Watch the Skoll Foundation’s Raymond Guthrie, Principal on the Innovation Investment team, speaking alongside David Bergvinson of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation at the 2014 Water for Global Food Conference.
At 25m:20s, Raymond responds insightfully to a question from the audience about the main criteria employed by the Skoll Foundation in choosing which social entrepreneurs to support:
We aren’t an early stage investor…we look for social entrepreneurs that are in the mezzanine stage…[where] there is evidence of the entrepreneur driving impact. They’re generally between one to four million dollars of earned revenue before we’d make our initial investment or grant.
Because we’re an evidence-based organization, it all starts with…evidence that the innovation or the approach of the entrepreneur is actually driving real impact. Then there’s also a means through which there’s sustainability, either through earned revenue or a pathway to public resources.
It all stems from the social entrepreneur having a vision for driving this equilibrium change that’s outside of just one county or one district…[asking] how can you fix an unsatisfactory equilibrium?
For us large-scale change is when, with an entrepreneurial approach, you are able to fix an unjust or unsatisfactory equilibrium and create a new sustainable one which is maintained long after our investment.