July 27th 2016
by Martina Mettgenberg Lemiere
To help funders get started and become better at core practices of VP/SI such as Impact Assessment, Capacity Building and Social Incubation, AVPN has, with the Guide to Effective Impact Assessment, the Guide to Effective Capacity Building and the Effective Social Incubation report, published three reports with actionable insights.
The Guide to Effective Impact Assessment distils practices in the four areas of getting started, learning from existing frameworks, implementation and presentation. According to AVPN research, these areas present hurdles to social investors’ approach in impact assessment and the guide presents a synthesis of literature and 13 portraits of Asian impact assessment leaders. Through its hands-on bibliography split into overview reports for general information, cases to provide specific examples and finally practical advice and guidance, the report allows readers to go beyond and deeper.
Another guide is on what AVPN calls capacity building. AVPN has worked on capturing ways to deliver capacity building and developed the Capacity Building Canvas to help organisations track their approach. The Guide to Effective Capacity Building builds on 10 in-depth case studies from diverse funders and presents an analysis of best practices in determining what is needed, structuring delivery and assessing the impact of capacity building. In the same practice area, the Social Incubation report offers first insights into 15 social incubators’ effectiveness, operations, program content and human capital. Fundamentally this report, published in partnership with DBS Foundation Singapore, finds that social incubators in Asia appear to help social enterprises progress from idea to growth and allow on average 47% of graduates to secure follow-on funding for their growth journey.
Now there are two next steps for the Knowledge Centre: The first is to continue building out the five practice areas by contouring and making Portfolio Management and Multisector Collaboration accessible and actionable. Under Portfolio Management, we already portrayed 4 organisations in cases. First we took a look at the UK: Impetus-PEF’s case is a classic venture philanthropic portfolio around education and employability. By contrast, Bridges Ventures describes itself as a Private Equity funder focused on underserved markets, health & well-being, education & skills, and sustainable living through a multi-fund approach and a strong impact lens. In the Kamonohashi Project and Swades Foundation we captured two different approaches in Asia. The Kamo Project’s strong emphasis on research enabled it to adapt the strategy of fighting sexual trafficking in Cambodia to the new context of India. Swades Foundation’s holistic development of two districts in Maharashtra, India, necessitated it to build strong partnerships locally as well as nationally and internationally and structure its portfolio around the needs in these two districts. In the next few months we will build this out further with more cases from Asia and also define what shape and activities a venture philanthropy portfolio can take, beyond the available financial lens of risk-return. To that end, we encourage members to contact us to shape our practices. We will again distil this into a Guide to Effective Portfolio Management to make portfolio management actionable.
Most importantly, in our second or parallel step, we are keen on helping practitioners in applying these insights. We endeavour to do this through workshops, masterclasses, webinars and other events focused on sharing AVPN insights and guest speakers in each of the practice areas. The aim is to build a peer network that can inspire each other. We welcome ideas on format, content and requests to bring a workshop close to you. To know more or to get involved, contact them at [email protected].
