SVP’s Investment Team – Getting kids ready for kindergarten

By Bill MacKenzie, SVP Communications Fellow

“SVP's investment is a game-changer for The Children's Book Bank,” exclaimed Danielle Swope, Executive Director of The Children's Book Bank, after learning in December 2013 that the non-profit had been selected to receive a three-year investment, including capacity-building expertise and a $55,000 grant, from Social Venture Partners Portland (SVP).The five-year-old Portland-based Children’s Book Bank (CBB) gathers new and gently used books from the community and, with volunteer help, cleans, sorts, and distributes them to children in need. By doing so, the CBB hopes to close the “book gap” between low­-income neighborhoods and middle and high ­income neighborhoods.“While our grassroots model has helped CBB develop a solid system for processing and donating books and has allowed us to reach a great number of children and families, this investment from SVP will help us grow from a start up organization to an established area nonprofit with the ability to really help move the needle on childhood literacy,” Swope said. “It will help us gather the capital, resources, and expertise necessary to make our programs both sustainable and replicable.”

SVP’s investment, along with the expertise of SVP Partners, is intended to help CBB achieve specific capacity-building goals in board development, planning for staff growth, marketing strategy and development and funding growth and diversification.

SVP also announced in January an innovative six-month $10,000 “accelerator” investment in KairosPDX, a Portland-based non-profit start-up. KairosPDX hopes to transform the education landscape by developing a model that eradicates the racial achievement gap in education and cultivates the next generation of social entrepreneurs, inventors and engineers.

The organization’s strategies include strengthening in-home early learning providers; coordinating a family connections program that offers a “one-stop-shop” for educational and social resources in North Portland; and establishing a K-5 charter school that will be open for kindergarten enrollment in August 2014.

The SVP investment will link the nascent organization’s leaders with SVP partners knowledgeable in key areas to accelerate planning and resource development.

“Not only will SVP’s investment help them launch effectively, but their expertise in culturally relevant programming will help SVP better serve communities of color, which is one of our priorities as an organization,” said SVP Partner Maren Symonds.

SVP’s decision to invest in these non-profits was the culmination of six month’s work by a dedicated Investment Team of nine SVP Partners who put their hearts, intellects and time into the selection process.

In years past, SVP pursued a traditional Request For Proposal approach in which non-profits self-selected to respond. The Investment Team then evaluated proposals based on clear criteria that was shared publicly. While SVP has used this process successfully, it does not translate well into an environment that begs for multi-agency collaborations and out-of-the box thinking.

“This time the process was more organic, working with a variety of non-profits to come up with different ideas and then working with them to create a proposal,” said SVP Partner Kim Bailey, a member of the Investment Team. “The proposals were then vetted by the Investment Team, a few were selected for deeper exploration to ensure alignment and then we worked with the non-profit to do that.”Although everybody had to invest a lot of time and energy, Bailey believes the non-profits found value in the new process. “I think they appreciated the positives of the much more collaborative process,” he said. “It engaged them earlier and allowed them to be a lot more organic. It was less about writing a nice grant proposal and more about thinking of some good ideas and how they would support the Ready for Kindergarten initiative.”

To prepare, the Investment Team went through a month long training to learn about the issues and then set selection criteria, including the ability of a non-profit to utilize SVP Partners’ professional expertise. Members of the Team also met with prospective investees for expansive discussions.

“Those initial meetings created a lot of openness because we were trying to craft the investment idea with the non-profit, as opposed to having them fully bake an idea and then present it to us,” said SVP Partner and Investment Team member Laura Koch. “In that open conversation organizations were able to get a much better sense of what we were looking for, what we were able to offer in terms of partner support, and what would ultimately be a good project, a good fit.”

“You’re looking for an organization whose goals are aligned with ours, a strong organization that’s ready to take the next step up,” said Symonds, who served as Co-Chair of the Investment Team. “If a nonprofit has a great program, but is already a crackerjack organization and doesn’t need any of SVP’s non-financial help, they’re not what we’re looking for. We’re interested in organizations and concepts for which our money and capacity-building resources will take them to the next level.”

The Investment Team started out analyzing nearly 30 ideas proposed by community partners, whittled that down to13, then seven, and finally three. Those three were then turned into full-fledged proposals.“All the time spent will lay the foundation for a much stronger partnership,” Koch said. “Putting in more time on the front end is going to end up with much better relationships, more honesty, a better sense of what they need and better outcomes.”

After full proposals were completed, the Investment Team recommended them for approval by SVP’s Community Impact Committee and Board of Directors.

Not everything went smoothly. “Because it was the first time using the new process, it wasn’t really well-defined,” Bailey said. “So there was oftentimes confusion about what exactly needs to be done and who exactly needs to do it. At times it resulted in more touch points or longer times to complete things, which may have added some frustration.”Still, he thinks the new process is better and more collaborative, benefiting SVP and the investees. “It gives us a much better feel for and understanding of the organization than the standard RFP process,” he said.

Bailey also firmly believes that the final investee choices are good ones and that SVP can have a big impact on them. “KairosPDX, for example, is so young that SVP can really help them put together an organization and help them mature to benefit their mission and objectives,” Bailey said.

Swope praised the Investment Team’s new selection process. “The concise initial proposal was both accessible and forced us to get straight to the heart of why what we do matters,” Swope said. In particular, she valued the collaborative proposal development and evaluation process with Partner involvement that “resulted in a more detailed presentation of our investment request and a richer understanding of what The Children's Book Bank and SVP could accomplish together.”“I am incredibly grateful to SVP for this full investment, but feel that CBB also benefited just from the application process in terms of prioritizing our needs and goals and developing a strategy for growth,” Swope said.