VA
Insights

My dear friends,

Colorful lights blinking in Christmas trees, flight crew wearing Santa’s red hats – all these seasonal factors are telling us that 2016 is already at the corner. It is another time for us to sit back, reflect and celebrate: what have we accomplished in 2015?

In 2015, probably the biggest milestone for VA was the launch of Social Innovation Hub at Tsinghua x-lab in July. VA and Yu Fund now have our incubator for young social entrepreneurs. Within 3 months since the launch, we have already concluded our first investment on a social enterprise: Tongchuang. In next 3 years, we look forward to working with over 50 young social entrepreneurs, together with our 4 founding partners: Narada Foundation, Dunhe Foundation, More Love Foundation, and China Youth Development Foundation.

Other highlights of VA’s major achievements in 2015 are:

 We continuously worked with Laoniu Foundation on evaluating their 5 strategic projects in 3 issue areas: early education, environment conservation and poverty alleviation. In review of their past legacy, we feel excited to help this China family foundation’s first brand to transit to their new strategies, which we helped shape up in 2014.

 While South China has seen more active civil developments in recent years, VA is proud to have played an instrumental role in shaping strategies for change makers from charitable foundations, entrepreneurs, and government. We enjoyed working on high impact topics, such as building a stronger international brand for the City of Shenzhen, and enabling a healthier environment for grassroots NGOs to thrive in community services.

 We made continuous efforts in shaping up “strategic CSR” with most innovative CSR players. We worked with Nike and One Foundation on their joint program to engage active runners in public charities, and we supported a medical equipment manufacturer to successfully tap into the completely new “non-profit” market. We are glad to see our new CSR strategy is both creating business values, and making the social impact more sustainable. 

VA has successfully completed 260 projects in China’s civil sector in last 6 years. What will VA become in the future? Instead of answering this question,I would rather picture what I see everyone in VA team will become in next 5 years: everyone will work on fun and high-impact topics as exemplified above,they will strike a perfect work/life balance with decent pay, and each of them will be a “portfolio manager” for social enterprises that have been invested by Yu Fund and Social Innovation Hub.

What VA ultimately will tell is simple – Philanthropy needs more than a heart, but also independent voice and professionalism.

We look forward to having you along with us in 2016!

Happy Holidays!

Robin Zhang