I came to your blog this evening facing an existential crisis. Riding alone in my car I asked myself that one, single most important question, “What am I passionate about?” For me, specifically, this question was extended to, “Why am I pursuing social entrepreneurship? What is the meaning of this venture to me?” My answer was honesty, yet equally unsettling.

I am passionate about organizing groups of people behind social change, I am passionate about “tactical philanthropy” (a phrase which came to my mind after being introduced to your blog), I am passionate about the metrics, the organization, the mobilization, the social and economic science behind social change. My honestly startled me. This was the first time I had come to terms with my motivations. A second, more inconsolable, question soon followed: “Am I a detached, unfeeling, callous player in the field of social change? Have I no heart for the real issues at hand?”

I came to your site and to my utter disbelief was presented with this post entitled “Social Venture Partners & Passionate Social Investing”. What timing! Though I do not know why I visited your blog tonight, having only been introduced to it once many months ago, you should think of me as a more regular reader from now on.

-Jonathan Hartman

Another great post Sean!

I would like to build on Isaac’s comments and say that I believe social investing can bring nonprofits and investors together – as opposed to having funders dictate unreasonable requirements to nonprofits – since social investors and performance driven nonprofits have in common the deep desire to serve people effectively.

That necessarily involves continuous learning, as opposed to simply assuming that services work, which has been the norm for too long. While traditional donors’ and funders’ thinking does not generally support building performance management capacity over time, the improvement philosophy of social investors does.

That should give nonprofits hope. But most importantly, is means that more people will be helped more effectively.

If social investors just use metrics, then they are potentially missing out on supporting organizations and initiatives that are improving, but have not yet met specific measures.

Equally true, if social investors just use passion or their feelings, then they risk supporting organizations and initiatives that are not effective, or that may even cause harm to those that they are trying to serve.

The same is true at the nonprofit level. We at LAYC use our passion for helping youth in combination with metrics to determine how to better serve DC and Maryland youth at the end of the day. Our passion is to serve our youth better tomorrow than we did today. And we do this by using metrics to determine what we do well, and where we need to improve.

This combination of passion and metrics is something that I think should be shared by social investors and nonprofits – because if it is – then it makes it far more likely that people receive services that can truly change their lives.