REDF has attracted media attention since its launch in 1997 in publications such as the Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, US News & World Report, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

The following are highlights from over 50 articles, arranged by year:

San Francisco Business Times
Nonprofit Profile: Carla Javits, President of REDF
Published December 9, 2011
Carla Javits was profiled in the San Francisco Business Times where she shared REDF's accomplishments, challenges, and ambitions.

Stanford Social Innovation Review
The Social Innovation Fund: Field Observations
Published December 2, 2011
Carla Javits (REDF) and Lisa Jackson (New Profit, Inc.) share their experiences and observations as inaugural Social Innovation Fund grantees.

San Francisco Business Times
Private philanthropists help put people to work
Published October 21, 2011
An article about the work REDF and other San Francisco Bay Area organizations are doing to help create jobs for the people who need them most.

Whitehouse.gov Blog
The American Jobs Act and Nonprofits
Published September 16, 2011
The Whitehouse blog mentioned REDF and our work with a social enterprise in our Portfolio, Green Streets, to create jobs for people facing the greatest barriers to employment.

Huffington Post
The Future of Job Creation in America
Published September 7, 2011
REDF President, Carla Javits, co-wrote an article in the Huffington Post with Jeffrey Hollender (co-founder of Seventh Generation) about the future of job creation and the importance of jobs and upward mobility for low-wage workers and those facing barriers to employment.

ABC KGO-TV Bay Area News
SF firm creates jobs for those hardest hit
Published/Aired August 5, 2011
ABC 7 Bay Area News ran a segment about how REDF is using funding from the Social Innovation Fund to support great social enterprises like Green Streets.

San Francisco Business Times
Federal funding to help REDF scale job creation model
Published October 17, 2010
REDF was featured as a ‘New Model’ of philanthropy in the San Francisco Business Times' Giving Guide.

The Economist
Let’s Hear Those Ideas
Published August 12, 2010
REDF was included in the Economist’s write-up of the Social Innovation Fund and its awardees.

Stanford Social Innovation Review
REDF Leverages First Social Innovation Fund Grant
Published July 29, 2010
Carla Javits wrote a blog post for the Stanford Social Innovation Review about REDF and the Social Innovation Fund.

The Wall Street Journal
Measuring the Bang of Every Donated Buck
Published March 1, 2010
Writer Alice Hohler credits REDF with pioneering the idea of social return on investment in a WSJ blog post in which she describes the latest thinking about ‘scoring’ charitable work.

The New York Times Magazine
For Good, Measure
Published March 9, 2008
Author Jon Gertner addresses issues of measurement and impact, and records Hewlett Foundation President Paul Brest’s reflections on REDF’s groundbreaking role in developing the concept of a social return on investment.

San Francisco Business Times
Nonprofit Profile
Published February 29-March 6, 2008
Carla Javits, REDF’s President, was featured in the Times’ nonprofit profile. She answered questions about REDF’s work, and gave insights into her personal motivations for her dedication to the field.

Wochi Kochi
New Trends in U.S. Philanthropy
Published February/March 2007
Wochi Kochi, based in Tokyo and published by the Japan Foundation, referenced REDF and other venture philanthropy organizations in an article on new trends in U.S. philanthropy.

San Francisco Chronicle
Teach the homeless to work, and then...
Published November 16, 2006
An Open Forum article, written by Cynthia Gair, REDF’s Managing Director of Programs, offered a perspective in response to the Chronicle’s “Shame of the City” series.

The Wall Street Journal
Strings Attached: Along With Their Big Bucks, Rich Donors Want to Give Charities Their Two Cents
Published July 3, 2006
Including REDF as an example, author Christopher Conkey reports on the trend of wealthy donors who are choosing a hands-on approach to their giving as a means of building sustainable organizations.

Harvard Business Review
Letters to the Editor
Published May 2005
In response to a cautionary article by William Foster and Jeffrey Bradach of The Bridgespan Group called “Should Nonprofits Seek Profits?” in the February issue of HBR, REDF Board member Stuart Davidson wrote, “Foster and Bradach rightly warn nonprofits about the pitfalls of starting an earned-income venture....too many organizations view revenue-generating activities as a panacea for their fundraising challenges, without accounting for the true costs of such endeavors...I...hope that more philanthropic organizations will consider providing appropriate and tailored support to nonprofits that are well suited to the social enterprise model. It can be a tremendously powerful tool in the battle against poverty.”

Equipping the Saints: A Guide For Giving to Faith-Based Organizations
Published in 2005
In Barbara J. Elliott’s book, one chapter entitled “Capacity Building: Leveraging Impact” addresses how REDF’s Portfolio generates income through social enterprise. She describes how REDF “strategically bolsters its grantees by offering both financial and intellectual capital. They have helped create ‘social purpose enterprises’ for nonprofits, which offer, for example, positions where hard-to-place employees can be productive while earning something toward the cost of their care”. You may find out more about Elliott’s book at http://www.centerforrenewal.org/equipping.htm.

Reinventing Philanthropy: Helping Businesses Help Others
Published December 13, 2004
Author Vyvyan Tenorio reports on REDF’s use of measurement to prove that running social enterprises can make positive change in people’s lives. “The staff created an extensive tracking system to monitor every person employed in REDF’s portfolio for a two-year period from the time of hiring. The system keeps tabs of employment, income, housing, social support, self-esteem, even signs of recidivism. So far, it has tracked more than 2,400 individuals since 1997.”

The Deal Magazine: Voice of the Deal Economy Magazine
Reinventing Philanthropy: Helping Businesses Help Others
Published December 13, 2004
Author Vyvyan Tenorio reports on REDF’s use of measurement to prove that running social enterprises can make positive change in people’s lives. “The staff created an extensive tracking system to monitor every person employed in REDF’s portfolio for a two-year period from the time of hiring. The system keeps tabs of employment, income, housing, social support, self-esteem, even signs of recidivism. So far, it has tracked more than 2,400 individuals since 1997.”

Institutional Investor
Adventures In Philanthropy
Published December 2004
Author Dalia Fahmy reports on how high-engagement grantmakers combine financial support with managerial assistance to support social causes. She describes REDF as “venture philanthropy’s old guard” in this growing field.

The San Francisco Business Times
Giving With A Cold Eye: Venture Giving Fund Prepares to Take On New Investors
Published November 12, 2004
In an article featuring REDF, author Sara Duxbury highlights the organization’s transition into an independent 501(c)3 organization. “Since 1990, the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund has blazed a philanthropic trail in its fight against Bay Area homelessness. Now, in keeping with a philosophy of innovation and business opportunism, REDF is again taking a new direction”. She further explains, “So far, REDF’s transition to a public non-profit has been successful. Its goal was to raise $9.4 million over the next three years, and after 10 months it is already 77 percent there.”

Social Enterprise Reporter
Balancing Act: The Right Size Scoop of Ice Cream
Published November 2004
In this first of three reports addressing how to balance a social mission with bottom-line financial returns, Cheryl Dahle explains how REDF Portfolio groups demonstrate new approaches to the challenges social entrepreneurs face. Kristen Ace Burns, REDF’s President clarifies, “Sometimes it’s a stark choice between serving the finances or the mission... But sometimes, you can find a creative solution to make the best of both worlds. The trick is recognizing when you can do that.”
SEE ARTICLE

The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Letters to the Editor
Published October 28, 2004
In response to an article written by Ben Gose, Paul Brest, President of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation explains how cost-benefit analysis is essential to strategic grantmaking. He writes, “...the Hewlett Foundation supports REDF (to the tune of $2-million) precisely because, in addition to being a well-managed organization, it uses the concept of ‘social return on investment’ to achieve measurable social impact.”

Ready, Set, Engage?
Published in October, 2004, SKOLL Foundation
High engagement philanthropy (or venture philanthropy, as it is also known) has become more and more common over the last decade. Funders and nonprofits are finding new ways to work together to complement and maximize impact of monetary grants, often with great success. Kristen Burns provides key elements that a nonprofit should consider before entering into a partnership with a highly engaged funder.

Fast Company
Five Social Enterprise Myths, Dispelled
Published January 2004
An article written by REDF’s President, Kristen Ace Burns was published on Fast Company’s website in conjunction with the announcement of their annual Social Capitalist Awards. Kristen discusses five myths related to social enterprise and debunks them. “The idea of applying the ethos and strategies of traditional business entrepreneurs to the realm of social change has in recent years captured the imagination of nonprofit leaders. And as the popularity of ‘social entrepreneurship’ grows, there are nearly as many definitions of the concept as there are people pursuing it.”  See article>>

Ending Bay Area Homelessness: The Philanthropic Role
Closing the Information Gap: An Information OASIS
Published in 2003
The Bay Area Foundation Advisory Group to End Homelessness included a sidebar commending REDF’s development of OASIS in this booklet on solutions for eliminating homelessness. “Some years ago, REDF found that its portfolio of nonprofits expended a great deal of time struggling to pull reports together for funders. More importantly, these organizations often lacked the in-depth data needed to rigorously judge the effectiveness of their own programs and enterprises...OASIS has proven critical not only in enabling easier and more accurate reporting to funders, but also in adapting and creating programs that are even more effective in helping their clients achieve stability.”

Changing Lives, Changing Times: The First Decade of Juma Ventures
Published in 2003
“In stepped The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund (REDF) and its...Farber Fellow Program. They saw the Enterprise Center idea as a somewhat risky, unproven concept, but they also saw its potential to get to scale quickly.”

Stanford PMP Forum: Business Skills for Social Leadership
Kristen Ace Burns (‘99) Takes the Reins at REDF
Published Summer 2003
The Public Management Program of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business conducted an interview with REDF’s President Kristen Burns. “George Roberts has invested over $21 million in REDF since 1997, and he continues to be a huge supporter of our work. This year he has called on us to raise a venture fund to complement the funds that he continues to invest in us and in our portfolio, so obviously this presents some challenges. Fundraising is new to us, but at the same time, it presents an excellent opportunity to get others engaged in our work, to think about expanding our impact,” she responded when asked about the challenges REDF faces.

Shelterforce: Enterprising Nonprofits
A Helping Hand
Published July/August 2003
Author Ethan Rouen cites REDF in reporting that nonprofit organizations are increasingly turning entrepreneurial. “By providing businesses run by nonprofits with an annual capacity-building grant of $75,000 to $150,000, REDF allows the businesses it assists to hire people with mental and physical disabilities, homeless youths and adults, ex-convicts, and others who find it difficult to acquire decent jobs because of employers’ prejudices. Funded organizations have had both social and financial success. REDF-sponsored organizations have been able to hire hundreds of people every year who normally would not be able to find work.”

Faithworks Magazine
Prophets of Profit
Published April 2003
Author Daniel Pryfogle wrote a feature article about social entrepreneurs making a difference. “REDF helps nonprofits launch new businesses that have dual bottom lines — money and ministry. The businesses have a passion to help people on the margins and the management savvy to turn a profit.”

The NonProfit Times
Earned Income Streams Are Coming Of Age
Published February 15, 2003
“Cynthia Gair: ‘We haven’t come into this trying to convince anyone to do this... The agencies have come to us having already started businesses. Some of them didn’t even know they were starting businesses...all of the enterprises are directly related to their agencies’ exact missions. Their income streams are part of what they do to accomplish their missions, and in particular to create opportunities for people who don’t have opportunities.’ ”

The NonProfit Times
Reflection and Resolve
Published December 15, 2002
“One of REDF’s nonprofit partners reported several changes as a result of the outcomes measurement [known as OASIS]. The organization streamlined all of its process to reduce paperwork by 300%. Staff said their jobs became easier with outcomes measurement because they could more easily find information about clients and more quickly prepare reports for funders.”

The NonProfit Times
Walking the Talk
Published October 15, 2002
“When The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund (REDF) wanted to measure the social outcomes resulting from investments in nonprofit enterprises...it took the needs of the nonprofits to heart. REDF wanted the outcomes of its evaluation efforts to match the organizations desired outcomes... To address these individual needs, REDF launched...OASIS.”

The Grantsmanship Center Magazine
“The Challenges of Becoming a Social Purpose Enterprise”
Published Fall 2002
This article originally appeared in the “Practitioner Perspectives” volume of Social Purpose Enterprises and Venture Philanthropy in the New Millennium, published by REDF and available in the Publications Section.

The Grantsmanship Center Magazine
Exit Strategies for Venture Funders
Published Summer 2002
This article is comprised of excerpts from “When is it Time to Say Goodbye?” published by REDF and available in the Publications Section.

@lliance
REDF — The Evolution of a ’Venture Philanthropy‘ Fund
Published June 2002
By REDF’s Melinda Tuan
“Since 1997, over 1,500 homeless and low-income individuals have been employed by the 20-plus enterprises in the REDF portfolio. REDF tracks each of these individuals for two years after they are first hired to see whether their lives have improved and whether they are less reliant on public services. The data shows that positive change has occurred for employees across every category in every enterprise in the redf portfolio and that most have decreased their reliance on taxpayer-funded social services.”

MBA Jungle
GoodWork
Published March/April 2002
“Nonprofits can pay more than you might think, but they’re not for the MBA who dreams of a new BMW. Salaries start at about $50,000, though they can run as high as $100,000. The qualifications are simple: ‘You need to be someone who has a passion for the organization’s mission and who’s willing to work with few resources,’ says Melinda Tuan... ‘You won’t have the luxury of hiring a marketing firm when you want to do a marketing study. You’ll have to get on the phone and do the research yourself.”

Americans for the Arts: Monograph
Will Venture Philanthropy Revolutionize the Arts?
Published November 2001
“Who are the funders? Portraits of some institutional funders practicing venture philanthropy help illuminate how venture philanthropy is supposed to work from the donor perspective.”

International Venture Philanthropist Award
Published October 3, 2001
George Roberts was named the first recipient of the International Venture Philanthropist Award. In an effort to bring greater international attention to strategies for evolving and expanding the nonprofit capital market, the Nonprofit Enterprise and Self-sustainability Team (NESsT) hosted the International Venture Philanthropy Forum in Budapest, Hungary, where the award was presented.

Honorable Tom Lantos of California
The International Venture Philanthropy Forum
Published October 2, 2001
US House of Representatives in Congressional Record, Proceedings and Debates of the 107th Congress of the United States of America, First Session (Washington, DC)

Responsive Philanthropy, The NCRP Quarterly
Adventures in Venture Philanthropy
Published Spring 2001
“Many VP funders aspire to similar core principles — The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund (REDF)...for example, are role models for SVP — but there are differences in how each constitutes and executes their VP model. VP organizations are far from the first funding organization to focus on outcomes, though some, like REDF’s excellent work on ‘social return on investment,’ are pushing this core principle further than most funders.”

More Than Money
Venture Philanthropy in a Learning Organization: An Interview with Melinda Tuan
Published Spring 2001
Condensed
MtM: Do you have any cautions about the venture philanthropy model for others who may want to use it?
TUAN: Be attentive to the power imbalance.
MtM: How did you become such a self-reflective organization?
TUAN: From the outset, our founding executive director, Jed Emerson, had a commitment to being self-reflective.
MtM: What kinds of mechanisms do you use to create trust and self-reflection?
TUAN: We publish and share information about what we’ve done wrong. That’s a real trust builder. We also make time to reflect.

Foundation News & Commentary
Mutual Accountability and the Wisdom of Frank Capra
Published March/April 2001
“The current movement toward building effective, comprehensive client tracking systems and leveraging nonprofit Application Service Providers (ASPs) as operating platforms to support such infrastructures is a promising trend in this area. One example of this is the OASIS project. In partnership with its nonprofit investees — the word investees is used since all support is viewed as a form of investment in a portfolio — this project is sponsored by The Roberts Foundation, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, the Phalarope Foundation, and the Penney Family Fund. The OASIS project is working to build a social impact and tracking system capable of telling both funder and investee where the greatest value is being created and on what terms. More such efforts are needed in other regions of the nation and they are no doubt out there waiting to be promoted.”

American Foundations: An Investigative History (MIT Press)
Chapter 10: Imagination
Published March/April 2001
“[George] Roberts is often asked why, if the goal is to train and employ the virtually unemployable, he doesn’t just support job-training programs in conventional existing businesses? His answer is that nonprofit service organizations are better suited to assist the working homeless because their managers are far more familiar with the myriad personal and psychological problems their employees face.”

San Francisco Business Times
Finance Section
Published March 23-29, 2001
“The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund...recently lost the leadership of widely respected Jed Emerson as he stepped down as executive director to pursue other opportunities. Emerson has accepted an appointment as senior fellow at the Hewlett Foundation and plans to complete his work as the Bloomberg Senior Research Fellow in Philanthropy at the Harvard Business School in June. Upon returning to the Bay Area, he will also join the Stanford Graduate School of Business as a lecturer and serve as an advisory board member at the nonprofit Roberts fund. Emerson passed the torch on to Melinda Tuan, who became managing director of the Roberts fund last year. Cynthia Gair continues as enterprise development director.”

Office.com
How One Foundation Reinvented Itself
Published January 18, 2001
REDF featured
“Most foundations tend to just give a grant, and they don’t tend to get very involved,’ says...Melinda Tuan. ‘We work off of the business plans of the businesses. We like to call our funding ‘investments,’ not grants, and even though the dollars are all philanthropic, we do our investments based on what the business plan needs.’ ‘It’s really changed my view of how a nonprofit and a foundation can work together,’ says John Brauer, president and CEO of REDF portfolio member CVE. ‘I really do see them as a partner. A lot of the foundation community is asking you to tell them the good news, and if it’s bad news, they want you to rephrase it. With REDF, they want to hear the good, the bad and the ugly.”

Harvard Business School: Social Enterprise
Initiative’s Latest Research Delves into Social Capital Markets
Published Winter 2000
“REDF invests substantially in a small portfolio of local nonprofits, each a market-based enterprise such as Juma Ventures, which recruits high-risk urban youth to work in Ben & Jerry’s shops. They closely monitor employees’ progress and also try to quantify the costs each represents to society. ‘If employees go off welfare and start earning wages and paying taxes, there’s an inverse relationship. They end up contributing to society,’ [Jed Emerson] says. ‘We are trying to find out what are the investments needed to achieve social value...These nonprofits are competitive enterprises — Rubicon produces high-quality cakes, for example — that just happen to employ folks that the rest of the labor market often won’t hire,’ he says. ‘We don’t operate on a charity basis because if you do it’s difficult to manage a good business.”

Crain’s Chicago Business
Nonprofits Look for Cash — Charities Seek More Than Contributions
Published December 24, 2000
“A fresh fish business, if the truck breaks down, can’t wait three months to apply for a grant,’ said Melinda T. Tuan, Managing Director of The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund... ‘We really had to adapt our approach to philanthropy to support these growing small businesses.” (The full article is available for a fee on Crain’s Chicago Business.)

USA Today
Push For ‘Return’ On Charity Helps Those Who Give, Get
Published December 22, 2000
REDF featured
“Furthest along this path is... The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund, which has developed a formula that measures the outcomes of the nonprofit businesses it supports with businesslike objectivity. The result is a set of indexes called the Social Return on Investment, which attempts to ‘quantify and monetize’ the output of nonprofit businesses.”

Worth.com
Does Philanthropy Need to Change?
Published November 27, 2000
Essay by REDF’s Jed Emerson and Paul Shoemaker of Social Venture Partners
“The traditional approach of providing initial, one-time support for an innovative idea...is simply not enough... We need more funders like The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund...’ Is venture philanthropy ‘better’ than classical philanthropy? No. Can classical philanthropy function over the next 30 years as it has over the past? Of course not. Will they both continue to add value in a sector able to absorb as much innovation, talent and resources as we can leverage? Absolutely.”

New York Times
ACCOUNTABILITY: Putting a Cold, Hard Number on the Value of Good Works
Published November 20, 2000

The NonProfit Times
The NPT Power and Influence Top 50
Published August 2000
(Jed Emerson named as one of the Top 50 people “leading and causing shifts in the third sector”)
“People are talking about social entrepreneurship and venture philanthropy, Emerson’s been doing it longer than most and has success to show for it. Emerson and The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund remain at the forefront in an area that could dramatically change how nonprofits work in the future.”

Enterprise Quarterly
Future Talk
Published Summer 2000
Jed Emerson was asked four questions, including: “How do you think the nonprofit community will differ in ten years?” “More people from the private, for-profit sector will move full-time into the nonprofit sector and will challenge current assumptions of traditional nonprofits concerning issues such as accountability, documentation and understanding how resources can be brought to bear to further their efforts.”

Making Waves: Canada’s Community Economic Development Magazine
Social Return on Investment
Published Summer 2000
(by REDF’s Jed Emerson)
“Many people in the nonprofit sector feel that their work is not adequately documented and therefore under-valued. The position of The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund (REDF) is that much of this frustration is due in part to an absence of appropriate measures by which the value created by nonprofit organizations may be tracked, calculated, and attributed to the philanthropic and public ‘investments’ financing those impacts. [REDF has created] a new method of measuring one specific type of impact generated by nonprofit enterprises: socio-economic value.”

The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Lessons Learned from ‘Social Entrepreneurship’
Published July 13, 2000
Review of REDF’s publication Social Purpose Enterprises and Venture Philanthropy in the New Millennium
“This three-volume set...sheds light on...‘social purpose’ organizations. The common thread in all three volumes is a call to do more with the venture philanthropy model. ‘It is imperative those active in the nonprofit sector move to achieve greater, demonstrated success in our field,’ concludes Jed Emerson.”

The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Roberts Fund Puts Its Venture Philanthropy Approach to the Test
Published July 1, 2000
REDF featured
“The whole point is, how do you engage young people in the mainstream labor market who have been told in that market that they have no value,’ says Jed Emerson. Ms. Tuan says she hopes data from the three-step assessment effort will be publicly available...this fall. ‘We’re not expecting a financial return’ on the groups that the Roberts fund supports, she says. ‘But we certainly hope that the investments we’re making are creating positive change in society.”

Forbes
The Radical Philanthropist
Published May 1, 2000
Early Stage Giving sidebar
“Like venture capitalists, these organizations are seeding promising clients:
The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund:

• Provides funding, business and technical expertise to nonprofits that help low income and homeless individuals.
• [The budget of] $3 million is funded by George Roberts, cofounder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co."

Responsive Philanthropy, The NCRP Quarterly
But is it Smart Money?
Published Spring 2000
REDF featured
“This article chronicles the relationship between REDF and AND (a nonprofit running social purpose enterprises), recognizing REDF’s role in what would become venture philanthropy.”

Community Scale Economics
Youth Industry
Published Spring 2000
This article originally appeared in the “Practitioner Profiles” volume of Social Purpose Enterprises and Venture Philanthropy in the New Millennium, published by REDF and available in the Pubications Section.

The Wall Street Journal
Networks Link Entrepreneurs and Nonprofits
Published March 29, 2000
“Says Jed Emerson...‘A lot of the new wealth is increasingly driven by individuals who’ve made it in their lifetime and want to know what return they’re getting for their social investment.’ With $3 million in funding, The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund...was created...as a forum for ‘getting practitioners and funders together.’ Of such partnership between charities and entrepreneurs, Mr. Emerson...says: ‘When you take social innovation and combine it with sounds management practice, you have the opportunity for incredibly positive social change.”

ABCNews.com
Tech Workers Turn to Charity
Published in 1999
“Rubicon Bakery is a living example of the kind of project favored by the new philanthropists... The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund...has supported the bakery for years. ‘What they’ve done is taken a long-term equity partnership with us,’ says Rick Aubry, executive director of Rubicon Programs. ‘They’re not just going to give us a grant for a year or two and expect it all to work out.”

Newsweek: Careers 2000
When You’re the Boss
Published December 1999

Harvard Business Review
Philanthropy’s New Agenda: Creating Value
Published November/December 1999
“Working closely with its grantee Rubicon Programs, REDF developed 25 criteria that not only measure the success of job-training programs but also help Rubicon to manage the programs more effectively. In addition to the most obvious criteria — changes in employment stability, wages, and job skills — REDF and Rubicon found that related factors such as substance abuse and even qualitative factors such as the trainees’ own assessments of their success in reaching personal goals were all meaningful measures of outcomes the program was trying to achieve”

The New York Times
PERSONAL BUSINESS: Lending His Name, and Tools, to Charity
Published October 3, 1999

Wired
Nonprofit Motive
Published September 1999
“We’re kind of the lunatic fringe of venture philanthropy, taking financial metrics and applying them in the social sector,’ says Jed Emerson. The Roberts fund recently hired a full-time financial analyst from J.P. Morgan to help build models for determining what Emerson calls ‘social return on investment.’ ‘We basically view all of our philanthropy as a form of investment,’ Emerson says. ‘We want to kow what impact it has.”

Leader to Leader
Leadership of the Whole: The Emerging Power of Social Entrepreneurship
Published Summer 1999
By REDF’s Jed Emerson
“Historically, leaders of a movement were recognized as leaders largely by their individual vision and ability to work across regions and borders... However, it appears that this kind of national leadership of movement is fading... In a globalized society...regional voices will set the national agenda... The new leader’s value will be found in the spirit of their words, their ability to inspire others to join the parade, and their ability to bring cool water — in the form of new resources — to those who march. It is a new role for those used to competing for a single spotlight.”

The Grantsmanship Center Magazine
Generating Income from Customers and Clients
Published Summer 1999
Sidebar: Nonprofit Business Ventures: Getting Started
“If you’re seriously interested in educating yourself about the whys, wherefores (and why-nots) of nonprofit business creation, the best place to start is The Social Entrepreneur’s Resource Page on the World Wide Web: www.redf.org. It’s a project of The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund, which supports selected nonprofit business ventures and disseminates evaluative studies of their successes and failures.”

Harvard Business School: Social Enterprise People & Practices
Social Enterprise Club on a Mission
Published Spring/Summer 1999
“George Roberts...spoke on ‘Investing in Social Enterprise’ to a standing-room only gathering of students, alumni, and faculty. Roberts was joined by Jed Emerson.”

The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Cheers and Challenges
Published May 6, 1999
“Jed Emerson...provided one of the more entertaining moments of the conference when he used the metaphor of marriage to describe the relationship between grant maker and grantee necessitated by so-called venture philanthropy. ‘Classical funding is to dating as venture philanthropy is to marriage,’ Mr. Emerson said.“ His implication was that venture philanthropy, like marriage, has tremendous rewards — but that a lot of grant makers might want to think long and hard before deciding to take the plunge.”

Harvard Business School (HARBUS)
George Roberts Inspires During Visit
Published April 5, 1999
“George Roberts is a man who believes in innovation. After making a fortune breaking new ground on Wall Street...his ideas are now quietly transforming social enterprise in San Francisco. ‘By the early ’80s, I was financially secure enough to want to give back some of what I’d enjoyed to the community. But I wanted to do something that would make a difference to people, something that wouldn’t get done if I didn’t do it,’ he explained. ‘Three to four percent of people in the U.S. aren’t taken care of by the private enterprise system. They’re the people who didn’t go to school, who can’t get up on time or who have problems with substance abuse. There’s a much higher cost to creating jobs in the part of the economy — and businesses employing such people aren’t going to be able to compete and be 100% self-sufficient.’ ‘I wanted to bring some of the lessons of the private sector, like accountability and holding people responsible to the world of philanthropy,’ explains Roberts, ‘so we basically analyze, we invest, and we monitor.’ Roberts is optimistic about the future — for the sector and his fund. ‘What you’ll see over the next ten to fifteen years is people who have been successful in their 40s and 50s wanting to give something back.’ But he stresses there is no simple model to copy. ‘What’s important is the mix — of private expertise and money, and social problems — that’s what provides the power. Our early results are good. But you really need history to make an assessment of how effective you’ve been. You need to be able to track what happens to people once they’ve left your employment. What we want to do next is grow, add staff, and help make sure that others who try this sort of thing don’t have to make the same mistakes that we did.”

Worth Magazine
Venture Philanthropy
Published February 1999
REDF featured
“Roberts is often asked why, if the goal is to train and employ the virtually unemployable, he doesn’t just support job-training programs in conventional existing businesses? His answer is that nonprofit service organizations are better suited to assist the working homeless because their managers are far more familiar with the myriad personal and psychological problems their employees face.”

The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Press Clippings: Worth: Investor Finances Charity Businesses
Published January 28, 1999
“The financier George Roberts had one requirement when he decided to step up his philanthropy in the late 1980’s: ‘What I was looking for was something that wouldn’t be done if we didn’t do it.’ he told Worth magazine (February). Mr. Roberts says he is now undertaking a review of how well his approach has worked, but he told the magazine he believes one key to success has been the nonprofit groups, which he says understand how to help people deal with personal and psychological problems better than business-run training programs.”

Bridge News
CMaking Sure Your Charitable Dollars Go To Work: Five Tips for Making Donations that Make a Difference
Published December 29, 1998
Commentary by REDF’s Jed Emerson
“...when it comes to charitable gifts, many Americans invest without a strategy or in-depth understanding of where their dollars are going... The following five tips can help.
1. Act on your commitment to become an informed investor.
2. View each gift as part of a linked strategy of support within a single area of interest.
3. Ask for accountability. Donors should look for measures of impact, not process.
4. Invest for the long term.
5. If you are a parent, mentor your own future ‘fund managers.”

The Washington Post
A LOOK AT...The New Philanthropy: Targeting the Cash
Published December 13, 1998
“Jed Emerson: ‘With the high degree of wealth creation that has taken place recently, there are individuals who, having become successful in the for-profit community through the use of their business skills, are now looking to have the same degree of impact through the application of those skills to their philanthropic activities. These folks represent a new type of player in the ‘nonprofit capital market’ and they are demanding a level of accountability and involvement not seen before in the sector. This means donors are asking recipients to track and document social return on investment, and viewing their gifts not simply as isolated donations, but as part of a philanthropic portfolio being managed in order to achieve certain stated objectives.”

The Christian Science Monitor
A Businesslike Approach to Helping the Homeless
Published October 7, 1998
REDF featured
“...The Roberts Foundation has zeroed in on a formula that seems to be working. The enterprises it funds, to the tune of several million dollars a year, are modeled after private-sector start-ups, though dedicated to alleviating social problems. ‘We’re trying to harness a free-enterprise approach to addressing social issues,’ says Jed Emerson... In the past year, the businesses have put more than 300 homeless people to work. ’...few nonprofits have attempted to build businesses around the homeless. As such, The Roberts Foundation ‘is definitely a bright light,’ says [Chris] Denniston [of Community Wealth Ventures].”

The San Francisco Chronicle
Wanted: New Hires/Firms Find Talent Among Disabled, Welfare Recipients
Published October 6, 1998
“For a lot of folks on the margins of the labor market, the main issue is not whether they can get a job, but whether they can keep it,’ added Jed Emerson... ‘A lot of support is needed because excitement about the initial placement wears off after a few weeks,’ Emerson added. ‘Child care, transportation and other problems can make everything unravel.”

The NonProfit Times
The NPT Power and Influence Top 50
Published August 1998
Jed Emerson named as one of the Top 50 people “leading and causing shifts in the third sector”
“[Jed] Emerson leads one of the most forward, foundation-based, venture capital organizations. The organization seeks to marry venture capital with the concept of “virtuous capital.” The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund recognizes the difference between financial risk exposure and organizational risk.”

The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Nonprofit Pay Scales: Getting What We Deserve
Published July 30, 1998
Opinion piece by REDF’s Jed Emerson
“A commitment to community and economic justice should not mean a willingness to be paid substantially less than those who do similar work at for-profit companies. The time has come to surrender the notion of the glamour of poverty that we have held so long. However, before nonprofit staff...crusade for higher salaries, they should be aware that with the advocacy of increased compensation comes something else from the for-profit world: increased accountability.”

National Public Radio (NPR)
Social Entrepreneurs
Published in May 26, 1998
partial transcript
“ARNOLD: There’s another type of social entrepreneurship out there where the nonprofit is actually running a money-making business...social entrepreneurship in its various forms is spreading around the country, and Jed Emerson with The Roberts Foundation thinks it’s largely a good thing that the walls between business and nonprofits are being breached.
EMERSON: Before, when business was evil and bad and Satan incarnate, social workers wouldn’t want to have anything to do with corporates downtown or even the small business people in their own community. And I think what’s represented by the evolution of new social entrepreneurs is in fact individuals who can play both sides for the common good. ”

The Grantsmanship Center Magazine
Business Ventures for Nonprofits — Finding the Right Legal Structure
Published Winter 1997
This article originally appeared in New Social Entrepreneurs: The Success, Challenge and Lessons of Nonprofit Enterprise Creation, published by REDF and available in the Publications Section.
Inc.

The State of Small Business 1997: Crossover
Published Winter 1997
“The Roberts Foundation...recently published a book of case studies called New Social Entrepreneurs. ‘Finally, people are realizing that we have to rethink not how to raise money but how to make use of the resources in our communities,’ says Jed Emerson, author of The Roberts Foundation’s case study book. ‘People are talking not about charitable contributions but about how to bring added economic value to the interaction between nonprofits and the communities in which they work.’ ‘I’m a big fan of failure,’ says...Emerson, who approaches funding nonprofits more like a venture capitalist than a typical foundation officer. ‘People involved in funding start-ups will tell you that out of every 10 launches, they’ll get two really successful efforts, two that are complete failures, and the rest in the middle — the walking wounded. When a for-profit fails, it’s viewed as a learning experience, an investment in intellectual capital. But when a nonprofit manager fails? It scars the person for life. We try to help the nonprofits adopt the private sector’s attitude.”

Buffalo News
Seminar Focuses on Jobs for Needy
Published November 14, 1997
REDF featured
“[Jed] Emerson set forth a new set of rules for nonprofits, which he came up with after dealing with the successes and failures of nonprofit entrepreneurial ventures. [His rules include getting] a patient funding source for the venture, since it can take three to five years before the business makes a profit; [and hiring] a qualified business manager.”

Business First — Columbus
Lecture Details How Nonprofits Can Benefit from Business Savvy
Published October 10, 1997
“Today, [Jed] Emerson heads a foundation that [George] Roberts funds, committed to creating businesses to employ the homeless and the poor. Emerson said Roberts‘ interest reflects what social entrepreneurism is all about. ‘It’s business people expert in the free enterprise system partnering with nonprofits,’ said Emerson. ‘...We’re looking at different ways (nonprofits) can make themselves more effective in work and not rely on grants.”

Entrepreneurial Nonprofit Leader
Famous Last Words of Failed Social Entrepreneurs
Published May 1997
This article originally appeared in New Social Entrepreneurs: The Success, Challenge and Lessons of Nonprofit Enterprise Creation, published by REDF and available in the Publications Section.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Putting Charities in Business
Published October 3, 1996
featuring HEDF, predecessor of REDF
“For people to get out of difficult situations in life, they have to have hope,’ says Mr. Roberts. ‘And the best way to give a person hope is to give them a job.’ Over the last seven years, The Roberts Foundation has spent more than $4.5 million to help nonprofit organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area establish profitable businesses that have put hundreds of needy people to work.”

Shelterforce
Moving Toward the Market
Published September/October 1996
by REDF’s Jed Emerson
“Clearly, the future holds great risks for all nonprofit managers, enterprise and non-enterprise alike. However, the rewards of pursuing an entrepreneurial approach to social issues are great and, in many ways less risky than simply ‘staying the course,’ as some would have us do. To grow a venture that supports itself, creates jobs for people long considered ‘unemployable,’ and kicks off money to help cover program costs can be an incredible, empowering experience for all involved.”

The Grantsmanship Center Magazine
Business Ventures on the Web
Published Summer 1996
“While most nonprofits initiate business ventures for the purpose of generating new revenue, some have other goals as well. One of the most important of these is to provide work opportunities for the people they serve... Examples of these enterprises have been assembled under the rubric of Homeless Economic Development Fund (HEDF).”