What can philanthropy and venture capital teach each other?

Venture capital and philanthropy are both methods of moving large amounts of money around the economy, but they usually do so with very different goals and strategies. VC aims to beat the stock market and maximize returns. Philanthropy cares more about creating impact and change (and obeying the strict rules that govern its practice).

Despite these different lanes that philanthropy and venture capital occupy, there is a growing movement of thought that they are not so far apart, and that there are indeed many lessons that each can take from the other. Philanthropy ought to take lessons on investing in teams, not just ideas; private business investing ought to consider the impact its dollars have on the world.

That’s the focus of this week’s episode of Off the Sidelines, an investor education podcast produced by us at Technical.ly and sponsored by Project Entrepreneur, a program by UBS. Project Entrepreneur wants to improve the enabling environments for women founders and advance inclusive capital, which includes diversifying the pipeline of investors and supporters. Bringing VC and philanthropy closer together is one way to work toward achieving that.

The majority of the episode is comprised of a conversation between Knight Foundation CEO Alberto Ibargüen and Slauson & Co. Managing Partner Austin Clements, conducted at ADVANCE, the annual conference on creating smarter impact hosted by Technical.ly’s sister site Generocity.

Listen to the episode to hear what each thinks their respective industry does well (and could do better), and whether enacting change requires concessionary returns or if advancing impact could be a strong investment thesis on its own.

We have more episodes coming up this season with conversations from notable figures throughout the investing world, so be sure to subscribe and keep up to date with all our episodes.

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