The Evaluation Process

Two weeks ago, the PT Investments Partners held our second Evaluation meeting, where we reviewed applications from the following PresenTense Fellows:

Mollie Gerver, Advocates for Asylum

Chaim Landau, Perspectives Israel

Baillie Aaron, Venturing Out

Daniel Rosen, Solar Mosaic

During the conversation, two central themes came to the surface, which I would love to explore further with the PresenTense Community.

1)  What does it mean to be a Jewish Venture?

2) How can a Partnership with limited resources assist a venture that is well positioned for growth?

To point #1 – Venturing Out and Solar Mosaic are not expressly Jewish Ventures.  Venturing Out teaches incarcerated persons the basics of Entrepreneurship, where as Solar Mosaic helps businesses, schools and places of worship to go solar and raise the funding from their members.   So do these qualify as “Jewish Ventures”?

One Partner expressed that the target market is not Jewish, and therefore does not align with the mission of PT Investments.  The counter point presented was that the values manifested in each of these ventures are Jewish.  Further, each utilize the Jewish community to achieve their missions by recruiting Jewish teachers and targeting Jewish religious institutions, accordingly.

We leave it to the community to decide…

To point #2 – our Partnership currently has amazing experience to share, but not always the right resources.  Perspectives Israel is a compelling program that offers an interactive 2-day trip that exposes its participants to a wide range of Jewish-Israeli perspectives on the Arab-Israeli conflict in a safe and non-judgmental setting.  They launched a successful pilot with phenomenal feedback, and are currently soliciting funding to scale the reach.

But PT Investments does not have the capacity at this point to fund Perspectives Israel to the level the organization requires, nor to assist with their Development strategy.

How do we open our community to evaluate these opportunities alongside (or better yet, as a part of) PT Investments, and contribute the appropriate resources?

Your feedback is appreciated.  If you take 5 minutes to fill out the following survey, you can help us come up with a sustainable solution to match the resources in our community with the Fellows in need.

https://israelamerica.wufoo.com/forms/pt-investments-resource-allocation-survey/

Bridging the “Non” Divide

I adapted this post from my latest PresenTense blog post, because it’s an issue that’s especially relevant to PT Investments as we start to bring for-profit professionals into the conversation about social-entrepreneurship.

———————–

What really separates a non-profit from a for-profit besides a legal classification and mission statement?

What is the difference between a social enterprise from an enterprise that is socially responsible?

There are so many buzz-words thrown around these days, and the distinctions between their definitions is not so clear.  At least to me…

I’m not curious about classifications or metrics, like the ones B Corporation (www.bcorporation.net) is establishing.  Although I am incredibly impressed with the change this organization is effecting, I’m particularly interested to identify the overlap between these business to determine whether collaboration and mind-sharing opportunities exist.

Specifically – how do we tap into the culture of innovation and start-up experience of our Israeli and Jewish communities, and allocate this collective knowledge towards the “social-entrepreneurs” among us?  How do we prove that the relationship is mutually beneficial, and that just because a non-profit professional is not expressly working to expand the “bottom line” he or she may know a thing or two about development, sales and bringing in hard cash?

There is an amazing concept emerging in Philadelphia called Missioneurs which hits the nail on the head.  Check out www.missioneurs.com.

Founded by Blake Jennelle, a peer of mine from Philadelphia (and all around action-oriented change maker) Missioneurs is “a community of mission entrepreneurs separated for decades by the types of organizations we lead. Now we’re coming together around our common sense of mission and hard-nosed entrepreneurial approach. We’re why people. Together we can solve any how.”

So simple.  So obvious.  Anyone trying to solve a problem/start a business/launch a project goes through similar hoops, ladders and hurdles to realize a vision.  So why don’t we collaborate?

Let’s get the conversation started.  Entrepreneurs, entrepreneur wannabes, consultants, investors, philanthropists, developers etc… will meet at a bar and shmooze.  The first beer will be on me.  Well not really, but I will speak to Blake about how we can leverage his experience for the PresenTense community – and will plan a “MissionMob” soon.  Talk about accountability and transparency.  Please hold me to this one.

Who knows what amazing opportunities will emerge?

PT Investments Launch!

After a year of planning and 4 days before the PresenTense 2010 Global Institute,  PT Investments held its first official Partnership Meeting on June 6th.

There was an amazing energy about the project, the opportunity to help fund and support PresenTense entrepreneurs and to give back to the Jewish community in a meaningful, engaged way.

Participants included Ben Weiss from Greylock Partners, Eli Novershtern from Canaan Partners, Denise Aptekar, former Director of Risk Strategy and Policy at Paypal, Eitan Hochstern from Invus Financial Advisors, Len Pader from CCG Media and Benjamin Pinkhasik from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, and Deborah Fishman and Aharon Horwitz representing PresenTense.

We discussed the vision of PT Investments – a non-profit venture philanthropy fund that provides follow-up support to PresenTense entrepreneurs following their Institute training by allocating $3-5K micro-grants and start-up services and advice from the Partners’ professional and academic experiences.

The most inspiring part for me was how much the Partners are looking forward to allocating their professional assets to invest in social innovation.  Amongst the 8 of us we have development, reporting, due diligence, budgeting, business planning, recruitment, networking, project management, marketing, volunteer management, organizational systems, technology support and growth strategy experience to offer to our upcoming Portfolio.

This passion for involvement is what is needed to effect social change.  As I learned at a talk last week about love and relationships - “the more you give, the more you love”.  So as applied to PT Investments – the more we invest our selves and our capital, the more we will take a vested interest in the success of our PresenTense fellows and the change they are inspiring in our communities.

We are currently planning networking events on June 30th in both NYC and Tel Aviv – so keep a look out for those event invitations.