Social Venture Planning Tips for Venture Concept Development

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Social Venture PlanningTips for Venture Concept
Development

• NYU Sterns 5th Annual Social Venture Competition
• Entrepreneurs Bootcamp
• October 5, 2008
• Jill Kickul, Ph.D., DirectorStewart Satter
  Program in Social Entrepreneurship

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Whats the difference?

• Social ventures have a double bottom line.
  While all businesses have a conventional bottom
  line to measure their fiscal performancefinancial
  profit or losssocial ventures also seek a
  second bottom line of positive social impact.

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Common Challenge 1 Problem and solution are
misaligned

• Clearly state the social problem you wish to
  solve.
• Articulate how your venture will actually help to
  solve that problem.
• Example Charter schools Offering parents
  students choice in public schools creates
  competition, which will spur innovation and lead
  to higher performing schools and better
  educational outcomes.

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Common Challenge 2Impact is not significant

• So what? Who cares?
• How will people be impacted by your venture?
• Do not just describe a process or activity or
  provide us with the number of people
  participating in something.
• Identify significant quantifiable changes in the
  following
• Economic value
• Environmental quality
• Social well-being
• Health or quality of life
• See Center for What Works.org

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Common Challenge 3 Venture is not scalable

• The venture need not be initiated as a large
  venture unless that is appropriate. However, we
  do not view favorably the small venture that
  lacks a vision for growth.
• We want to support ventures that create
  significant, systemic change over time.
• Once you have proof of concept how will you move
  beyond serving a small group?

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Common Challenge 4Venture is not profitable or
sustainable

• If you receive seed funding through the NYU Stern
  Business Plan Competition, where will you get the
  next round?
• Who will pay you for your goods or services and
  why?
• A quality product, a needed product, an
  inexpensive product is not enough. How will your
  venture be sustained?

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What is a Theory of Change

• Based on your understanding of the problem, what
  is your theory about which actions will lead to
  the results you want to achieve?
• A Theory of Change offers a clear roadmap to
  achieving results by identifying the
  preconditions, pathways, and interventions
  necessary for an initiatives success.
• Its a statement about causality.

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Theory of Change and Social Value Creation

• 4 elements need to measure social value creation

Inputs - resources invested in your
activity Outputs - the direct and tangible
products from the activity.
i.e. people trained, trees planted, products
sold Outcomes - changes to people resulting from
the activity. i.e. a new job, increased
income, improved stability in life Impact
Outcomes less an estimate of what would have
happened anyway
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Tools to Measure Social Impact

• Social Return On Investment (SROI)
• SROI is a way to measure social outputs, outcomes
  and impact.
• SROI indicates the value of the social impact in
  financial terms
• SROI is a tool to assessing the monetary value of
  some of the social impact

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Start by answering these questions

• What social problem will you address? Why is it a
  pressing problem? What is the scale of the
  problem? What would the world look like if you
  solved it?
• How will you solve this problem? What are the
  core aspects of the venture that will address the
  problem?
• What social benefit will ensue from the work of
  the program. How will you be able to observe this
  benefit?

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Examples

• Habitat for Humanity Providing families with
  simple, decent, affordable housing will break the
  cycle of generational poverty.
• Low Cost Eyeglasses Delivering affordable
  corrective eyewear to the 1 billion people in the
  developing world who need it and cant get it
  will raise the standard of living in those
  countries through enhanced educational and
  employment opportunities for the wearers.

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Stern Business Plan Example

• SimulTel
• 33 million U.S. residents are foreign-born. 21
  million are LEP, a growth of 50 over the last
  decade. 22 of New York Citys population is
  LEP. Language barriers seriously hamper access
  to, and quality of, health care. Current
  strategies to overcome the language barrier are
  inadequate and inappropriate. Numerous federal
  and state laws mandate linguistic access in
  health care settings. However, only 48 of LEP
  persons report that they usually have an
  interpreter and only 1 of interpreted encounters
  involve the use of trained medical interpreters.
  The use of inexperienced interpreters, such as
  family members, can have severe health
  consequences, including missed diagnoses,
  unnecessary surgeries and improper use of
  medication. The past four years have seen
  increased enforcement of federal and state
  statute on the provision of oral interpreting
  services. There are over 100 million ER visits,
  inpatient hospital visits, outpatient physician
  visits, and dental visits per year with LEP
  persons. However, there is a limited pool of
  competent interpreters to meet this need.
  SimulTel not only addresses a significant public
  health concern, but also services a large and
  growing market need.

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Exercise

• Take ten minutes to answer the following
  questions about your venture
• What social problem will you address?
• How will you solve this problem?

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Tools

• BluePrint Workbook Blue Ridge Foundation New
  York, Resource Bank (www.brfny.org)
• Venture Philanthropy Partners (http//www.vppartne
  rs.org/)
• Global Social Venture Competition
  (http//socialvc.net)
• Theory of Change (http//www.theoryofchange.org/)