Social Venture Capital or Venture Philathropy or ...

Have you come across the terms “Social Venture Capitalist” or “Venture Philanthropy”?

If you were to google “Social Venture Capitalist” you would find that almost every search result describes such an investor as one which invests in business entities that meet two priorities: 1) produces positive societal or environmental outcomes, but also 2) produces an adequate financial return within a timeframe of around 5 years. The Social VC will take an equity stake in the business and typical target sectors include clean tech, healthcare, education and sustainable agriculture. Hence, the traditional “Social Venture Capitalist” is still strongly profit focussed but less demanding on return and timeframe in exchange for seeing a better social outcome.

If you dig further into funders of social ideas, you may come across “Venture Philanthropy”. These funders focus on non-profits with a stronger emphasis on the impact. They are often able to go longer term and involves hands-on support, help with strategic planning, networking, and expert advice to help a non-profit grow. Funding is often by grants from foundations or private firms rather than holding equity stakes in return for investment funds. In summary, more weight is on impact and less or no weight on financial return.

Where does The Bloomtime Project fit and what makes us unique?

We see ourselves as in-between the two models. The word “philanthropy” carries an impression of charity or simply giving away money to support a purpose. We don’t believe in simply giving away funding. What we believe in is the value of the journey to the Project Owner, their personal development, and an impactful, positive outcome. Every good idea may go through iterations and pivots, twists and turns. The Project Owner and any supporter must be resilient and creative to find a way through. Along the way, further ideas may emerge to greatly improve the original idea. The magic for all involved is to collectively work together as a team to achieve something beyond the original idea. It really is about building a venture into a success.

The Bloomtime founders collectively have many years of experience and network in the corporate world and venture capital which can help a project owner to get started faster and avoid unnecessary mistakes. At the same time the Bloomtime founders have passion and a heart for seeing lives helped by great social enterprise and charitable ideas. The combination of smarts and hearts is what differentiates us.

We don’t need to have a clear financial return as a requirement to fund and start a project. Just a project owner who is clear what they want to achieve, a plan to go about it and resilience to see it through. Bloomtime will fund a good project without a financial return to get it started. Later, if the project grows rapidly, Bloomtime can arrange further funding which could involve stakes in the social enterprise as a signal of strong intent. We are flexible to fit the situation.

Perhaps the best way to describe us is “Social Venture Builders” with smarts and hearts.

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Have you got an idea or project or idea for a social enterprise in Singapore? We would love to hear from you. Find out more at: https://bloomtimesg.org/about