July 13, 2000 | Read Time: 1 minute
Social Purpose Enterprises and Venture Philanthropy in the New Millennium
This three-volume set from the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund, in San Francisco, sheds light on so-called “social-purpose” organizations: profit-making ventures that are owned and operated by non-profit groups for the express purpose of employing poor people or workers in need of job training.
Volume 1: Practitioner Perspectives offers the views of executive directors and business managers of organizations financed by the Roberts Foundation, the parent of the R.E.D.F.. Chapters recount their experiences developing ideas, training staff members and workers, and tracking costs.
Volume 2: Investor Perspectives is the largest of the three books, analyzing the ways in which grant makers measured the results of their investments, and what their experiences portend for the broader field of “venture philanthropy.”
Volume 3: Practitioner Profiles provides a look at six businesses supported by the R.E.D.F.. Organizations include Juma Ventures, which recruited young adults to sell ice cream, and Community Vocational Enterprises, a group that hires people with mental illnesses to be janitors at sites around San Francisco.
The common thread in all three volumes is a call to do more with the venture-philanthropy model. “It is imperative those active in the non-profit sector move to achieve greater, demonstrated success in our field,” concludes Jed Emerson, executive director of the R.E.D.F..
Publisher: Roberts Enterprise Development Fund, P.O. Box 29266, San Francisco, Calif. 94129-0266; (415) 561-6677; boxset@redf.org; http://www.redf.org; 416 pages; $35.
