Meet Us on the Mezzanine Level
Brad Brown had questions. How do we help great organizations grow beyond the SVP relationship, get them to the table with heavier-hitting funders, and ultimately to national scale? And how do we harness the entire SVP network to do it?
Enter: the Mezzanine Fund.
Imagine you lead a thriving nonprofit focused (for the sake of illustration) on ensuring kids are ready for kindergarten on day one. Your results are clear, your programs successful, and potentially replicable. In short, you have a great product that could help many more kids beyond the boundaries of your community.
How do you get there?
Your local funders are tapped, or not interested in investing outside their community. You don’t yet have a national reputation, so your access to large scale funders like New Profit, or the Social Innovation Fund is limited. You’ve encountered the gap – some might even say the chasm – between local, small scale funding opportunities, and the relationships that can take your work to the next level.
The Mezzanine Fund aims to bridge that gap. It will provide grant money, time, and expertise to current or former SVP Investees with proven, replicable programs – helping prepare them to scale nationally, and fostering connections to other funders. For instance, New Profit indicated interest in seeing which organizations are selected, and recently played a role in events that informed the Mezzanine Fund concept.
Genesys Works, originally seeded with SVP dollars in Houston, was successfully replicated in the Twin Cities with support from SVP Minnesota, where Brad Brown serves as Executive Director. From there, having solidified an effective model, they were able to launch a third office in Chicago and capture the attention of President Obama and New Profit, which invested $750k to create a national office and accelerate expansion. This growth will allow Genesys Works to get more low-income and minority youth on the path to college and professional careers.
The grant from New Profit “is the first grant Genesys Works has received for national expansion,” says their Executive Director and SVP Partner, Jeff Tollefson. Before that all their funding came from local sources. “If we can provide the mechanism to help [nonprofits] cross the chasm, this would be of great value.”
In addition to benefiting Investees, the Mezzanine Fund provides an opportunity for Partners to reach beyond their city’s SVP affiliate. Partners from Seattle, Boston, San Diego, Waterloo … all over North America will work together to select the strongest organizations.
“The Mezzanine Fund takes SVP to a new level of engagement and collaboration,” says SVP Seattle Board Chair, Fraser Black. “I’m excited to work with other SVP affiliates to take the best ideas and replicate them across the nation, ultimately achieving a greater level of social impact.”
Want to Get Involved?
The Mezzanine Fund is still taking shape, so it’s a great time to dive in. “We’re building the car while we’re driving it,” jokes Brad Brown, who is leading the charge.
Immediate opportunities for SVP Partners include participating on one of the Mezzanine Fund Teams. Team responsibilities range from selecting Investees, to shaping processes, to fundraising.
See the full list of Task Teams. (NOTE: You will need to log-in SVP’s Intranet to view Mezzanine Fund details. Need help?) If you’d like more information please leave a note on the Intranet site, or contact Brad Brown at: bbrown@svpmn.org.
The Nuts & Bolts
Eligibility for Funding: Current and former SVP Investees that are ready to replicate their program in another city that has an SVP affiliate (e.g. a San Diego Investee that wants to expand to Boston). In Seattle, proposals are by invitation only.
Funding Amount: Through the Mezzanine Fund, SVP intends to invest between $300-500k per organization over 3 years.
Basic Process: The details of this process are still being worked out, but these are the basics.
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Investees submit LOIs (due January 21, 2011)
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Review LOIs and invite 5 organizations to submit proposals
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Select 1-3 Investees
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Raise funds and invest
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Begin capacity building process in selected cities
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