Black-Led Echoing Green Launches $15.6M Fund To Boost Social Innovators
Social entrepreneurship non-profit Echoing Green is launching a $15.6 million fund to provide capital to help social innovators grow.
The Signal Fund
The Signal Fund will serve as a financial tool providing capital to social innovators at critical growth stages, especially founders with overlooked potential for scalable social impact.
In 2019, research from Echoing Green and The Bridgespan Group showed that the revenues of Black-led organizations were 24% smaller than those of their white-led counterparts. The unrestricted net assets of the Black-led organizations were 76% smaller than their white-led counterparts.
Co-designed with Angel City Advisors and Echoing Green Fellow Daniel Tellalina, the new fund aims to test a new set of financial mechanisms.
It also aims to model more broadly accessible investment vehicles that can help fuel social change and innovation globally.
Investing in Social Innovators
As part of a two-year pilot, Signal is aiming to make 20 investments in recipients of the Echoing Green Fellowship, which has supported almost 1,000 innovators for the last 35 years.
The fund has already disbursed $3.6 million to 12 social innovators, and as a result, recipients have already leveraged an additional $18 million in funding for their organizations.
“In the current economic climate, fundraising for entrepreneurs has become increasingly difficult,” said Echoing Green President Cheryl L. Dorsey.
“Through Signal Fund, we are strengthening and de-risking a new pipeline of social innovators – ones that we believe will expand the set of leaders who are too often overlooked by mainstream philanthropy and financial institutions. This fund can help proven social innovators move past the proverbial valley of death that so many start-ups face.”
Image credit: Echoing Green
