Funding Ideas, Backing People: Panel at 2007 Skoll World Forum
Video Description
This panel at the 2007 Skoll World Forum explored funding strategies from multiple perspectives including innovation from within foundations, private sector investment for public good, non-profit venture investing and cutting-edge strategies for private placements in traditional not-for- profit organizations. The moderator was writer David Bornstein. Panelists were J B Schramm, Founder and CEO, College Summit; Ion Yadigaroglu, Managing Principal, Capricorn Management LLC; Edward Skloot, President, Surdna Foundation; and Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO, Acumen Fund.
Speakers
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CEO, Solutions Journalism Network
David Bornstein is CEO and co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, which works to establish the practice of solutions journalism — rigorous reporting that examines responses to social problems — as an integral part of mainstream news. He has been a newspaper and magazine reporter for 25 years, having started his career working on the metro desk of New York Newsday. Since 2010, he has co-authored, with Tina Rosenberg, the “Fixes” column in The New York Times. He is the author of three books: How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas (2003, Oxford University Press), The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank (1996, Simon & Schuster), and Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know (2010, Oxford University Press).
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President, Sundra Foundation
Edward Skloot is Director of the Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society and Professor of the Practice at the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University. In June 2007 he retired as President of the Surdna Foundation, a family foundation headquartered in New York City. Before coming to Surdna, Skloot was founder and President of New Ventures, a nonprofit consulting firm that assisted other NGOs in earning income as a complement to fundraising. Earlier, he served as a senior official in the governments of New York City and New York State and worked in the for-profit world as a management consultant. Currently, Skloot serves on the boards of Independent Sector, Venture Philanthropy Partners, TROSA, Citizens Schools and the National Council for Palliative Care. He is a member of the advisory boards of the Bridgespan Group and the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, Stanford University. The Surdna Foundation has published a compilation of Skloot’s recent speeches in the book Beyond the Money: Reflections on Philanthropy, the Nonprofit Sector, and Civic Life, 1999-2006. He was also the principal writer and editor of The Nonprofit Entrepreneur, published by the Foundation Center.
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Managing Principal, Capricorn Investment Group
Ion Yadigaroglu has been Managing Partner at Capricorn Investment Group since 2004, and is an early investor in iconic technology companies including Tesla, SpaceX, Planet, QuantumScape and Saildrone. Capricorn was born from the desire to demonstrate the huge investment potential that resides in breakthrough commercial solutions to the world’s most pressing problems, and as such is one of the original impact investors. Prior to Capricorn, Ion was a Director with Koch Industries, executing a range of acquisitions and investments. Prior to Koch, he was a founder and Chief Executive Officer at Bivio, a software startup in Colorado, and the second employee of Olsen & Associates, a foreign exchange analytics company. Ion was a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University and holds a Masters in Physics from Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich in Switzerland and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Stanford University.
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Founder & CEO, Acumen
Jacqueline Novogratz is the Founder and CEO of Acumen. Acumen is changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies and leaders with character, competence and moral leadership. Acumen invests pioneering philanthropic capital in sustainable businesses addressing the toughest problems of poverty. Under Jacqueline’s leadership, Acumen has invested $128 million in 128 companies providing critical goods and services to more than 260 million low-income people across Africa, Latin America, South Asia and the United States. Acumen also has launched KawiSafi, an impact fund focused on off-grid solar in East Africa and is in the process of building several other for-profit facilities.
Acumen also cultivates a new kind of leader through its Fellows Programs and +Acumen, its online school for social change. To date, the organization has built a corps of 500+ Fellows. More than 450,000 individuals from 192 countries have taken +Acumen’s online courses. Acumen is now reimagining a global university designed to integrate the transformational depth of its fellowships with the scale of +Acumen to equip thousands of young changemakers with the tools and ecosystem to lead in today’s world.
Jacqueline sits on the board of the Aspen Institute. Her best-selling memoir The Blue Sweater chronicles her quest to understand poverty and bring dignity to the poor. In 2017, Forbes listed Jacqueline as one of the World’s 100 Greatest Living Business Minds.
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Co-Chair, College Success Initiative, New Profit
J.B. Schramm currently chairs the Learn to Earn initiative at New Profit, a venture philanthropy and social innovation organization that provides funding and strategic support to help the most promising social enterprises achieve scale. J.B. leads the organization’s ecosystem innovation work for college access, postsecondary education and career, helping colleagues in the field equip 10+M more Americans for career success by 2025.
Forbes named J.B. to its 2012 Impact 30 list of top global social entrepreneurs for his work founding and leading College Summit, the organization President Obama saluted with a portion of his Nobel Peace Prize award in 2009. J.B. is the recipient of Honorary Doctorates of Public Service from Regis University and the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), and is a fellow of the Aspen Institute, Skoll Foundation, Ashoka, and the Manhattan Institute. He has been interviewed by, and published in, numerous media outlets including The New York Times, the Washington Post, and People.
J.B. is a graduate of the Denver Public Schools, Yale College, and Harvard Divinity School. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and three children.
