Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation

This grant supports research, case studies and a publication that draws lessons from more than 175 investments in early-stage social enterprises made by Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation (DRK) over nearly 20 years of experience. The goal is to identify critical factors that drive scale, impact and systemic social change in order to build understanding among practitioners in the fields of social innovation/enterprise, philanthropy and impact investing. Specifically, DRK's leadership believes that they have identified six capabilities that enable these organizations to break the code to scale and reach critical mass, in turn leading to changes in policy and to the underlying conditions that create societal inequities and other challenges. While there have been episodic cases about organizations that have reached some level of systemic change and many articles focusing on entrepreneurship more generally, DRK is well positioned to share lessons from its long experience and to do a comparative analysis across its portfolio, which includes many organizations that have achieved significant results. Based on data collected across its full portfolio, DRK estimates that the social enterprises it has supported have impacted more than 150 million lives, helping those in greatest need gain access to food, water, shelter, sanitation, healthcare, education, and economic mobility.