About Us
History
The Growth Philanthropy Network (GPN) began with a question: why do successful social programs rarely spread beyond their originating cities to other communities that need them? The failure of top-performing programs to grow nationally represents a huge missed opportunity to effect positive social change on a large scale.
Beginning in March 2003, GPN sought to answer this question by conducting research and speaking with more than 350 experts and leaders in more than a dozen cities. GPN found near unanimous agreement on the need for a national marketplace to promote second-stage growth of nonprofits. GPN also uncovered a growing number of high-net-worth individuals interested in becoming involved in high-impact philanthropy. In 2005, based on its research and interviews, GPN constructed and introduced a marketplace model to provide the missing capital, expertise and local resources essential for sustainable social program expansions.
GPN's opinion-leader outreach was facilitated by the Carnegie Corporation. GPN’s network development funding has been provided by the: Annenberg Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Mayer-Phillips Family Foundation, and incubation services were provided by Public/Private Ventures.
From 2005 through 2009 GPN served as an intermediary focused on developing and demonstrating key pieces of its marketplace model by assisting 4 nonprofit organizations to scale their impact. GPN worked intensively with Ways to Work and YouthBuild USA and much less intensively with Year Up and the Calvert Foundation.
Each organization was vetted through a detailed due diligence process that includes GPN’s standard set of “growth worthy” and “growth ready” evaluation criteria. Each has proven quantitative measures of social impact and demonstrated the ability to reproduce that impact on a large scale. Perhaps most importantly, each one represents a potential field changing solution.
GPN helped Ways to Work and YouthBuild to attract growth capital through our unique collaborative funding process that syndicates capital from a variety of funders to finance their expansion plans. A GPN “Due Diligence Rating Report” and Growth Business Plan for each organization are available on request.
In 2009 GPN felt the timing was right to shift its work from demonstration to actual market creation. To establish a broad based philanthropic marketplace that can reliably fund scale-ups of effective sector initiatives, GPN helped establish the Social Impact Exchange, a national membership association dedicated to scaling social solutions. In 2011, the Exchange has 2,800 members and it is the entity through which GPN is implementing its market development strategies. For more information on the Exchange, please see www.socialimpactexchange.org
