Closing Keynote Address: My Journey from Venture Capital and Venture Philanthropy to National Philanthropy Friday, 10 May 2013

Speaker: Nat Sloane, England Chair, BIG Lottery Fund Nat Sloane has been a venture philanthropist for 10 years. In his first 25 years, he set up three businesses, became a venture capitalist, and learned how to grow businesses. He got into philanthropy initially by standard check-writing, but didn't find it satisfying. He then joined a corporate foundation as a trustee in March 2000. His experience led him to wonder, why am I leaving my business brains at the door in working with charity? What was I trying to do with philanthropy? He started Impetus Trust in 2002 to provide strategic money and expertise to social entrepreneurs tackling tough social issues. They just completed a merger with a private equity foundation mobilizing nearly 40 million per year. At Impetus, Nat said, the deal flow was initially broad and open to any social problem. It focused on charities and social enterprises with three years of experience and with incomes of between $250k and $10m. It provided grant funding and it took the organisation 18 months to do its first deal. Nat said they spent a long time thinking through the purpose of the Trust and to find a focus on certain programme areas. Ultimately, it decided on education and on working with at-risk youth. That debate on the mission led to the conclusion of using venture philanthropy to drive impact and social change. Impetus subsequently broadened the types of organisations it chose to work with and started funding startups, a pilot and then a large NGO. It also developed corporate partnerships. He said it has been a process over the last 10 years and Impetus leaned into risk, and not away from it. Initially, they thought quite a lot and probably needed a bit more action, he said. We are patiently impatient, he said, and recognise that the long-term goals of building a global market takes time. He talked about two ways to think of pioneering. The first is the John Wayne approach and the second is the Elizabeth Blackwell (the first woman in the US to become a doctor, in 1849) approach. "It's not easy to be a pioneer, but its always fascinating. I would not trade a moment, even the worst moment, to tread on a conventional path for all the riches in the world." We should listen to our inner Elizabeth Blackwell voice, he concluded.