Philanthropic venture capital: Venture capital for social entrepreneurs?

Philanthropic venture capital (PhVC) is an innovative funding model available for social entrepreneurs which provides a blend of performance-based development finance and professional services to social purpose organisations. PhVC aims at maximizing the social impact of the investee through the provision of capital and value-added activities, as typically done in traditional venture capital (VC) financing. The acknowledgment of the growing importance of SEs on the one hand striving to develop new and, sometimes, profitable business models to improve local livelihoods and on the other hand of their funding needs, spurred the development of PhVC. PhVC emerged in the United States in the late nineties as a way of improving the effectiveness of the financing model implemented by grant-making foundations; nowadays, PhVC applies not only to foundations, but a wider set of investors willing to create impact on society.