A New Type of Corporate Partnership

If you are sitting in a traffic jam, you can blame the car in front of you, and all the cars in front of you, for creating the traffic jam, or you can take responsibility for joining them, alone in your car at rush hour, and say, ‘I am the traffic jam.’

Emmanuel Faber, COO Danone

At Acumen, we think of ourselves as a “global” organization, but I was reminded this past Friday that the word has many meanings. I spoke at a conference at Indiana University called “Framing the Global,” designed to advance the conversation within the sphere of global studies. The academics who attended were all involved in exploring the social, political, economic and cultural consequences of transnational flows of people, products and ideas. I was invited as a practitioner to talk about Acumen’s work, our model for the kind of leadership needed in an increasingly interconnected world, and to share my own experiences forging new kinds of partnerships with the corporate sector. I was there to share some concrete examples of what could be done when you assumed the world was interconnected.  This is a core element of Acumen’s guiding principles, and I believed our work would intersect directly with the issues raised at a conference on the question of what is “global.”

The Q&A session after my talk started out with a question about corruption, and moved on to challenge Acumen’s willingness to partner with corporations in light of the troubling history of multi-nationals in many of the markets where we work. Many of the questions held a real skepticism about whether corporations could help build a more equitable world, and they gave me pause.

The experience challenged me to consider very carefully how Acumen could help transform the history of exploitive corporate practices. I realized the importance of the work we are doing to forge a whole new kind of corporate partnership. It is not enough to say that our work brings real benefits to social enterprises and the people they serve. Our goal is to change the systems that have, in so many cases, led to the inequality and lack of options that we see. So, to be successful, we need to partner with corporations that are also interested in changing systems.

I was lucky enough to hear Emmanuel Faber, the COO of Danone, speak recently at a Wealth & Giving Forum event in New York focused on social impact. He openly challenged the notion that there are systems that exist beyond our control, and shared Danone’s work to partner with Grameen to innovate around product development, manufacturing and corporate investment. We see more and more companies willing to go outside their comfort zone and partner in creative ways in order to achieve breakthroughs (including through our partnership with Dow, which I wrote about here). We are now working with multiple global corporations based in both the US and the countries where we invest to provide financial and in-kind support to social enterprises that seek to scale. These companies are looking beyond traditional CSR to find new potential allies in the development of more inclusive and sustainable business models. But these are the early days of exploring the potential for collaboration between corporations and social enterprises.

We know there are systems, and drivers, and institutions that make the kind of radical change we want to see happen much harder, but my time at Indiana University served as a great reminder that if we want to create change, we can neither dismiss what is broken as “the way things are” nor can we blame it as though we are powerless to change it.

I am excited that Acumen is choosing to engage in the debate about the role of corporations in helping to build a more inclusive model of business and more dignified and equitable model. I believe we will discover a whole new set of solutions by engaging in this discussion from a position of openness and respect, even as we hold ourselves accountable to the people, and not the systems, with which we stand.

(originally posted in Acumen blog at http://acumen.org/blog/)

There’s a first time for everything: the TA Initiative summit; Nairobi, Kenya

Veronica Mahiga of Unilever and Charles Oboth of Gulu Agricultural Development Co

On May 14-16, Acumen held its first summit of social enterprises and global corporations to explore opportunities for collaboration aimed at expanding access to critical goods and services for poor communities in East and West Africa. The event was the formal kick-off of the Technical Assistance (TA) Initiative, a partnership between Acumen and Dow launched as a Commitment to Action at the Clinton Global Initiative.

The event in fact represented many firsts:

• The first time Acumen had launched a formal effort to provide technical assistance grants to social enterprises
• The first time Acumen had partnered with a network of corporations on technical assistance opportunities
• The first time we brought together leading corporations and pioneering social enterprises to identify common ground and complementary strengths in the development of more inclusive and sustainable markets. 

Godfrey Mwindaare of Acumen, Dorcas Onyango of The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, and Yulanda Chung of Standard Chartered

Ross McLean of Dow Chemical at site visit with Acumen Investee, Sanergy

Though the TA Initiative Summit ended on May 16, it has left us with great momentum and some valuable insights. The Summit was truly, in the Acumen spirit, an experiment—a chance to learn by doing. It required a leap of faith from the attendees, from the ten social enterprises that joined from across East and West Africa, and the corporate participants who joined from Michigan, Johannesburg, Dubai and London. The corporate participants came for a chance to learn and identify new opportunities for collaboration between corporations and social enterprises and left filled with ideas for working together. The enterprises were given an opportunity to network with potential corporate partners, and apply for technical assistance grants earmarked for this group.

What became evident during the summit was the desire of the 40 or so participants to make the most of the time together. It was palpable during the active break-out discussions, the buzz in the room during breaks, and the follow-up from many of the participants since. Though the most important indicator for success will be what happens after the summit, we have already heard great feedback from participants that the opportunity to explore partnership opportunities across the social enterprise and corporate worlds was a unique and valuable one. Dozens of commitments to follow up were created at the summit, and we will be going through them and following up with participants in the days and weeks to come.

Alden Zecha of Sproxil, adding a new follow-up idea to the wall.

Our tremendous thanks go to all who joined, who took a chance to explore a critical new frontier in the spread of solutions to global challenges. And especially to Dow Chemical, our partner in the Technical Assistance Initiative, for taking this journey with us.

Eric Martin of Cambridge Leadership Associates, the author, and Bo Miller of Dow Chemical

– Yasmina Zaidman is Acumen’s Director of Communications and Strategic Partnerships

This blog first appeared on the Acumen blog

The Magic of Partnerships

I feel like I hear that word so much more often now that I am in the Partnerships business. I was recently at a conference in Washington DC where I learned that helping major corporations partner with non-profits is a virtual industry. If that’s the case, then I am proud to say that once again I find myself a novice on a steep learning curve. And as is my wont, I will proceed without the benefit of extensive experience so much as a passion for finding the most direct route to doing something that has an impact. So, when I was asked by Andrea Useem to comment in an article for Devex on the subject, I was happy to share my experience in the wild frontier of partnership building. Here’s the piece, and I am truly honored to be quoted among peers who are making the term “partnerships” really mean something by focusing on impact and long-term strategic collaboration. http://www.devex.com/en/news/5-keys-to-effective-partnerships/79643

Your Coffee, Their Lives, Our Planet

 

(originally posted on Acumen Fund’s Blog)

I recently attended a conference on “Sustainability as a key factor for mitigating risk in agricultural supply chain finances,” co-hosted by the Rainforest Alliance and Citi Foundation. A pretty specific topic, for sure, and you may be asking yourself, “how many people are there trying to figure that out?”

Well, you’d be surprised. There were at least 80 people there, and potentially many more that would have come if they could. Why, you may ask?

A simple answer, really: a lot of the things that people consume come out of the ground – coffee, tea, chocolate, cotton, and almost everything we eat. What many don’t realize is that in the majority of the world, the people who grow stuff are among the world’s poorest and the way commodities are produced is having a bigger and bigger impact on the environment. Our global supply chains now matter more than ever.

Most of the world’s poor are small scale farmers. And a major reason they remain poor is because they struggle to get their products to market. Even when they do, because of a multitude of reasons – lack of transportation infrastructure, lack of access to capital, lack of accurate market information – they are often abused by exploitative middle men in the process and fail to capture the true value of what they produce.

At the same time, conventional agricultural practices are creating a perfect storm of environmental challenges: decreasing water tables, loss of arable land, deforestation, loss of habitat, and pollution from pesticides and fertilizers.

People need the stuff that comes out of the ground, but we also need to get it in a way that enables producers to have stable and adequate incomes, and that allows the environment to sustain life in the long-term. Without both conditions, the system cannot be considered sustainable. One of the best ways to achieve both is to develop new supply chains and new business models that fairly compensate farmers and reward sustainable agriculture. At the most basic level, engaging smallholder farmers – farmers with tiny plots of land – in global agricultural supply chains may be one of the most powerful ways to reduce global poverty and ameliorate environmental degradation.

So things like Fair-Trade, organic, and certified sustainable are not just hip new ways to show you care – they are actually the beginning of an effort to transition our agricultural systems into a means to meet customers’ needs, but also address critical social and environmental issues.

What’s exciting is that major brands and retailers— Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Starbucks, Unilever –recognize the value of sustainable supply chains (short hand for this effort). But huge challenges stand in the way of improving these practices, especially among the millions of disaggregated smallholder farmers. OK- reality check – it’s anything but simple. Tensie Whelan, who leads the Rainforest Alliance and co-hosted the event, mentions the growing role of companies in her blog on the event:

Hundreds of companies are working with civil society (and occasionally, governments) to help millions of producers to invest in sustainable practices-helping them to become more viable small businesses and, not incidentally, more stable long-term suppliers.

A few weeks ago I joined these 80 people from companies, financiers, foundations, non-profits, and academics, because Acumen Fund has developed a portfolio of companies dedicated to improving famer productivity, and we’ve begun to find innovative business models that we think will contribute tremendously to the advancement of socially and environmentally sustainable agriculture. Companies like Global Easy Water Products, which distributes low-cost irrigation technology tailored to small-holder farmers in India, and Western Seed, which sells high-quality hybrid seeds to farmers in Western Kenya who for generations have used farm-saved varieties.  Or companies like GADCO, one of Acumen Fund’s newest investments from our new operation in West Africa, which engages smallholder farmers in Ghana in the production of rice for local markets, increasing their productivity through improved inputs and linking them to a higher value market by managing the whole supply chain.

I was there to better understand how we can partner with companies, NGOs, multi-laterals, to make sure that these innovations truly achieve scale, both for individual companies in our portfolio, and for the broader network of global supply chains.

My big Aha at this conference is that a challenge this complicated takes the networks, expertise, and capital of a whole constellation of actors. Acumen’s niche here is, I believe, in finding and supporting innovation in the sector, and whenever it makes sense, to be a great partner to those organizations who need this challenge addressed in bold, new ways:  to corporations who know they must move in the direction of sustainability for a myriad of reasons, and to Foundations (such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which helped us launch our agriculture portfolio), who have made it their business to tackle the world’s biggest challenges.

Making sustainable supply chains the new norm and not just a niche or fad will require tremendous effort on the part of these diverse actors, and whole new systems that can support, expand and monitor sustainable practices. In all of this Acumen Fund aims to be a source of innovation through the business models we invest in. And always, we strive to be a champion for entrepreneurial solutions and for the entrepreneurs themselves, recognizing that transforming markets and raising standards can just as easily create new barriers for farmers and entrepreneurs that are already struggling.

At this event, I was humbled by the complexity of the issue and impressed by the commitment and expertise of all those gathered. I left convinced that Acumen Fund and our agriculture portfolio has a unique role to play through our continued investments in enterprises that unleash new ideas for a system that must evolve – for producers, for the planet, and for all those who consume and know they must do so in ways that are sustainable. That is, for you and me.