Jacqueline Novogratz

The post’s title says it all - almost. Yes, Acumen Fund founder and CEO Jacqueline Novogratz has written a book - it will be published in early March. Entitled The Blue Sweater, the book is part memoir, part manifesto - a personal history trafficking in the lessons of Jacqueline’s life. Those lessons inevitably include many of the core values on which she founded Acumen Fund: respect, generosity, accountability, humility, audacity.

Earlier this evening, New York Times syndicated columnist Nicholas Kristof posted a review of The Blue Sweater on his blog, On the Ground. His entry is entitled Investing to fight poverty:

One of the most interesting innovators in aid and development is Jacqueline Novogratz, a New Yorker, the CEO of the Acumen Fund. She is, what? An aid worker? A banker? A bleeding-heart venture capitalist? A tough-minded philanthropist? All of the above?

On my Southeast Asia swing, I read an advance copy of her memoir, “The Blue Sweater,” which will be published in February [actually, March 3], and it’s a terrific and sober-minded look at the complexities of doing good. She acknowledges that helping people is much harder than it looks, and that donors need to do more listening and less instructing – yet at the end of the day, she believes there are things we can do that really do make a powerful difference to the world’s neediest.

Browse to Kristof’s blog and check out the review: http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/investing-to-fight-poverty/

You can learn more about The Blue Sweater at http://www.thebluesweater.com

In addition to holding the “billionaire title,” these three individuals share a commitment to a new movement of social change, according to Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, co-authors of Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World.  Bishop and Green believe that Gates, Clinton and Jolie are part of a new generation of wealthy, powerful people who are changing the role of philanthropy by combining focused, charitable donations with “big-business-style” investment strategies. Their book profiles several of these new philanthropists, including those listed above and other influentials like George Soros and U2’s Bono.

Bishop, American Business Editor/New York Bureau Chief for The Economist, explained the basis for focusing on the super-rich as change agents in a recent interview with Alliance Magazine: “The point we’re making is that there are more super-rich people around than ever before and they have all sorts of problem-solving talents developed in their business lives that they are now looking to bring to bear on some of the world’s big problems.”

But while these philantrocapitalists may be willing to take greater risks with their checkbooks as compared to traditional philanthropic institutions, many of them have a deep interest in accountability and rigorous performance measurement. Bishop’s and Green’s Values blog recently published an entry on philanthrocapitalism’s need for robust impact measurement systems.  Acumen Fund’s new portfolio management system, called Pulse, was pointed to as one innovative “work-in-progress” solution aimed at addressing this challenge.

Bishop also recently interviewed Acumen Fund CEO Jacqueline Novogratz at the Clinton Global Initiative about Acumen Fund’s emphasis on market-based solutions to solving the problems of global poverty (the video can be viewed below or on The Economist’s website).

In reviewing the list of names and organizations included in Bishop’s and Green’s book, it is clear that philanthrocapitalism has as many distinctions in as it does similarities.  Though the movement is unlikely to settle on a precise spot along the scale of pure philanthropy to pure capitalism, an exciting, unifying theme emerges: there is great promise in connecting high net worth individuals with innovative intermediaries to move from social investment to long-term impact.