As the population becomes more socially conscious, opportunities to make a positive social impact have expanded as well.
On Monday night, students gathered to hear Acumen Fund’s Chief Investment Officer Brian Trelstad deliver the 2010 Joel and Lois Coleman Social Impact Lecture. PennSEM, an organization that exists to advance Penn’s capabilities in the social sphere, organized the kicked off to the Social Impact Task Force's Social Impact Week.
The Social Impact Week was arranged to encourage students to explore what College and Wharton Sophomore and event organizer Chloe Ho called “social impact your way.”
Ho said she wanted to bring Trelstad to speak at the event because she understands that the future of social impact will include areas beyond traditional ventures such as the Peace Corps. Ho suggested that students who want to help people in need could look to “careers in non-profit or investment” as Brian Trelstad did.
Trelstad called himself an “accidental venture capitalist” who has been a social entrepreneur since his undergraduate days in 1990. As CIO of Acumen Fund he manages a $30 million investment portfolio. Trelstad explained that Acumen Fund provides “patient capital for impatient people.”
Acumen Fund raises capital from individual donors and from institutions and identifies enterprises that are in need of these funds. Because the investments are in both social and economic aspects of the companies, Trelstad and the Acumen Fund “measure success in both financial and non-financial returns.”
The investors in the company are taken mainly from what Trelstad called the “philanthropic pocket,” so a lot of the returns on investment can be put back into new companies and endeavors.
The Acumen Fund invests in companies in Third World countries that deal with health, housing, water, energy or agriculture. A to Z Textile Mills, which produces long-lasting insect nets in Africa to protect against malaria-carrying mosquitoes, is a company that has received capital from the Acumen Fund’s investments. The first private sector ambulance service in Mumbai — 1298 — also profited from Acumen Fund’s capital.
College sophomore Carly Ziegler explained the importance of companies like the Acumen Fund. A member of Penn’s chapter of MedLife, an organization dedicated to bringing health care to Ecuador and Peru, Ziegler remarked that funding from companies like Acumen Fund provides “the most essential asset to organizational growth.”
Trelstad’s intention was to offer students a new path toward positive social impact, explaining how necessary and useful finance and investments can be.
This article has been corrected to reflect that the Social Impact Task Force organized Social Impact Week. It originally stated that PennSEM was the organizer of both Monday's talk and Social Impact Week.
