Common Good Ventures

CGV is a team of experienced business people applying their professional expertise, networks and passion for change to help nonprofits achieve sustainable returns and greater social good.

Grantee Profile

Common Good Ventures was founded on the principal that mission-driven non-profit organizations can benefit from business coaching, mentoring, and a thoughtful and accountable management framework, much like businesses in the for-profit sector. It operates like a venture capital firm, carefully employing due diligence to identify the non-profits that are likely to leverage CGV’s capital and coaching to achieve sustainable returns as well as greater social good. At present, CGV works with long-term partner organizations as well as several additional non-profits each year through its Business Advisor and Springboard programs. The non-profits served by Common Good Ventures in turn serve low-income people in such areas as youth at risk, children and adults with disabilities, the terminally ill, adult learners, foster care youth, low-literacy children and adults, the frail, the isolated, and the elderly.

About Our Grants

The Foundation’s 2010 grant of $125,000 is the second installment of a two-year, $250,000 award to support CGV’s continuing efforts to build a new model of non-profit collaboration among its partners, with an eye toward broader dissemination of the model in the years ahead. This strategic initiative focuses on the most effective ways to accomplish organizational goals through networking, partnering, outsourcing, and collaborating with private and public entities, thereby bringing private-sector production networks into the non-profit arena.