Why We Exist
The founding of New Profit was inspired by a question:
“Why don’t the best social innovations scale like companies and commercial innovations do?”
We were among the first organizations to try to bridge that gap with a venture philanthropy model that provides social entrepreneurs who are developing promising models with the same type of support that for-profit companies can access to grow.
Our Approach
We provide our grantee-partners with unrestricted growth capital and strategic advice to help them build the capacity of their organizations, collaborate with others, and take aim at changing the larger systems in which they operate.
- BREAKTHROUGH LEADERS
Using our industry-leading investment selection and due diligence process, we identify high-impact organizations across the country led by visionary social entrepreneurs. Since 1998, we have invested over $130 million in unrestricted growth capital to more than 100 path-breaking organization to scale their impact. In addition to New Profit partners serving as close-in advisors to social entrepreneurs, our groundbreaking collaboration with Deloitte Consulting LLC has provided Fortune-500 caliber strategic support to 30 New Profit grantee-partners, totaling over $10M in pro bono support since 2013.
- Systems Change Initiatives
Because no single organization or approach can create large-scale change on its own, we convene the boldest social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and other leaders from across sectors to do together what none of us could do alone. We find the underinvested areas and pressure points in big systems impacting issues such as early learning, K-12 education, and workforce development and serve as a backbone organization to systems change initiatives that address them with a dynamic mix of programs, policy ideas, partnerships, and public engagement.
What Makes Us Different?
We are dedicated to making our organization and the philanthropic sector more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. New Profit’s accelerator program has supported dozens of early stage entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities, including women, people of color, and entrepreneurs affected directly by the criminal justice system.
Our in-house capacity building and measurement and evaluation team helps translate industry-leading knowledge on nonprofit management into real-time solutions for organizations in our portfolio, helping them to maximize their impact and sustainability.
Our nonpartisan policy initiative, America Forward, unites a coalition of 70+ social entrepreneurs with policymakers to advance a public policy agenda that champions innovative and effective solutions to our country’s most pressing social problems.
Through our field leadership efforts, we convene and engage a diverse community of innovative leaders from across sectors to forge connections, spark ideas, align strategies, and shape initiatives that unlock the potential of social innovation to expand opportunity for all Americans.
We were early backers of breakthrough organizations—including KIPP, Year UP, Health Leads, Citizen Schools, Teach for America, Jumpstart, Youthbuild USA, and BELL—and breakthrough initiatives such as the Pathways Fund and Reimagine Learning Fund.
In 2017, New Profit portfolio organizations served 3.9M beneficiaries across 39 states. 86% of portfolio organizations reported the growth of their organization’s geographic footprint over their investment period, either to new sites or to new states.
Our Impact
Want to Learn More?
If you are interested in becoming part of our community of social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and other bold changemakers, click here to join our mailing list or reach out to us at info@newprofit.org to connect and learn more.