Unreasonable Institute Launches $150,000 "Village Fund"

Published October 30, 2009 @ 10:08AM PT

The Unreasonable Institute has just updated their website with an announcement that they are partnering with First Light Ventures to launch a $150,000 fund for participating entrepreneurs at the upcoming social innovation incubation program. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the money will be allocated not by the venture investors but by the entrepreneurs themselves.

I've been following UI for a while. They're one of the most complete social incubator models I've seen, explicitly taking best practices from programs like Y Combinator and TechStars, which use mentorship, training, and investment to launch new technology startups.

This funding marks a major milestone for the viability of this idea. After spending some time with the folks behind the project, I've been confident about their model of curriculum and mentorship for a while, but there is something fundamentally different about the value they can provide to their entrepreneurs, and in turn, the investment the entrepreneurs are likely to invest in their community.

And community is the operative word. The boldest experiment with this money is that it's to be allocated by the entrepreneurs themselves. The funding will come in a combination of forms from larger unrestricted monies to smaller amounts allocated throughout the program for things like building a website. The precise structures through which the allocation will happen are yet to be announced, but it's clear the emphasis is on putting the power in the hands of people who have intimate knowledge of their peers and their projects.

I think it's a big experiment. I resonate deeply with the notion of redestributing power in the funding equation, and the idea of building deeper community bonds. I also worry about how the introduction of financial resources and the power to allocate it brings out the more competitive, tenacious and destructive tendencies.

No matter what, it's going to produce an incredible amount of learning. I would venture that regardless of what happens, our field will be better off for having tried something new.

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Comments (2)

That is a wonderful write-up, Nathaniel. Thank you!

Posted by Teju Ravilochan on 10/30/2009 @ 11:56AM PT
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Interesting indeed. The same concept of investing in those who invest in community objectives can be found in our founding paper which was delivered to the Committee to re-elect the President in 1996.

http://www.p-ced.com/1/about/history/

After sourcing the Tomsk initiative in Russia the model was incorporated in the UK in 2004 and the primary social objective was the microeconomic 'Marshall Plan' which put forward the idea of a social enterprise investment fund "under oversight of an independent board of directors, particularly including representatives from grassroots level citizens action groups, networks, and human rights leaders."

http://en.for-ua.com/analytics/2007/08/09/110003.html

The impact, which so far has resulted in reforms which have increased domestic adoption, rollout of affordable broadband and the creation of a new USAID foundation can be viewed step-by-step in the links on this page:

http://people-centered.net/About.aspx

Jeff Mowatt

Posted by Jeff Mowatt on 11/02/2009 @ 12:02AM PT
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Author

Nathaniel is the founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, which works annually with hundreds of students in dozens of countries around the world through curricular programs and student project incubation.