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The AVPN Brown Bag Lunch Gathering in TOKYO (current Tokyo Visionaries’ Gathering) is a monthly closed gathering of AVPN members. AVPN is Asia’s largest network for accelerating solutions to social issues through strategic philanthropy and impact investing. The event serves as a forum for discussion, learning, and collaboration on how to provide high-quality funding to create social impact.
The first AVPN Brown Bag Lunch Gathering of 2024 was held on Friday, 9 February 2024, at the office of an AVPN member, the Foundation for Social Change (SIIF).
Akihito Hyuga, Chief of Secretariat of the PwC Foundation, gave a presentation at the gathering. The PwC Foundation was established as a general incorporated foundation in May 2020 and became a public interest incorporated foundation in May 2021. Its mission is to address social issues as a foundation specialising in creating the future through technology, aiming for a society in which all people can play an active role. At the beginning of the presentation, Mr. Hyuga explained the background of the Foundation’s establishment and his thoughts on its establishment as a corporate foundation with a variety of specialised knowledge resources.
A key feature of the Foundation’s grant programs is that PwC Foundation members serve as program officers (POs) and work together during the grant period to create impact. This is based on the belief that the Foundation’s role is to manage the progress of the project while accompanying it to ensure that it makes an impact. It is also unique to note that the PwC Foundation’s grantees are not limited to those in the public and social sectors.
We often hear from the management of many social venture startups that receiving investment from VC firms forces them to chart a rapid commercial growth curve in a short period of time and prevents them from focusing on their original goal of solving social issues. To address this dilemma, the Foundation’s grant program specifically targets startups that have not yet received VC funding.
As a Foundation dedicated to creating the future through technology, aiming for a society in which all people can play an active role, the PwC Foundation has been involved in various fields such as human augmentation, rural healthcare, global environment, and food systems, among others. The presentation attracted enthusiastic attention from the participants of the event, whose backgrounds varied from banks, grant-making foundations, consulting firms, and other organisations.
During the latter half of the discussion, participants asked a variety of questions, including the training of grantee organisations and program officers, the significance of risk-free funding (i.e., grants) by corporate foundations, and how to measure impact. In response, Mr. Hyuga shared that the Foundation went through repeated trial and error to collect a certain number of samples (macro figures) necessary to enable measurement of impact, as well as how it has been working on communication in order to acquire resources.
In his talk, Mr. Hyuga talked about the successes and hardships he has experienced in grant-making projects to date, the unique concerns of a foundation that pursues impact as a provider of funds, and his future plans to build an impact ecosystem with various funds such as donations, grants, and investments. It was a valuable opportunity to hear these stories available only in a closed meeting.
In the open room after the session, members actively exchanged business cards with one another, sharing information and building networks.
The gathering became a valuable opportunity for knowledge exchange among members of different organisations, such as foundations, financial institutions, government agencies, and intermediary support organisations, who share the same position as funders.
To read this article in Japanese, head to https://note.com/avpn_japan.
