AVPN Webinar

28 May 2015
Creating Impact
Learning from
Failure
Holly Piper, CAF
Venturesome
Andrew Muirhead,
AVPN

avpn.asia

Ever Tried. Ever Failed.

No matter.
Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett

CAF Venturesome: a leader in social investment

Offered

36 million

Helped

100 individuals and families

to support social investment

12 years

Supported more than

of expertise

450 organisations

A portfolio of

And currently operates

100 clients

4 active social
investment funds

at any one time

What did we look at?

Focus on financial failure, rather than failure of social impact

22 social investments in which we failed to recover some or all of

the capital invested

Remaining question: is there a correlation between financial and

social failure? (our experience suggests that there is!)

What did we find?

50%

Cant do it

45%

Wont do it

32%

Nobodys buying

27%

Cult of personality

27%

Bad with money

People are
important!

But contributing factors also matter

High risk business models

Weak financial management and monitoring

High proportion of restricted funds

Dependency on a single income source

Exposure to public service contracts

Macro-economic factors

Case study: high-profile social enterprise with

ambitious growth targets
50% Cant do it

Board slow to react to deteriorating

situation, struggled to work
collaboratively with founder CEO

45% Wont do it

Commercial and fundraising expertise

but struggled to build viable business
model, unrealistic fundraising forecasts

32%

27%

27%

Nobodys buying

Rapidly deteriorating environment, with

public sector finances severely strained

Cult of personality

Charismatic founder CEO resigned

following arguments with the board

Bad with money

Financial controls were reasonably

strong

Conclusions
What have we
learnt?

And what will

we do?

Flexible and patient approach

Increase the intensity of support

Improve measurement and analysis

Remain bold, seek to innovate

Sector engagement and collaboration

Transparency around successes and

failures

Find out more and sign up to our newsletter:

www.cafonline.org/supportsocialinvestment
Email:
hpiper@cafonline.org