Kurt previously worked for Medecines Sans Frontieres (MSF) for which he managed field programs in Thailand, Kenya, Russia, Bosnia and Angola and later became CEO of MSF-Norway. In 2000, he became the first ‘philanthropy consultant’ in Belgium, with a specific focus on venture philanthropy. After 5 years as a consultant, Kurt managed programs for the city of Antwerp and the Foundation for Future Generations. Since 2010, he was responsible for Ashoka in Belgium.

Click here to download the full press release.

The Fund with of €7.5 Million under management, has to date completed three investments. One of them, Auticon, is a great example of a successful transfer from one country to another; in this case from Belgium to Germany.

In the following interview Johannes Weber, Managing Partner and initiator of the Social Venture Fund, talks about the challenges of transferring the Auticon project to Germany and explains what venture philanthropy organisations can do to support the scaling up of innovation across Europe.

Why has the Social Venture Fund decided to invest in the scaling up of an initiative across European borders?

Weber: There are a couple of reasons for this. First, our investors come from many parts of Europe. They thus expect that investments are made on a Europe-wide basis.

Second, if you have made an investment in a social enterprise that has been able to scale up, you see that most of the social problems in developed markets in Europe have very much in common. However, solutions to these problems are initiated in different countries, which often lead to parallel developments. This is very inefficient.  In many cases other regions could benefit from that innovation as well.

A last reason is that focusing only on one country with a fund of this size is still difficult. Since we wanted to make good impact investments that provide a decent financial return and actually return the investment of capital, we felt we had to broaden our perspective.

Tell me more about the investment in Auticon.

Weber: Auticon is a company that helps people with Asperger’s syndrome, which is a very strong kind of autism, to find jobs. Demographically, 1% of all people suffer from Asperger’s

syndrome. These people often demonstrate above-average capabilities in the IT field. However, due to their limited social skills in terms of interaction and communication, they tend to have problems in a working environment. Auticon helps people with autism develop their special skills, trains them to be software testers and deploys them as consultants in IT departments within large and medium-sized organisations. The concept is not a kind of sheltered workshop, but one that provides service on a top level. People with autism tend to have error rates that are often up to 10 times lower than for testers without autism. This is a real value-add for the companies.

Before investing in Auticon, we explored a number of other social enterprises providing working opportunities for people with autism. We knew we wanted to bring such a model to Germany, but found some difficulties in doing so. Most of the organisations we talked to were still struggling with their main market and were thus not prepared to grow into another country yet. Another that was prepared to scale up wanted to do so through a social franchise model.  Despite being a very simple business model, the support of people with autism still depends a lot on governmental support, which tends to be very different across countries in Europe. This would have made a social franchise very difficult. In any case, it would have simply not been economically lucrative to pay a franchise fee to a player somewhere in Europe in order to bring this to another country. As the model would have to be adapted to local peculiarities, the value-add from the franchise model would have been very limited.

Many of these players, which employ people with autism as software testers have smaller business models alongside their core business model (such as training, schools, assessment centres). These tend to support this business model and this is the only way they can work economically. In order to make the business model work in Germany, we felt we had to strip the business model to its core. – that is providing software testing by people with autism and charging an hourly rate. We found a company in Belgium called “Passwerk” that has a very similar approach. It is actually the biggest player in Europe, employing 55 people. They have a very professional team and are really excellent in what they do. They were very happy to help and share everything they have – documented process, assessment processes etc. – free of charge. They really educated us, showed us all the stumbling blocks, shared information and prevented us from making the same mistakes they had made when they started. Once we had started with Auticon, our Germany-based project, we felt we would need them to come to Berlin a couple of days every month to help us with the first assessment, with employing the right people, with the struggle we might have in the process, etc. We thus formed a cooperation, which is legally not binding, but allows us to pay a fee that will compensate “Passwerk” for travel and working time.

What were the main difficulties in scaling up Auticon and how did you overcome them?

Weber: All in all it went surprisingly smoothly because our partner in Belgium was so helpful and open. Auticon could actually call “Passwerk” every day and talk about any problem. The cooperation has been excellent.

There were of course minor stumbling blocks, such as the fact that all the information was in Dutch and had to be translated into German. Another difficulty we had was to assess whether the business model would actually work in Germany. We talked to CEOs of companies and asked them if they were willing to employ people with autism. We were also fortunate to be able to contribute one larger client to Auticon in the beginning. This helped us to work on a very practical project. As I said before, the implementation of Auticon depended also on the support of the government. People with autism have a severely handicapped pass and receive governmental support. We needed to find out if the government would be ready to support Auticon. This is essential since we work with so-called “job coaches” that help Auticon employees in their daily work within the client’s company. However we wanted to offer the services of Auticon at market rate and this does not include the salaries of the job coaches. Another struggle was finding the right legal form. We really juggled with this one, as so many things depend on your legal form. Luckily we could rely on good legal advice. In the end we decided to set up a limited company (in German: GmbH) and we might set up a charitable limited company (gGmbH) alongside. Finally, there was the issue of finding the right people within the company as well as deciding how to approach people with autism. After all, these are not the people that will apply for a job directly as they tend to be rather frustrated with the working environment. In both cases, it was very helpful to have a strong network and board members, such as Aspies (a self-help group for people with Autism) and the German Autism Association and many others who helped us.

How can venture philanthropy organisations help organisations that wish to scale their projects across borders?

Weber: Organisations that want to scale need to have the necessary capacities. Many social entrepreneurs still lack the size to think about internationalisation. Venture philanthropists can provide the capital and know-how for them to grow. Furthermore, the CEO that is driving the scaling up as well as the employee implementing it on the ground must be the right person. Investors can help to put them into place. Concerning the former, you often see a very charismatic founder who is really successful in his or her country or region. However, he might not have the necessary entrepreneurial knowledge to take the initiative across regional, let alone national borders. In the target country you need a strong entrepreneur who is really enthusiastic about implementing the initiative and who has preferably worked in the same social area for years. That has been the case with Auticon. The Managing Director in Germany has worked for two years on developing a concept to make such a business model work in Germany and has an autistic son himself. This helped us to understand his intrinsic motivation to succeed.

Furthermore, it is important to involve experts on the ground to get a better impression of whether and how the initiative would work in a certain country. Here, venture philanthropists can help a lot by providing access to their networks.

Finally, as an investor in an organisation that wants to scale up, you should be very realistic and blunt.  Sometimes, you have to realize that not all initiatives can be scaled up. Many services are not good to scale up because they are so human-capital intensive. If the social entrepreneurs think it would not work then we should not push the social entrepreneur or organisation in that direction, because they will just be unsuccessful and eventually burn out.

What are the next steps for Social Venture Fund?

Weber: On the one hand, we would like to increase our portfolio. We aim to have 8 to 10 investments. By coincidence, the last three investments were somehow related to Germany. However, our focus is on Europe. So, one of the next steps is to initiate a pure investment in another European country- preferably together with a local Social Venture Capital Fund or Venture Philanthropist.

On the other hand, we will continue to help our portfolio companies to scale up in their core business models, as well as prepare investors in other markets to take our innovations across borders.

Of course we also think about our lessons learned and what a Social Venture Fund 2 could look like. In this sense it is very important to meet other funds and exchange experiences. EVPA has really helped setting up this platform for us.

Further information on http://www.socialventurefund.com/eng/home/ and http://www.auticon.de/

Inspiring Scotland’s 14:19 Fund is one of Scotland’s most collaborative approaches to tackling youth unemployment and maximising the impact of charitable investment. During 2011:

• The 14:19 Fund Invested £6.1m in a portfolio of carefully selected charities all focused on getting young people into a job, education or training.
• The 14:19 Fund portfolio leveraged an additional £4.9m.
• 5,242 young people were supported and 7,025 qualifications and achievements were gained to help young people to be more prepared to move into a positive destination.

Commenting on the success of the Fund, Andrew Muirhead, Chief Executive of Inspiring Scotland – who also sits of the Board of the European Venture Philanthropy Association said:

“The need for the 14:19 Fund and an approach which maximises the impact on investment is vital in Scotland at the moment.   The 14:19 Fund ensures young people are given the best possible chance of successfully securing a positive destination of employment, education or training and prevents negative long term consequences, for both young people and society.

“The venture philanthropy approach has a ‘turbo charging’ effect, enabling more young people to be supported and aims to help charities to maximise their efficiency, reach and collaboration and ultimately work towards financial sustainability.   The 14:19 Fund has helped more young people, year on year, while charities have been able to expand operations at the same time creating efficiency savings.

“Investors from across the public and private sectors choose to invest in Inspiring Scotland because we don’t see this as charitable giving- rather investing with a social return.”

Building on the success of EVPA, AVPN brings together VP practitioners and others in the VP ecosystem to collaborate and scale their social impact.

AVPN’s founder members include leading venture philanthropy organisations, foundations, private equity firms, private banks, family businesses, professional service firms, philanthropy advisers, corporations and universities.

Doug Miller, chairman of AVPN and founder chairman of EVPA said: “The launch of AVPN with 92 founder members shows the strong interest that already exists across Asia in VP.  The current level of activity in each country is small in terms of overall philanthropy.  Through AVPN we expect to see the same growth effect as in Europe when a similar network was launched there”.

AVPN has members in 18 countries including China and India which, in the medium term, are expected to be the most active countries. Early hotspots for VP supporters are Hong Kong, Singapore and other South East Asian countries.

Simon Chadwick, CEO of AVPN based in Singapore, said: “AVPN is already active through networking and learning events in the countries with the largest membership.  The Member Directory allows anyone interested in Asian VP to connect quickly and directly with like-minded organisations.”

More information on www.avpn.asia .

The Directory is intended to be the premier reference for grant-makers, grant-seekers, social investors, service providers, academics and private banks, as well as others interested in the area.

It will be published on 23 April. The report is free for all members.

Reserve your copy (€50 plus postal charges) by sending an email to info@evpa.eu.com.

The Grameen Credit Agricole Foundation, set up by Crédit Agricole SA (France) and Grameen Trust (Bangladesh), aims to participate in the fight against poverty through the development and encouragement of micro-credit initiatives and social business projects and the provision of financial and technical support for microfinance institutions in developing or emerging countries.

8th EVPA Annual Conference, 13-14 November 2012, Dublin, Ireland

Early next month, registrations will open for the premier event of the year for venture philanthropy and social investment. The 8th EVPA Annual Conference will take place on 13-14 November in Dublin, Ireland.

EVPA Annual Conferences bring together about 400 delegates, including social investors, donors, foundations, private equity organisations, advisory firms, private banks, academic institutions and some selected social entrepreneurs, to discuss recent developments in the European VP sector.  This year, the conference will focus on the question “Backing the change-makers in a time of uncertainty: can we do more?”

We are delighted to announce the first two keynote speakers for the conference.

Mary Robinson is President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice.  She served as President of Ireland from 1990-1997 and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997-2002. The recipient of numerous honours and awards throughout the world including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, Mary Robinson is a member of the Elders, former Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders and a member of the Club of Madrid.

Johan H. Andresen is owner and CEO of Ferd, a privately-owned Norwegian industrial and financial group. In addition to the group’s purely commercial activities, the business area Ferd Social Entrepreneurs supports selected organisations, projects and individuals with the aim of creating a better future for children and young people in particular, and for the society in which they live.

The venue for the conference is Ireland’s historic Croke Park – home to Ireland’s national sport Gaelic football and Hurling. A reception will also take place in the Dining Hall of Dublin’s famous Trinity College.

Online registration opens in May – save the date to reserve your space at the 8th EVPA Annual Conference. We hope to see you there!

In 2011, the European Commission proposed amendments to the European Single Market. After a consultation period with individuals and organisations, the EU decided on ten proposals including the Social Business Initiative, aiming at improving the environment for social entrepreneurs.

At the end of 2011 the European Commission took a step forward in setting the foundations for a strong European market for social investment funds with its proposal for a regulation. The proposal set out a new “European Social Entrepreneur Fund label”, so that investors can easily identify funds that focus on investing in European social businesses. Setting a European framework and a clearly recognisable EU brand for social investment funds is now a vital process for a more transparent investor market and greater investor confidence.

In the next few months the proposal will pass to the European Parliament and the Council (Member States) for negotiation and adoption under the co-decision procedure.

The issues raised at European level are close to the heart of EVPA and a number of our members are contributing to the discussion:

“I consider this a mayor achievement for venture philanthropy/social investment in Europe. It is great that the topic has come so high up on the agenda of the EC, and that they make fast and serious progress with it. Fostering the social entrepreneur sector will be of vital importance in a Europe that will necessarily see government retreat from multiple tasks. The next step for the initiative will be to experiment with various forms of support for social entrepreneurship and to foster the early signs of success. The early shoots of successful social entrepreneurship and social investment should not be strangled by regulation and supervising bodies.”

Pieter Oostlander, Director, Shaerpa

“Today’s discussion in the Parliament is very important because when the regulation is adopted it will be the cornerstone for our emerging sector in the following years, with the objective of being operational for the next EU budget in 2014.”

Olivier de Guerre, Chairman, PhiTrust

“I hope the regulation will be as effective and unbureaucratic as possible in order to promote this emerging sector.  It needs to be supported especially by institutional investors that are sophisticated and do not need heavy regulation”

Luciano Balbo, Founder, Oltre Venture

On 13 – 14 November around 400 delegates and leaders of the sector will convene in Dublin for EVPA’s 8th Annual Conference. This year the premier event in venture philanthropy and social investment looks at recent challenges that the sector faces with the theme of the conference being “Backing the change-makers in an era of uncertainty: can we do more?”

First keynote speakers were announced last week, including Mary Robinson from the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice and Johann Andresen, owner and CEO of FERD, Norway. Both change-makers and visionaries of our time, they will certainly inspire all participants.

EVPA is delighted to host its Annual Conference for the first time in Ireland. The vibrant city of Dublin not only has a rich cultural heritage. It is also facing economical difficulties and a time of uncertainty, making it a great background to this year’s conference. Site visits to some of Dublin’s main players in the venture philanthropy and social investment landscape will also be included in this year’s programme.

To learn more on the conference venue, speakers and social events please visit our conference page.

Registrations for the Annual Conference will open on May 2nd.

We are grateful for the support of the One Foundation.