Young Professionals for Acumen Fund co-founder Erica Dhawan (far left) writes about how YP got its start. Also pictured: Molly Alexander from Acumen Fund and Farhat Umar, YP's other co-founder.In November 2007, while working Lehman Brothers, I cold-called Acumen Fund to find out if there were any opportunities to get involved. Because I was unable to volunteer full-time, I began to brainstorm with Acumen Fund's Molly Alexander about building a network of young professionals interested in social enterprise. With the help friends, we organized an event in June 2008 called “The Value Chain of Social Enterprise: How Young Professionals Can Get Involved," which attracted over 300 attendees. We then hosted our first fundraising event in October 2008, raising almost $4,000 for Acumen Fund.
YP is now a group of over 500 young people - bankers, consultants, entrepreneurs, marketers, designers, non-profiters, and students - who share a vision of collaboration in the fight against poverty. We see a broad vision for our future: integrating this group with our peer organizations and providing more opportunities for young individuals committed to creating change. I truly believe that social enterprise is the cause of our generation and I can't wait to see how YP evolves in the next few years.
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Have the Young Professionals for Acumen Fund considered forming a group / profile on www.unltdworld.com ? Over 10,000 social entrepreneurs across the world, who could really benefit from the insight and business skills you have to offer... dan [at] unltdworld.com if you're keen to chat further...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the head's up, Dan. I'll drop you a line today.
ReplyDeleteIs there any way people from outside the US can collaborate?
ReplyDeleteI live in Mexico and I'm really interested in collaborating in some way with Acumen fund or with any organization of young social entrepreneurs. If there is something we can do to contribute to this movement please contact me at dimitri.lf at gmail dot com and I'll be glad to help.
We're still figuring out to expand from our New York base but we're very open to ideas and suggestions. Please share!
ReplyDeleteI'm part of StartingBloc and NetImpact - I'm curious if Acumen would consider opening an 'interest' group in Philadelphia to hold similar events and coordination as Acumen does in NYC?
ReplyDeleteGiving responsibility to local 'interest' groups but keeping it coordinated in/based out of NYC.
I'm up for discussing this further offline - ronjon.bose [at] gmail.com