Yu Venture Philanthropy
Yu Venture Philanthropy (Yu VP) has engaged in the “Skills of Social Entrepreneurs” program Social Investment (SI) platform initiated by the British Council together with other 5 VP organizations since August this year. The SI platform has initiated a social enterprise (SE) contest and offers the winners with training, mentorship and access to VP. While SEs experience a rapid development in China since 2009, lack of access to finance has become one common key barrier for SEs to scale up. The SI platform is intended to tackle this bottleneck by directly connecting social investors with SEs and thus effectively promote the development of SE and SI in China.
Since the beginning of application on 19th August, the SI platform had received great attention and broad participation from social entrepreneurs around the country. More than 200 applications arrived in one month. Among the applicants we found well-known star SEs like Xixiang Women Development Society, and also new-born yet well-performing start-ups such as Mi Philanthropy.
Yu VP began the evaluation and selection process right after the due date in October. The team established a rigorous evaluation mechanism to make sure every application would be assessed carefully in 5 key areas: overall strategy, social impact, financial performance, team capability and scale-up potential. Two rounds of scoring and group discussions were carried out by the management team and the Investment Committee of Yu VP. After all these efforts, 24 SEs came out for the next round of phone interviews.
From 18th to 22nd October, key members from the Investment Committee of Yu VP conducted phone interviews with core team members of the 24 selected candidates. At least 2 members from the Investment Committee participated in each phone interview. It gave us a precious opportunity to hear about many inspiring stories from lots of passionate and committed social entrepreneurs. Thanks to this direct communication, Yu VP understood the SEs better and thus was able to select the candidates with stronger growth potential as well as vision aligned with our investment philosophy. At the same time, SEs also had the opportunity to experience style and preference of different VPs. This mutual assessment in the end left us 8 SEs on the candidate list for the boot camp.
Yu VP and these 8 SEs along with other VPs and their candidates took part in the 3-day boot camp in Beijing from 7th to 9th November. During the boot camp, British experts invited by the British Council shared their experiences about SE model design, managerial skill, marketing and promotion. Meanwhile, Yu VP offered our candidates trainings on strategic planning, financial management, presentation skills, as well as one-on-one mentorship. On the morning of 9th November, all SEs made presentations of their finalized SE business plans in front of the board of 4 judges. Heart-touching stories were told, and behind the stories we excitedly saw social entrepreneurs with more confidence and more mature SE business plans. In the end, 3 SEs entered the last round after a difficult decision made by the judges.
In the following 2 months, Yu VP will conduct further communication and cooperation with these 3 SEs. Through in-depth consultancy and mentorship, we hope to further improve the candidates’ business model and capabilities, and finally select a winner to provide social investment at the beginning of next year. Look forward to it!