Jeff Skoll, the first President of eBay, and now Chairman of the Skoll Foundation in Palo Alto, founded this organization ten years ago to invest in, connect and celebrate social entrepreneurs. He founded it shortly after establishing the eBay foundation with the belief that just as there are great entrepreneurs like those in Silicon Valley solving critical problems with unique, innovative solutions, so too are there high potential social entrepreneurs who are worthy of smart capital. I’m an avid follower of the content and discussions on Skoll-founded and managed social entrepreneur community – SocialEdge, a community by and for social entrepreneurs. The Skoll Foundation supports social entrepreneurs focused on categories of tolerance and human rights, health, economic and social equity, peace and security, institutional responsibility, and environmental sustainability. These issues are at the heart of the foundation’s vision of empowering people to create a peaceful, prosperous, sustainable world.
I met Skoll Foundation’s Dan Crisafulli at SOCAP09 where he announced an exciting new pulse platform where social investors can begin to track metrics of their porftfolio called pulse – a collaboration between Skoll, Salesforce.com and the Acumen Fund. Watch the video of Dan to hear first-hand about Skoll and their new tracking platform. It was also interesting to learn about how this talented Skoll Foundation leader chose to leave a successful early career in private equity to apply his business skills toward social impact, first in investing via the International Finance Corp (IFC) , and now at Skoll.
Although the Skoll Foundation provides grants to promising scalable social enterprise organizations, the bulk of their investment is in debt and equity and guarantees, all aimed at organizations who have the potential to become self-sustaining or candidates at a later stage for traditional capital markets. Skoll is seeking to fill the gap while creating a new marketplace for funding along with other pioneers like the Acumen Fund.
Here’s a great short video interview of Dan created by envisiongood as produced to help promote SOCAP09.
The South has great entrepreneurs who have created significant wealth who are candidates to follow the lead of Jeff Skoll and others who can make a huge impact with their dollars, talent and innovative approach to giving a hand-up via social investing. Read more on Jeff Skoll’s vision and you’ll be inspired.
