As the old saying goes, “from clogs to clogs is only three generations”. Throughout the ages, the circumstances of many families have already manifested this rule: the inheritance of wealth could hardly sustain without the inheritance of family core value. If a family keeps good traditions, family rules and mottos, and pass on from generation to generation, the family could keep its prosperity despite ups and downs.
Introduction: For slightly over 6 years since it was first founded, a grant-making NGO in the Pearl River Delta area has dedicated to support grassroots NGOs and community’s commonweal innovation. Its area of involvement has been extended from pure community poverty alleviation to 5 other areas including floating population care and environment protection. While the organization is striving to cover a variety of charitable areas, various issues have been exposed due to inadequate resource allocation. The limited human, financial and time resources created obstacles for knowledge storage; and hence the grassroots NGOs’ demand for network collaboration, academic, and government resources under common topics cannot be resolved.
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?
My dear friends,
In review of 2014, I feel most excited to welcome 5 new talents to have joined Venture Avenue’s social consulting / investing team. While they came from diverse backgrounds, from financial service to private foundation, they all share VA’s passion since its establishment 5 years ago: to empower China’s philanthropy with independent evaluation, strategic planning and impact investing.
On Mar 27, the British Council successfully concluded its second Social Investment Platform (SIP) of the Social Enterprise Program. SIP this year has gathered 9 social investors, including Yu Venture Philanthropy Fund (Yu VP). Since its opening for application last September, the platform has attracted a total of 434 interested parties.
Family foundations have a long history and extensive social influences worldwide. Compared with other charitable foundations, family foundations are more flexible due to the relatively low transparency requirement, few administrative constraints, and resistance against economic fluctuations. Therefore, family foundations are more capable of taking risks and being patient when seeking for solutions to social and environmental problems.
“Nearly every problem has been solved by someone. The challenge of 21st century is to find what works and then scales it up.”
—— Bill Clinton, Former U.S. President
This is especially true for China, where an increasing number of social enterprises (SE) have emerged over the past decade. How many of them work? Are they ready to scale up?
Within the past few years, companies, both local and multi-national, have begun to invest on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to enhance their competitiveness. What are the CSR initiatives and projects featured with? Have they reached meaningful impact? Are they going to sustain in the future? This article provides VA’s observation on these questions in the hope that CSR practitioners can better structure the project portfolio and make customized strategic plans.
Note: companies and industries mentioned in the following article are defined within the scope of innovative business models aiming for social and environmental impact.
Along with the rising attention towards public benefits, people start to rethink how to transform such attention into practice. Consequently, an increasing number of interesting social innovation business models (SIBM) has emerged. In B2C business, SIBMs are often faced with similar challenges. The root cause of these challenges is a lack of understanding of different levels of market demand.
Following the article Challenges Faced by Family Foundations in China in last VA newsletter, VA team worked with the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA) to conduct a research on international family foundations, in collaboration. By digging into the first-hand and second-hand information about numerous leading international family foundations worldwide, we have observed some tested key success factors. These will respond to the three challenges previously mentioned and hopefully provide good references to family foundations in China.