Founded | 1998 |
---|---|
Founder | Vanessa Kirsch, Founder and Managing Director |
Type | Public charity |
Focus | Venture Philanthropy |
Location | |
Key people
|
Vanessa Kirsch, Founder and Managing Director Doug Borchard, Managing Director |
Employees
|
50+ |
Website | newprofit.org |
New Profit is a nonprofit social innovation organization and venture philanthropy fund based in Boston, Massachusetts, with a mission to increase social mobility by strengthening, connecting and amplifying the best ideas across the nation. With their signature partners and a network of philanthropists, New Profit invests in a portfolio of social entrepreneurs, grows their impact, and drives systemic change in education, youth development, public health, workforce development, and other levers of opportunity. Through convenings, they connect social entrepreneurs with cross-sector leaders and build communities that amplify bold visions and systems-changing agendas that fuel social innovation. Through America Forward, New Profit's nonpartisan public policy platform, these communities drive policy agendas that forge public/private partnerships that can accelerate their impact.
New Profit was founded in 1998 by social entrepreneur Vanessa Kirsch. After starting and growing two nonprofits—Public Allies and the Women's Information Network—Kirsch took a year to travel the world, interviewing social entrepreneurs and citizens across 22 countries. Through this experience, she came to understand that the nonprofit sector lacks sufficient access to second-stage growth capital, locking social entrepreneurs and their funders into a start-up phase mentality. She determined that in order for social entrepreneurs to have the greatest possible impact, they needed access to financial resources that could allow them to sustain and grow their program models.
In 1996, she began laying the groundwork for a venture philanthropy fund that would provide social entrepreneurs and their organizations with funding and valuable strategic consulting services. After over a year of research and development with a team of social entrepreneurs, academics, and philanthropists, Kirsch and a partner founded New Profit in 1998. With support from Monitor Group and under Kirsch's continued leadership, New Profit has worked with 34 nonprofit organizations to date.