Acumen Fund
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Acumen Fund is a non-profit global venture fund targeting the four billion people living on less than $4 a day. Its aim is to help build financially sustainable and scalable organizations that deliver affordable critical goods and services that improve the lives of the poor. Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder and CEO of Acumen Fund.
Acumen Fund seeks to set the global standard for how to affect wide-reaching social change in poverty alleviation and private sector development by:
- Identifying extraordinary social enterprises with innovative approaches to serving the world’s poor in the areas of health, water, and housing;
- Supporting these enterprises to become financially sustainable and scalable with equity and debt financing and intensive management support;
- Creating the standard for measuring the social and financial returns of these investments and establishing a position of thought leadership based on these successes;
- Building a global community of professionals (staff and Fellows), donors, institutional partners and social entrepreneurs capable of deploying financial, human and intellectual capital to solve some of the most intractable problems of poverty.
Since its incorporation in April 2001, Acumen Fund has begun to prove that it can raise large amounts of philanthropic capital ($30m + since inception) and cost-effectively invest this money in enterprises that will both achieve high impact social change and return capital for future investments. As of March 31, 2006, Acumen Fund had $11m in investments under management in the following countries: India, Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt and South Africa. It has additional commitments approved by its investment committee of $8m in new investments pending final documentation. By year end, Acumen Fund seeks to have $20m in investments under management.
The Acumen Fund has an Acumen Fund Fellows Program which selects young professionals each year and provides them with the chance to effect real social change through Acumen portfolio organizations in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, India and Pakistan. The Fellows spend one year, starting in September, working with the Acumen team and local entrepreneurs.
