During 2008, Social Venture Partners is investing in social entrepreneurs who serve the developmental and educational needs of children pre-natal to age five and their parents. Social Venture Partners will consider investing in early childhood development organizations that meet the following attributes. They must:

Demonstrate they are an entrepreneurial organization lead by a visionary social entrepreneur. The social entrepreneurial organization:

• Is inspired to change a social problem
  
• Acts innovatively to create a new solution to the social problem
  
• Takes direct action by creating new organizations, services, or markets
• Demonstrates courage and persistence and bears the risks of innovation
• Has a workable plan to move from vision to reality
• Creates demonstrable social benefit through the value proposition they pursue

Be committed to growing their organization and expanding their reach to new markets, geographic areas, or larger numbers of customers served.

Be beyond the ‘proof-of-concept’ stage of development and have an operating history with some form of evaluation that demonstrates results. While most of our investees are earlier stage organizations, large, established nonprofits with new and innovative approaches will also be considered if the work they seek support for meets all the other criteria listed in these guidelines.

Seek capacity building assistance as well as financial assistance. Social Venture Partner’s investment in the investee is a ‘package deal’ in that we provide both financial investment and technical assistance to improve the organizational capacity of the investee. We define capacity building as efforts that improve an organization’s ability to achieve its mission and could include such things as marketing, strategic and business planning, financial analysis, human resource systems, product development, information technology, or executive coaching for investee managers. Proposals that are most clear about what capacity building assistance is requested have a much better chance of being selected for investment.

Additionally, while collaboration with other organizations is not a requirement we welcome proposals that seek support for such work. Collaboration can include joint ventures, mergers, shared services, and other projects that combine and leverage one organization’s resources with another’s.