by Kaitlyn Brown A changing landscape An increasing number of social entrepreneurs are choosing to launch for-profit businesses rather than non-profit organizations to attain their desired social impact. For-profit models allow these entrepreneurs to avoid dependencies on sometimes unpredictable grant [...]

Check out our very own Berry Kennedy’s article, Why impact investing goes beyond venture capital, on GreenBiz.com. http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2013/03/29/why-impact-investing-beyond-venture-capital

by Perry Teicher UM Social Venture Fund’s interest in Detroit stems from a strong belief in the value of supporting the local economy, particularly in alignment with the continuously growing socially entrepreneurial ecosystem in the city. Detroit has attracted a [...]

By Mary Fritz Whether it’s fully developed and at the forefront of your mind or vaguely defined and rarely considered, everyone has a slightly different concept of social impact. There are broad areas of overlap – most of us agree [...]

By Phil Ginsberg How innovative can a startup incubator possibly be? I had no idea – until I visited Detroit’s Green Garage with SvF’s Urban Revitalization Circle. In the course of our afternoon with Green Garage’s management, its entrepreneurs and [...]

By Emily Litwin “All you need to know is that finance is love.” Gautam smiles, adding, “And compounding.” If only impact investing were that simple. In the burgeoning field, the University of Michigan’s Social Venture Fund has helped pave the [...]

By Pratik Butala Negotiations are some of the most challenging business conversations to have because the two parties at the table often act as adversaries looking to get the largest “share of the pie.” In our first semester’s Management and [...]

The Social Venture Fund is extremely happy to announce that we will be kicking off the Social Venture Fund blog series today! Impact investing and social entrepreneurship are fast growing sectors attracting the best and brightest who want to change [...]

The Empowerment Plan is a path-breaking social enterprise based in Detroit, Michigan that provides both jobs and coats for people in need. The organization trains homeless women as skilled seamstresses and employs them to construct self-heating, waterproof coats, which turn [...]

7/9/2012 –  AAnn Arbor, Mich. — The Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studiesat the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business announced today its Social Venture Fund has closed an investment in Jack & Jake’s, a sustainable food [...]

X-Conomy, November 2011 The first rule of starting any entrepreneurial venture is: Find a problem that needs solving. Detroit, as we all know, has some big social problems: poverty; crime; homelessness; abysmal literacy rates; rampant unemployment. It should hardly be [...]