about as low as the rest of the world. It’s this terrible simplification that there’s one Africa and things go on in one way in Africa. We have to stop that. It’s not respectful, and it’s not very clever to think that way.“

Acumen Fund is doing it work to show how and when markets work for the poor, and when they don’t. It is showing when and where patient capital is an alternative to pure markets or philanthropic efforts. It is defining the standards of social performance for patient capital with Pulse. And how can we not forget Wold Metrics day! Acumen is working every day in a smarter way. Hans Rosling closes with this call to action and so will I:

“We hope that when we act on global problems in the future we will not only have the heart, we will not only have the money, but we will also use the brain.”

The ideal partner(s) will be equipped to build upon nearly three years of work by Acumen Fund to help bring Pulse to the next level of becoming a sustainable, evolving industry standard tool to measure and track social impact.

Please contact Brad Presner at bpresner@acumenfund.org for more information and to request a copy of the RFP.

Ripple Effect team presenting at the conference

The Ripple Effect team marked the end of the successful India phase of the project by attending and presenting at the recently concluded Water Summit 2009 conference held in New Delhi.

The summit had an excellent turnout with over 150 attendees and speakers representing multiple stakeholders from the water sector in India. These included senior representatives from the Government of India, NGOs, World Economic Forum, UNDP, USAID, SDC, private sector, as well as various State Water Boards and financial institutions.

An introduction to the Ripple Effect project was made by Acumen Fund and IDEO, followed by presentations from four of the organizations running the pilot projects – Jal Bhagirathi Foundation, Naandi Foundation, Piramal Foundation and Water Health India.

All the presentations were very well received by the attendees, who also provided valuable feedback to us. In particular, the technology based work of Piramal and Naandi was complimented by several members of the audience. It was mentioned that while similar ideas had been implemented elsewhere, (eg. by Mother Dairy in India), this approach had not been tested in the water sector until now. One audience member commented that successful projects like they had seen within the Ripple Effect, should be linked to the public sector through policy interventions, in order to reach even greater scale. Yet another, from an international NGO, suggested starting a Ripple Effect like project in sanitation.

Jal Bhagirathi water outlet

During the pilot presentations, Jal Bhagirathi spoke of the successes it had achieved through their public-private-community partnerships model. Their reverse osmosis plant was now selling water to newly established remote water outlets, owned and managed by the community members. The project resulted in improved availability of safe drinking water while providing opportunities for livelihood generation for the women in the village. As a result of this project, the volume of water sold from their reverse osmosis plant, had increased from an average 2000 liters a day to 12,000 liters per day. The location of the outlets had resulted in reducing the distance of access to water from 2 km to under 0.5 km for the community.

In addition, this will be a wonderful opportunity to learn how Acumen Fund has been leveraging social media to share, promote and listen to our extended network of investments, donors and community members.  For more information, please follow us on Twitter, sign up for our newsletter, or join our Facebook group in advance of the talk.

Click for directions to the The Paley Center.

To reserve tickets for the event, please visit the Paley Center web site

And as a final reminder, Jacqueline will be speaking this Wednesday at the 92nd Street Y in conversation with Matthew Bishop of The Economist. Hope to see you there!

With diligence being done, deals being made, communities engaged and the problem of global poverty grappled with, every day in the New York office is exciting.

Knowledge & Communications, where I work, is a growing part of the organization. The department is working to build a community and share knowledge with the aim of extending Acumen Fund’s impact beyond that of its portfolio. Acumen Fund acknowledges that even if its goals are met—$100 million in investments, touching 50 million lives— 98% of the poor will be unaffected by its work. This makes Knowledge & Communications an essential part of the Acumen Fund goal: changing the way we think and talk about poverty.

In truth, however, I’m only part associate. I’m also part human sponge, trying to absorb every last piece of information about growing an enterprise that I can. My first week on the job, I slipped stealthily into conference calls and meetings, blending in best I could.

I found myself in an all-staff Norms meeting on my second day. I couldn’t imagine what could possibly be “normal” about this wonderfully abnormal office, where it seems half the staff is always away in far-off countries working with entrepreneurs and experienced investors choose to invest in companies serving a customer base whom both the governments and the typical private company have deemed too difficult to reach.

“Okay, let’s talk about the kitchen,” was Director of Talent Harry Dellane’s opening. I looked up to see large sheets of white paper covered in what seemed to be a laundry list of rules dictating office behavior.

A rousing conversation began about best practices and lessons learned. It was Refrigerator Management 101! “Wow, these people are really into a tidy kitchen,” was my first thought upon realizing how engaged and articulate everyone was on the subject.

“How do you feel about this norm?” Harry probed. As the conversation continued and the staff hotly debated the best way to keep the sink clean, I smiled and let a brief laugh escape. At my previous offices, there wasn’t a chance in corporate hell that this conversation would have occurred – and even if it did everyone knew just to smile and nod.

What I realized, as the meeting progressed from cell phone use to greening the office, was that this was innovation at its best. Building a truly innovative environment starts with the everyday. By encouraging staff to speak up and share information across departments, you help avoid the “yes, sir,” groupthink culture that can grow within any organization and prevent the best ideas from coming forth.

Innovation is simply a necessity in social enterprises, which seem to ignore the traditional business wisdom by incorporating social returns into their bottom lines. It is particularly important to build this environment in developing countries where entrepreneurship and innovation may be stunted by years of distortionary aid.

This pro-innovation environment is seen in all aspects of Acumen Fund, making working here all the more exciting.  Staffers are encouraged to share knowledge and resources, to develop new ideas and frameworks, to challenge each other and the traditional business wisdom. I didn’t expect to learn a business lesson when I walked into the Norms discussion, but I learned a great one: bottom-up approaches are as important to innovation as they are to poverty alleviation. At Acumen Fund, the culture begins and ends with innovation – from portfolio management to kitchen management.

At the edges of the Thar desert in Rajasthan, in the region of Marwar -The Land of Death- Jal Bhagirathi Foundation, a Ripple Effect pilot awardee, has been working to bring water security to village communities. This is no small challenge in a region where the average annual rainfall is a mere 100-500mm and the water table is declining at a rate of 1-2 meters a year. The focus of communities here is to get access to any water at all – let alone safe water. It is in this environment that JBF has, amongst other water harvesting initiatives, been running a reverse-osmosis treatment plant in Pachpadra, about 100 km from Jodhpur.

Ripple Effect and JBF have been working together to develop a sustainable business model to extend access to safe drinking water to households located at a distance from the RO plant. This model not only aims to meet the water needs of these communities but also to provide a source of empowerment through livelihood provision to the members of local self-help groups.

The model that is being operationalized has water from the reverse-osmosis plant delivered to several distribution outlets run by members of the local self-help group where it is then sold on to other households. By reaching both wholesale and retail users, the output of the plant is being tripled and local incomes increased. The careful and collaborative business planning that went into the model has enhanced its potential for viability and sustainability – costs of operations have been carefully determined; a break-even analysis has been performed; and a tiered pricing strategy implemented.

Planning can, however, only go so far. Critical to the success of this model is the buy-in of the community – water quality was not previously seen as a high priority – and a powerful awareness-raising and marketing campaign was essential. In this area JBF’s passionate work made all the difference. In a few short weeks multiple meetings and discussions were held with self-help groups; market surveys of hundreds of households were completed; individuals selected and trained to run outlets; many hours of physical labour dedicated to gearing the plant to handle the up-scaled operations; and multiple community awareness activities have been undertaken and will continue. It has been most heartening to watch the skeptical village Sarpanch, turn into the foremost champion of the project and lead a rally through the village to announce the work! The local media too has picked up on the work being done and has publicized this swaach (safe) water initiative.

It has been truly remarkable to have been on this journey with JBF and to see the synergies from effective public, private, community partnership. At the time of writing this, the demand of the water at the outlets has already reached twice the initial target!

Matthew is the Chief Business Writer for The Economist and the author of Philanthrocapitalism. His series “The Business of Giving” in partnership with the 92nd Street Y has included onstage interviews with leading figures in the philanthropic world including President Clinton, Vartan Gregorian, Eli Broad and more.

92YTribeca is located at 200 Hudson Street at the corner of Canal and Hudson Streets in New York City.

To reserve tickets for the event, please visit the 92Y web site

Mark your calendars: June 16 (tomorrow) is World Metrics Day! Our declaration of an official World Metrics Day (or WMD, as we’ve been calling it) is a little (well, actually, a lot) tongue in cheek, but Acumen Fund’s commitment to metrics is absolutely serious. Figuring out how to measure social impact has long been a challenge for philanthropists, social investors, practitioners and the development sector. Our focus has been on finding ways to collect, understand and use data to (1) best support the enterprises in which we invest, (2) improve how Acumen Fund works and (3) create common measures for the sector - in that order of importance. (We’ve blogged here before about metrics, on what we like to call cost effective cost effectiveness and our best available charitable option methodology.)

If you follow our work, you know that we’ve been developing a platform called Pulse, discussed in BusinessWeek and The New York Times when it was announced last fall at the Clinton Global Initiative. Pulse helps social investors track, measure, and evaluate operational data to understand whether different approaches to solving the problems of global poverty are working. Although originally designed as a tool to help us manage our own portfolio, we’ve been working with Salesforce.com to make it available for adoption by peer organizations and to share data across the sector. We have also been collaborating with the Rockefeller Foundation, B-Lab, Deloitte and PwC to develop standard definitions of social and environmental performance that can enable comparability across portfolios (for more on this, see www.iris-standards.org). About forty organizations are currently testing Pulse, which we expect to be widely available to nonprofits later this year.

We chose June 16 as World Metrics Day for three reasons. First, last year on June 16th we convened a number of our partners and leading thinkers on the topic at the Rockefeller Foundation to map out our current strategy, and we are simply taking stock of where we have come in the year. Second, it’s Bloomsday, a day notable for its devotees’ commitment (obsession?) to a singular topic, perhaps the least linear novel ever written (Joyce’s Ulysses). Finally, it happens to be my father’s birthday (happy birthday, Dad!). My father is a pathologist and the naming of Pulse was inspired by the autopsy metaphor. Most measurement and evaluation in the social sector is like an autopsy: intrusive, inconclusive and too late to help. We wanted to build a metrics practice that could take the “pulse” of our investments, with simple but meaningful measures that can help us make course corrections real time.

So we will be spending the day thinking about and talking about and, indeed, celebrating metrics. Celebrate with us — June 16 is the first annual World Metrics Day. Remember, count something. and make it count!

Updated 6/18/2009 - thanks to Sara Olsen of SVT Consulting for her great blog post over at Social Edge on World Metrics Day. Count what counts, Sara!

This article really captures the cardinal rule of understanding your customer. The methods include everything from recognizing the cultural context—first approaching the village elders for permission to perform—to using alternative media like live entertainment to grab the new customer. These lessons translate to social enterprises in obvious ways.

Some of our investees have already mastered these creative marketing strategies. Global Easy Water Products’ (GEWP) parent organization, International Development Enterprises – India (IDE-I), has produced a number of short Bollywood movies featuring their KB Drip irrigation products. KB Drip salesmen will arrive at a village market, set up their projector and let the crowd form. Here are two examples of these masterpieces (with English subtitles):

KB Drip video 1

KB Drip video 2

Of course, the devil’s advocate to this article might argue that this type of advertising could be exploitative and persuade poor families (who have limited access to information) to buy things that they do not actually need. Aneel Karnani, a professor at the University of Michigan, has accused our sector of “Romanticizing the Poor” and of exploiting the poor’s “bad choices”. But, it is food for thought on whether you believe a rural poor consumer in India deserves the freedom of choice and whether they are adequately informed to make appropriate consumer choices for themselves and their families.

TED began in 1984 as a conference to bring together leaders in Technology, Entertainment and Design. Since then, it has grown and become a forum for visionaries and innovators, thinkers and doers, to share “ideas worth spreading.” The challenge is to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes and the results have been nothing short of inspirational.

Speakers at the event included social-media analyst Clay Shirky; futurist Stewart Brand; economist Paul Collier; data visionary Hans Rosling; and our own Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO and Founder of Acumen Fund.

This is a thrilling moment for Acumen Fund and for all those working to support social enterprise. It means we are on the Administration’s radar and it means there is an acknowledgement that the traditional top-down approach to aid needs to be rethought.

Jacqueline argued that neither markets nor aid alone will bring an end to global poverty. Instead, she told of the successes created by patient capital and explained how it can provide dignity and hope to the world’s poorest.

“The idea of Patient Capital takes the best of the markets as well as philanthropy and aid. Patient Capital is money invested in entrepreneurs building companies and organizations that solve tough problems like healthcare, water, housing, alternative energy. Expectations for financial returns are lower than market rates. Expectations for social impact are very high.”

In a bold move, she proposed a Global Innovation Fund to invest in local entrepreneurs and civil society leaders. This may have been an outrageous proposal a few years ago. But as the aid debate shifts and as policy officials open their doors, change is in the air and this doesn’t seem so unrealistic.

She ended with a sense of urgency and of hope.

“Now is the moment for all of us to move forward with a spirit of faith, of generosity, of integrity, of perseverance. For it is these qualities for which men and women have always been honored and there is so much to gain.”

Stay tuned for a link to Jacqueline’s Ted@State Talk when made available. In fact, if you haven’t visited the site, do so now. You won’t regret it!

By Aden Van Noppen

“I will develop a social enterprise major on my campus.” “Thousands of incoming freshmen will read the Blue Sweater as their first taste of college.” “We will create a viral video that reaches millions.” “Students will learn about and engage with social enterprise through the online hub we will build.” “We will change the way our generation tackles poverty.”

The seventeen student leaders who took Acumen Fund’s New York office by storm last week committed to accomplishing all these goals and more. Acumen’s inaugural Student Leaders Workshop was meant to ignite the fire under a cohort of young leaders who will return to their campuses in the fall as champions of social enterprise. The workshop and the students exceeded all expectations, and time will tell what they will accomplish together.

History tells us that college students are frequently on the cutting edge of social change. We (as a recent graduate, I still count myself among them) are often unsatisfied with the status quo and have the energy and passion to demand new ways of solving old problems. However, young people today are not protesting or rioting—instead, we are proclaiming ourselves social entrepreneurs and actively searching for the best models to address poverty. The movement for social enterprise is brewing on campuses across the country and the world, and seventeen young global leaders left Acumen Fund’s workshop last weekend inspired and driven to bring it to a new level.

We spent much of the workshop asking ourselves hard questions. What is development? How do we measure poverty alleviation? When can market-based solutions sidestep the barriers of traditional approaches? What is leadership? How do we know when to step forward and when to step back? How do we change the way our generation tackles poverty? There are still more questions than answers, but the participants now look to Acumen as an inspiring model and to each other as a dynamic group of leaders who can continue searching for the answers together.

If the last few days are any indication, their excitement, curiosity, and commitment will continue to grow. Social media tools are buzzing as they stay in touch, collaborate, and strategize. What they accomplish together is still to be seen, but I have no doubt that they will inspire many on their campuses and beyond to question the status quo and embrace a new model of fighting poverty.

In the coming months, the students will demonstrate the power of young people and of building a tribe of individuals who, as Seth Godin told us when he kicked off the workshop, “Decide to say yes.” Two days after leaving, one participant wrote, “The workshop left me with hope and inspiration. I now have a better idea of the field and how it works but most importantly, the workshop gave me the confidence to aspire and dare to dream.” These seventeen leaders will return to their campuses in the fall as extensions of the Acumen Fund team, ready and equipped to support Acumen’s mission to change how the world tackles poverty.

TechnoServe VP for Development Simon Winter speaks at ANDE training. (Photo by Brian Murray)

Last week, along with 40-plus other participants, the Acumen Fund summer associates participated in an energetic and informational training session run by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE).  ANDE is a member-driven organization whose goal is to dramatically increase the effectiveness of capital and technical assistance for entrepreneurs in developing countries.  This training was a definitive step towards that goal.

For the second year in a row, ANDE has organized this training along with Acumen Fund, Root Capital, Grassroots Business Fund, Endeavor and many other members of ANDE.  With the exploding interest in supporting Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs) as a means of alleviating poverty, the importance of coordinating and connecting those entering the field has never been more critical.  Not only was the training immensely important to developing relationships across organizations; it also provided a forum to share best practices and to promote innovative thinking.

The two-day seminar was packed with a discussion of different business models, presentations on social metrics and hands-on case studies.  As if any of the graduate-level interns needed more motivation heading into the sector, the opportunity to hear from amazing speakers such as Christine Eibs Singer from E+Co, Brian Midler and Namrita Kapur from Root Capital, Susie Lee from IGNIA, Raj Kundra, Sasha Dichter and Ann MacDougall from Acumen Fund, Simon Winter and Jennifer Golden from TechnoServe, Ben Powell and Ricardo Teran from Agora Partnerships was inspirational.

I was uplifted to meet our peers who are now heading into the field to countries such as Pakistan, Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, Nicaragua and Guatemala. In particular, I was humbled and inspired by their backgrounds, skill sets and demonstrated passion for the work we will be undertaking.   I hope that this foundation of collaboration is something we all push to continue beyond the training amongst ourselves and by including more people interested in the sector.

My personal highlights were:

• Sasha Dichter’s non-profit Venn Diagram
• Learning more about the Global Impact Investing Network and its mission to educate and drive more investors into the sector
• Quote to inspire by Ben Powell of Agora Partnerships:
  Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success

  ~ Sir Ernest Shackleton’s trans-Antarctic expedition recruitment advertisement

Although not exactly applicable to those of us heading out into the field (safe return = certain), it is a reminder that we all need support, encouragement and community to help us through the hard times when things don’t seem possible and barriers appear impassable.  I’m confident coming out of this training that this community is stronger than ever and I look forward to contributing.

For those of you who were at the training, please feel free to share your highlights in the comments section!

This is a thrilling initiative. First, it underscores to me that many of the world’s new standards are likely going to come from corporations who increasingly see themselves as global citizens. Of course, regulation is critical – and I am not naïve about the damage multi-national corporations can cause to the environment. But this is an important step forward, and I do believe that young people especially will hold companies to a higher standard of behavior and the smartest companies will stay ahead of this curve.

This initiative also excites me because it may provide an algorithm not only for corporations but for all of us. What would it take to influence our individual behavior so that we took the attitude that we give back to the world what we take out of it? We now have sophisticated tools to measure our carbon footprint – therefore, we know what steps could be taken to offset it. The same calculations can be done for water.

We could take this further as well, for example, around luxury consumption. What if we each created some sort of match for ourselves, whereby we would contribute to organizations fighting poverty in proportion for what we spend on luxury consumption? In other words, we would not “charge ourselves” for what we think we need in terms of the essentials (and this figure may vary widely according to overall income, of course). But we might contribute to charity at a rate connected to the very non-essential – not only to make us think about what we’re consuming but also create a different kind of redistribution that would be encouraged not by government taxation but by an individual’s own – but perhaps shared – moral code.

In the early years of Acumen Fund, one of our Partners told me that he was considering buying a Lexus when it hit him that he could, instead, buy a good (but less expensive) car, and give the difference to Acumen Fund. Years later, that gift is one of the most meaningful to me. I saw the partner recently and he told me that after seven years, he’s still driving the car and that every now and then, he smiles to himself thinking about the meaning the particular car enabled him to create. There’s something to this idea…

As I looked around the room at the twenty and thirty somethings who, collectively, cover a wide spectrum of NYC professions ranging from non-profits to multinational banks and corporations, I couldn’t help but think about how Jacqueline had immersed herself in both ends of the spectrum at different junctures of her career path. Jacqueline started her career as an investment banker on Wall Street before becoming the CEO of a global nonprofit social venture fund. The Blue Sweater describes this journey and the personal discovery that we - the rich and the poor - live in an interconnected world.

Since the event, I have reflected on ways in which we young professionals are also connecting with each other while drawing from our diverse backgrounds and resources to achieve the shared mission of making social impact. A network that has impressively grown to over 500 members since its conception about a year ago, YP for Acumen Fund has the potential to harness all this talent and willingness to make positive change in the world. The recurring question of the evening was: “Now that I’m involved with YP, what can I do to help further the cause?” Here are my take-aways:

1. Fundraising - The most direct impact we can make is to support Acumen Fund’s mission by raising funds. During the event, a young professional asked Jacqueline if Acumen Fund ever planned on expanding its investments to other countries (other than its existing portfolio work in East Africa, Pakistan, and India). The answer: it’s part of the vision, but a level of committed funds is needed to do so. With 500+ members in the network, YP can set a goal of raising $50,000 (who doesn’t like goal-setting?) if everyone sets out to donate or raise $100 each. Additionally, there are many opportunities to find creative ways of fundraising (events, more book readings, auctions). If you’re ready, donate here.

2. Voice for Acumen Fund - Jacqueline said it herself: “Being a non-profit allows us to exercise patient capital and focus on changing minds, not just lives, and to experiment.” As a growing network, YP can really make an impact at spreading the message and changing the minds of existing, unproductive assumptions on poverty and poverty alleviation. Acumen’s market-based, bottom-up approach to lifting people out of poverty is a powerful and compelling story that can and should be shared with others.

3. Power of the Acumen Fund Network - Repetition hits it home: we are a network of 500+ members, and this really means something. Whether you are looking for ways to individually connect with others who share your interests or you want to combine resources and exchange ideas to further the Acumen Fund cause, the YP network is tremendously resourceful and can be leveraged to enable these goals. I have always found it invigorating to meet others who share the common goal of working collaboratively to make social impact - big or small - and the YP continues to make this possible.

But no. Instead, you are putting together a spreadsheet tracking each of the local dealers who are going to distribute your low-cost, low-margin product to the base of the pyramid. You have just met 5 dealers in the past six hours plus you plan to meet another 50 in the coming week and your boss (a venture backed entrepreneur) has to report the numbers to his investors by 5pm that day. And by the way, he asked you for the information this morning when he called you on your cell - which barely gets any signal.

This is not the typical role of an ex-Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Stanford MBA graduate normally finds himself playing. So why in the world did this particular individual want to do this kind of work - and what type of leader does it really take to succeed in this field? As the manger of Acumen Fund’s Fellows Program it is my job to know.

So what do I think are the skills needed to succeed in this field? Here are the the “Three R’s” of Social Sector Leadership, which I believe are all necessary ingredients for success and some characteristics that I believe truly differentiate the social sector from others.

1. Resilience: For those of you who are clamoring to get into this sector, I first want to dispel the romantic vision of social entrepreneurship; taking a business to scale in this sector is incredibly hard and takes extraordinary humility, patience, and sheer resilience. Be prepared to bang your head again about 10 doors before you manage to open one. And that data you have to report in a beautiful, McKinsey-style deck is often hidden in tens and hundreds of hand-written ledgers (that’s right - many social enterprises are not IT enabled! There is even one company we know of that has 7 million clients and not a single e-mail account - can you believe it!).

Resilience is not about the physical challenges you will face on a day to day basis (though they are important, too); it is about the emotional battle you will encounter with yourself every day. Most days you will think you are crazy to do this stuff, and your mind will try to convince your heart to quit. A real leader in this sector is one who wakes up every morning ready to battle this fear and goes to bed every night exhausted and fulfilled. So your job as a leader, mentor, friend, fellow, or peer is to encourage each other to keep fighting, because those are the leaders we need. There is a great TED talk up about by Elizabeth Gilbert discussing this issue and the constant battle between your inner demon and genius… check it out.

2. Resourcefulness: I recently heard a presentation by the leadership guru Tony Robbins in which he said too many people spend their time making excuses and that the defining factor for a leader is not resources - it is resourcefulness. This could not be more true for leaders in the social sector. If social sector leaders simply said “sorry, I don’t have the resources to make this happen” we would not see some of today’s leading organizations like LifeSpring, Aravind, Ashoka, Echoing Green, Kashf Foundation - just to name a few.

So I encourage leaders in this sector to create change by reevaluating, reassessing, and re-organizing their resources. Spend your time mapping your assets to understand what you do have and then just go for it.

3. Reflection and Empathy: I cannot emphasize this capability enough. Innovation is a practice of trial and error, and yes there will be errors… many. The leaders that I value most are the ones who take the time learn from their failures not the ones who don’t make any (which of course there are none).

So I encourage young leaders out there to take the time to write in a journal, discuss a thoughtful article, and enjoy the company of your own thoughts. Reflection takes practice and discipline but it will pay off in spades when you find yourself battling the daily challenges of the social sector and it will teach you how to learn from your mistakes and find more innovative and lasting solutions.

And so there you have it - reflections from the Acumen Fund Fellows Manager. Do you have these capabilities? If so, I hope to see your application this fall for the Class of 2011 Fellows Program!!

“This looks just like South Jersey!” In true Acumen fashion, I had an “Aha” moment driving through rural Punjab on the way to see Acumen Pakistan’s newest investment, Jassar Farms. Located two and a half hours outside Lahore in Narowal, the region is surrounded on three sides by India and is only three kilometers from the border. So why did it look like South Jersey? Punjab is the breadbasket of Pakistan with a beautiful sea of green fields on both sides. As we drove deeper into the heart of Punjab, we passed fields of rice and wheat and sugar cane, all sporadically peppered with brick kilns. Even at the farm itself, spread across 250 acres of land, there were fields of sorghum, alfalfa, and corn, all being grown to process into livestock feed at the farm. At the farm, I met up with Shehzad Iqbal, social entrepreneur and CEO of Jassar Farms who had a thing or two to share about dairy farming in Pakistan and the social impact of this new line of business. Jassar Farms is a corporate dairy farming business focused on dairy and breed improvement of poor livestock farmers aiming to increase milk productivity. Here are a few interesting facts about dairy farming in Pakistan:

• Pakistan is the 5th largest producer of milk worldwide, yet one cow has the productivity level of only 1/5th of a Western cow.
• On average, the milk production of one cow is approximately 1,800 liters of milk per year.
• As a comparison, one western cow has a milk yield in the range of 8000 – 10000 liters per year.
• In the normal 9-10 year lifespan of a cow, she can give birth 9 times in her lifecycle and is lactating 270 - 305 days per year.
• The milk producing livestock in Pakistan is divided almost equally between buffalo and cow. Pakistan is among the top producers of buffalo milk globally but herds most commonly suffer from poor farm care, poor quality feed and lack breed improvement. While buffalo breed improvement could reap great benefits, breed enhancement through artificial insemination has been less studied in buffalos as compared to cows, worldwide.
• Through experiments in artificial insemination and other methods of livestock breed enhancement, there is strong potential to improve the gene pool of cattle offspring.
• If a cow is on average producing 1,800 liters of milk per year and it is artificially inseminated with a bull who’s mother and grandmother averaged, were producing for example, 10,000 liters of milk per year, then the cow’s female offspring will have the genetic potential to produce the average of the two (10,000 + 1,800)/2 = 5,900) and thereby slowly improve the milk production capability generationally.

This is where Shahzad really explained the social impact of the business idea. In the Pakistan agriculture sector, over 75% of livestock owners are poor farmers owning less than four cows.

The cost of importing high quality bull semen doses costs between $75-$100 and is essentially unaffordable to rural, dairy farmers who own 2-5 cows per household. Shahzad gave the example of a local farmer, Mohammad Butta, who owns two cows and has a family of five. Mohammad milks the cows in the morning and then sets off to work his fields. With a family of five and a household income of $75 per month, he cannot afford the high cost of imported semen dosages. So by producing semen doses locally and making it affordable to the rural livestock farmer, Jassar Farms has the potential to increase incomes of farmers from increased milk yields.

This is the first Acumen Fund investment in agriculture and specifically in the livestock and diary space and it will be interesting to see the value and impact this new business innovation may yield.

We are excited to share that D.Light Design, one of Acumen Fund’s portfolio companies, has been nominated as a finalist for TiEcon 2009’s 50 “Hot Emerging Companies” award. From among 1,200 nominees, finalists have undergone a rigorous screening process by TiE’s industry judges. D.Light Design’s mission is to deliver safe and affordable lighting and power solutions to households that lack reliable energy supply. It is exciting to see a social enterprise be considered as a peer among fast-growth commercial companies. This is evidence of the potential to for companies to achieve scale and profitability, while having a material impact on the quality of life of the poor.

The TiE Awards will be decided by collective voices. Voting closes tomorrow on May 7, 2009. We encourage our community to get involved-vote for D.Light Design and other innovative new Indian companies.

I am one of about 12 individuals sitting around the conference breakout table. We are a diverse mix of organizations, foundations and generations but we’re all asking Scott Harrison of charity:water and Donna Callejon of GlobalGiving the same question: how do we use social media to get our message ‘out there’. Just because we can, should all foundations and charitable organizations be creating social media strategies?

When asked how to measure the cost benefit of investing in a social media strategy, our own Tactical Philanthropy panelist Sean Stannard-Stockton responded to this question by asking “Does your foundation have a unique approach to poverty alleviation?” If you believe you have a unique method to influence change, you increase your impact merely by spreading that idea.

The problem with this, especially for the more traditional charities and foundations here at the Council on Foundations conference, is that when you decide to leverage social media tools (and that’s all they are, tools) to spread your idea, you relinquish full control of that message.

Scott Harrison uses this to his advantage. charity:water uses a powerful media strategy to engage people by telling stories which drive interest in their work and communities. By partnering with major media outlets they’ve managed to ‘get the word out’ but not to always control the direction of the message. But hey, 25million viewers via American Idol is pretty unbeatable. This method only works when you have strong, compelling content to begin with, something many non-profits struggle with.

“It’s easier to be a two year old organization launching into the social media space, they’ve come in on the wave” Donna reminds us. As I look around the table of staff from more established foundations searching for ways to leverage social media tools to connect with the next generation or turn interest into donations or to connect donors to the recipients on the ground I think: enlist the next generation to teach you about your message and how they want to be engaged; find your community’s evangelists and give them something specific to share; and finally tell stories, real stories of true impact. Hopefully then the myth around how to use social media tools becomes trumped with the knowledge of why you want to get your message out there. Or just don’t do it at all.

A tiny bead of sweat ran down the ridge of my nose.  It reached the end, teetered for a split second, then dropped quietly onto the doctor’s desk.  I sat behind the desk, inside the Vijay Nagar Women of India clinic, which is tucked into a government-built housing project in the Bandra East area of Mumbai.  As the sweat hit the desk, it made a soft splat, and little Natra’s eyes followed it down.  About 3 years old, he seemed pretty interested in the inability of this strange white man to deal with the Mumbai heat – not surprising, all things considered.

Natra and his mother, Surekha, had agreed to take a survey about healthcare administered by Acumen Fund Fellow Joanna Harries and her colleague, Rubina Dsouza.  Joanna and Rubina work for Dial 1298 for Ambulance, a professionally-run, high quality ambulance service run in Mumbai (51 ambulances) and Kerala (30 ambulances). You dial 1298 to get a fully-equipped ambulance with doctor and medical equipment on-board.  1298 is affiliated with the Ambulance Access for All Foundation, whose mission is to provide high-quality service for all Indians, regardless of income. 

But will poor Indians call an ambulance?  That’s what Joanna and Rubina are working to find out.  Service for all is not only a noble goal, it’s good business as well – after all, some 40 to 60 percent of Mumbaikers live below the poverty line, in slums.  If you fail to serve this customer segment, you miss a huge number of calls – and your ambulances can run below capacity.

Effectively serving this market begins with listening, and that’s what Joanna and Rubina are doing.  They have been spending time visiting various Women of India clinics, all of which are located in slum areas, and asking a simple, 5-question survey: what do you do when you get sick?; how do you get to the hospital?; which (if any) ambulances do you call?; why wouldn’t you call an ambulance?; who helps you when you get sick?

Joanna and Rubina and I did eight surveys today, just the tip of the iceberg.  What is interesting is that 1298 takes its commitment to the low-income segments seriously – both in terms of social impact and in terms of business sense.  The company is marketing in a number of innovative ways – tying up with schools, hospitals, train stations, and more.  Slum outreach is an element of their business plan.  Regardless of income level, growing 1298’s customer base is an awareness game – call it marketing, brand management, outreach, whatever – you have to have potential customers know about your service before you earn their business.