New Investee, New Ideas!!

From Guest Writers and Lead Partners:
Scott Chase and Lynn Thorby
Photo from one of the radish gardens that the young men grow
and sell to local chefs.

It was with great excitement that Lynn Thorby and I agreed to be Co-Lead Partners for DSVP’s newest investee, Youth Village Foundation. Having been to Youth Village Foundation as part of the site visit team from the Investment Committee, we knew that the they would welcome our expertise and would be open to new ideas from us.

The Foundation supports programs to educate and train non-violent juvenile offenders who are residents of the Dallas County Youth Village. These programs range from culinary training to dog training and DSVP's networking and engagement resources will enable the Foundation to expand its funding and programmatic sources. The Foundation could also benefit from accounting, strategic planning and board governance skills that DSVP has to offer. These are the skills our partnership is known for and constantly improving. So, our mission at this early stage of the investment is to take those skills and apply them to our newest investee.

As a way to determine how best to deploy our resources, DSVP has the benefit of coordinating an Organizational Assessment for Youth Village Foundation with the Center for Non-Profit Management. The assessment will help determine and prioritize the strategic initiatives that DSVP will engage with on-the-ground.

Next month, we will report on the findings from the Organizational Assessment.

International Philanthropy keeps focus on Social Innovation

Why would a Social Venture Partnership be interested in international philanthropy? Seriously, we are all about the citizen sector engaging in local nonprofits to help address our own community needs...right?

Recently, DSVP had the opportunity to co-host an event with John Wood, of Room to Read (see previous post). His vision is to end global poverty through access to books and education by building libraries and schools in some of the most impoverished regions around the world. He has taken his Microsoft back ground, and modeled his Room to Read mission with the aggressive growth strategy of Starbucks. The result...over 700 schools and over 7,000 libraries in nine countries. His mission is to impact ten million children by the year 2020.

As we look at our own unique challenges within our own back yard, we might question what the opportunity is for us to help support another international mission. I would suggest two reasons why this is important:

1. The work is innovative.
Our own education system is challenging at best. We strive to find new ideas to raise up and move to scale but are frequently slowed down by existing rigid infrastructure and systems. Same with the delivery of our nonprofit missions. We often approach the work with the same old model of building leadership and accessing resources. Room to Read's international education work and delivery of it's mission is proving to be social innovations that are worth learning (and borrowing) from.

2. John Wood is a pioneer social entrepreneur who is doing it right and well.
Although the social entrepreneur movement is almost 20 years old now, there are just a handful who have been working as such for a long enough time for us to learn from their experience. Ten years into his work, John's work is maturing in ways that are giving us all a more in-depth look at best practices. It is certainly worth nurturing into the next phase so we can continue to learn from and glean tools for social entrepreneurship. Indeed, it is important for us to raise up those who are doing it successfully.

Besides, who wouldn't want to help realize a vision..."to solve world poverty within this generation".

Listen to the Podcast!

Room to Read Luncheon

View more presentations from DSVP.

Connecting our world through travel and social entrepreneurship.

This week, Dallas Social Venture Partners, has the honor of hosting international social entrepreneur, John Wood, of Room to Read. A friend to the social venture partner movement, Mr. Wood will be presenting to a number of DSVP Partners alongside other philanthropist and social entrepreneurs in our community on Wednesday. The program was made possible with collaborative support from the Entrepreneurs Foundation of North Texas, The Dallas Foundation, The Communities Foundation of Texas, and Dallas Women's Foundation; and underwriting from Marie Keese Lelash Foundation.

Below are a few entertaining resources to prepare our minds for the discussion. Much of Room to Read's work has taken place in Southeast Asia. So, as a starting point, we begin with some reflections from DSVP Partner Ellen Wood (no relation to John) from a recent trip to Southeast Asia. Then you can see a couple youtube videos about Room to Read's work. And finally, you can look at a couple of recent articles featuring the mission.

Travel Notes.E.Wood.Vietname.Cambodia

View more presentations from DSVP.

"Change Your Life: Devote Yourself to a Cause", Men's Journal- January 12, 2009

"Room to Read's John Wood: Bringing the Power of Education to Children Around the World", Knowledge @ Wharton- December 23, 2008