research

Deepti shushed me; gave me the look – let’s get started, she was trying to say. I kept talking anyway. Then Abigail shushed me; same look. I still kept talking. Finally, Hali gave me a nod – the presentation was starting. I finally shut up, and politely asked Jason Rzepka from Pop!Tech to come in and have a seat. Through the shushings, Jason and I were using the last few minutes of pre-event networking to catch up on his work – a yearly conference held in Maine. But neither he nor I had come to Gibson Dunn’s 48th floor offices (sidenote: thanks to Gibson Dunn for letting us use their amazing space) to talk about Maine. We were there for a presentation by the returning class of Acumen Fund Fellows.

Why would someone from Pop!Tech – and about 50 others – be interested in the Acumen Fund Fellows? Well, in Pop!Tech’s case, they’ve just launched their own Social Innovation Fellows program. So Jason joined us – along with representatives of the financial, non-profit, academic and business sectors for the first ever Acumen Fund Fellows Knowledge Discussion.

I took my seat, and looked around the room. Moses Lee – a researcher from the William Davidson Institute – was sitting across the room from David Auerbach and Elmira Bayrasli of Endeavor. Gary Rindner – an Acumen Fund partner and one of the Fellows’ mentors – sat in front of Jason from Pop!Tech and across from Jason Spindler of the NYU Reynolds Fellowship program (more fellows!) My colleague Mariko sat with Sarah Murray from the Financial Times; Mike Hokenson from Minlam Asset Management sat in front of them. The crowd stirred and squinted – the sun set behind Acumen Fund Talent Manager Deepti Doshi as she introduced the event, sending a glare into our eyes – and the program began.

One at a time, all seven Acumen Fund Fellows presented his or her research project, each based on work they’d done in the field. First to present was Chris Walker, who spent the last 10 months working for Dial 1298 for Ambulance in Mumbai, India.

There is something Orwellian about last week’s World Bank announcement of a new poverty line, and the Bank’s entire effort to categorize the poor, that I found moderately disturbing. This top-down attempt to box the problem and then convince ourselves that, because of some statistical shenanigans, there are now more (or fewer) people living in poverty is the kind of pointless navel gazing that I want us to avoid getting trapped into at Acumen Fund.

We have had internal discussions about this, which inevitably end with the realization that we will know poverty when we see it. What’s more, we need an honest check against moving too far up market - thereby neglecting our charitable intent and our aim of trying to serve the poor, who we define in terms of lack of income, lack of access, lack of dignity and lack of a chance to take control of one’s own destiny.

It certainly should be someone’s job to think about the distribution of wealth, the trends in economic development and the amount (and distribution) of human suffering, but I would take the effort more seriously if it were done by an organization that holds itself accountable to evaluating its programs for their ability to systematically alleviate poverty.