VANCOUVER+acumen Case Competition – From a Student’s Perspective

Stop for a second, and close your eyes. Go back five years, maybe ten, to a year when you were a university student. You have to wake up at 8:00am on a Saturday morning to present a case to a panel of judges and you’ve barely gotten any sleep over the past twenty four hours (this doesn’t sound promising)… but wait, this is the first time you actually want to wake up that early on a weekend day and you can’t wait to present!

Now fast forward in time. Imagine you are sitting at a beautiful desk in a New York head office and you are in front of a… a stock chart? No, of course not. An idea. Not just any idea, a breakthrough idea that could change the world.

Vancouver +acumen Case Competition. This is how these two scenarios come together, allowing for a group of undergraduate and graduate students to step into the shoes of a board member, an investor, or fellow for Acumen Fund, not only challenging them to think critically but inspiring them to think differently. On March 10^th, students will spend 24 hours with a take home ‘open’ case and the following day, will present to a panel of judges made up of industry leaders in finance and social enterprise.

This is not an easy task, but thankfully we (the students!) have the wonderful Mark McCoy as our coach. Here is a summary of what Mark has taught so far:

Workshop #1

This workshop focused on strategies for case analysis as well as an introduction to Acumen Fund. Mark led us through an example of a boy named Arthur who had an unsuccessful first year at university. He then used this example to illustrate various techniques used in sorting out the facts of a case, fully understanding the problem, conducting analysis, and outlining a solution. We also had the opportunity to learn more about Acumen Fund’s investment criteria, portfolios, fellows program and the concept of patient capital.

Workshop #2

The topic of workshop #2 was implementation and presentation. The example of Arthur was applied again, and this time to Acumen Fund’s ‘10 Things We’ve Learned About Tackling Global Poverty’ (http://www.acumenfund.org/ten/)! The students were intrigued and conversation was sparked. Mark went into more detail about Acumen Fund’s investment criteria and how Acumen Fund measures impact.

There was also an astounding guest presentation from Nikolas Laufer-Edel who taught the students how to create an effective, visually appealing power-point presentation. The energy in the room after workshop #2 was definitely one of excitement and anticipation.

Workshop #3

The upcoming workshop will be this Saturday and it will focus on financial modeling. Although Mark doesn’t expect us to become ‘masters of excel’ in just a few hours (or at least I hope not!), financial modeling is a fundamental aspect of determining whether or not a project is going to be financial sustainable. The Vancouver +acumen team will be tweeting live from this workshop!

Lastly, I have gathered some thoughts from a few of the other students who have been attending the workshops. Here is what they have to say!

“I heard about the case competition from a fellow student. I was curious about how finance concepts could be applied to something other than banking. I also found out that the women who wrote the book ‘The Blue Sweater’ founded the Acumen Fund. The workshops have been very interactive and Mark is engaging and very supportive. I am looking forward to the case and taking all of the skills we have learned and applying it to a meaningful cause!” - Jasmine

“I’ve been very competitive my whole life, and I really wanted to experience a real-life application of the materials I’ve been taught in Sauder. Hence, combining competition with learning is what attracted me to the case competition. The seminars have been very useful so far. My favorite segment was definitely “the presentation on presenting”, but the case-competition strategy talks have been insightful as well. I’ve learned how to present effectively and how to work as a team under tight time constraints. I am looking forward to spending an entire day looking at a case and creating an organized conclusion out of the disorganized collection of information.” - Tim

“I thought this would be a great learning experience because of the workshops. I love that there is that social, entrepreneurial aspect in this case competition because of what the organization works to fund. I had also heard great things about this case competition! I’ve only been to one workshop so far but I was surprised at the quality of the content! I am looking forward to the rest of the workshops and watching other people’s case presentations! From my experience, working on cases is such a unique way to learn about business problems and really working the brain to form a creative solution. I can’t wait to read the case and feel the sense of accomplishment at the end of everything!” - Elizabeth

Make sure to follow @van4acumen this Saturday at 10am [PST]!

- Rebecca Konsolos, @rkonsolos

The Generosity Exercise

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” Aesop

 I like to think that I’m smart about the way I make charitable donations. I feel that social enterprises are generally more effective uses of money, therefore I’m biased to charities that follow this model. So when I came across an article in The Boston Globe titled, “Why we give to charity”, I was surprised to learn about a number of studies that found that the more people think about giving, the less generous they are.

One of these studies, done by scientist Daniel Oppenheimer, found that giving donors more information about a charity’s overhead costs makes them less likely to donate, even if the charity’s costs were low. This was due to something he called the ‘drop in the bucket effect’; the realization of how little their contribution is going to help in the grand scheme of things.

It forced me think about my own approach to giving and about all the times I ignored requests for money or just said ‘no’, and it made me realize that I may not be as generous as I previously thought.

So when our +acumen chapter conducted its own generosity experiment late last year, it allowed me to exercise my generosity muscle in an entirely new way: being generous for the sake of being generous; saying yes, instead of saying no.

My giving mainly consisted of small acts, giving money, time or assistance to those who asked. The results from my one-week experiment were subtle; a smile or a sincere “thank you”. But maybe that’s the point of this exercise.

There’s this great TED talk by Luis von Ahn, where he talks about his software reCAPTCHA, that is digitizing books using crowdsourcing. Every time you type in a security word while buying tickets on Ticketmaster or adding friends on Facebook, you are helping decipher older texts that can’t be read by computers. People are digitizing books at a rate of 2.5 million books per year, one word at a time.

I see Generosity Day as spurring something similar, a combination of many small acts that will result in the change we all want to see in our lifetime. Like reCAPTCHA lead to the translation of the web, this one day could lead to a change in the way we interact and make decisions.

In his own generosity experiment, Sasha Dichter talks about giving a man on the subway $20 for medication. There was no way to know whether this money would be used for medicine, and had Sasha not conducted this experiment, there’s a chance he never would’ve given the man money. But by being more consciously generous it lead him to change his beliefs.

There is no one solution when it comes to solving global poverty. Every one is going to need to pitch in. It’s this idea of a culmination of small, positive actions leading to something meaningful, that inspires me and instills hope that I can make a difference.

VANCOUVER+acumen is supporting Generosity Day with these t-shirts, with proceeds going to Acumen Fund. We will also be celebrating with a Generosity-themed Salon on Tuesday, February 28^th at a restaurant to be confirmed. Email us at van4acumen@gmail.com to be notified of details.

- Aki Kaltenbach, @akikaltenbach

Making an Impact through Social Finance

We’re really excited to be participating in the inaugural Canadian Global Impact Investing Group event: Making an Impact through Social Finance. The event will bring together organizations working to deploy capital to transform lives, create a world beyond poverty, fund social ventures and support sustainable development.

One of our knowledge/education team member, Jocelyn Ling, will be presenting on behalf of Vancouver for Acumen Fund — shar­ing the acu­men model (both on a global and chap­ter level) to the impact invest­ing com­mu­nity in Van­cou­ver. The event will be held on Wednes­day, Nov 23rd from 6:30pm — 9pm at SFU’s Segal Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness in down­town Van­cou­ver. You can check out more details about the event here.

Three other orga­ni­za­tions will also be pre­sent­ing at the event: Vancity, Global Cat­a­lyst Ini­tia­tive and Oppor­tu­nity Inter­na­tional Canada. Also, at the event, they will be giv­ing away door prizes: Impact invest­ing: Trans­form­ing How We make Money While Mak­ing a Dif­fer­ence – Jed Emer­son, Antony Bugg-Levine and Banker to the Poor – Muham­mad Yunus.

Look­ing for­ward to con­nect­ing with other fel­low impact investing/social enter­prise champions!

Update: For those of you who could not make it out to the event, check out Jocelyn’s presentation at the event here.

Workshop Spots Available!

The Education team has been able to secure a larger venue to host the Case Competition Workshops! If you weren’t able to register for the competition, but would like to participate in the workshops, you’re more than welcome to join us!

Workshop participate will cost $50 at the door and includes all 4 workshops!

The first will be held on Saturday, November 5th at 10am at Buchanan A104, UBC.

For more details on the workshop, click here.

Case Competition – it’s back!

Excited yet? The Vancouver for Acumen Fund Case Competition: Investing for Impact is back! (more details)

Registration is open to students in undergraduate and graduate studies competing in teams of 3. Successful applicants will be notified by October 24th.

If you haven’t received your confirmation email – check your spam, or email us!

email us if you have any questions: van4acumen.edu@gmail.com

A short video from our last Salon

Vancouver for Acumen from Chris McNally on Vimeo.

The First of Many Conversations at +Acumen Salons

Tuesday, June 28^thmarked the first of Vancouver for Acumen’s newly launched Salon Conversation Series; an event designed around conversation and inspired by the values and principles of Acumen Fund.

The idea sprung from our chapter’s two-day moral leadership workshop in early May after posing the question “How can we share more conversations about the values and principles of Acumen Fund in a way that is unique and enriching for participants but at the same time scalable to other chapters?”

Acumen Planning Workshop Vancouver Spring 2011