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Social
Venture Investment
Currently there exists
an underdeveloped market of resources and support to launch and spread
social ideas. Social ideas do not spread nearly as quickly as news or
business innovation. Change agents face challenges in scaling up
efficiently. Further, there is a lack of support services to initiate,
evaluate and grow the most effective ideas.
Global Grassroots offers
venture development support to teams who have participated in the
Social Entrepreneurship Training
and are interested in implementing social change projects. Where possible,
teams are connected to local microfinance resources, and new ventures are
evaluated for Global Grassroots investment based on defined
Target Investment Criteria. Global
Grassroots seeks ideas with a measurable impact significantly greater than
traditional solutions and prefers those which offer additional
opportunities for replication. Priority is also given to ideas that are
able to rely upon a local citizen base of support and/or generate
self-sustaining sources of revenue.
Once an idea is chosen for
launch, Global Grassroots works to develop strategic partnerships with
local, national and international partners to weave together an
infrastructure of collaborative investment as well as support services
including business consulting, training, in-kind and other resource
contributions, media coverage, volunteers, access to advocacy groups, etc.
When possible, financing is structured as a joint-investment of all core
stakeholders to cover the start-up and short-term operating costs of the
new entity. Evaluation metrics and ongoing assessment processes are
incorporated into the operations phase to ensure the development of a
strong organization. |
