Guest Blogger: Rishi Moudgil

Born and raised in Metro Detroit, Rishi came to Ann Arbor for college and subsequently has lived most of his adult life here. His spirit runs high for the Maize and Blue, where he has spent much time supporting both the popular aspects of the University of Michigan as well as some hidden gems. During this process, he received masters' degrees in business and education and worked in several departments ranging from entrepreneurship to service learning.

Growing up, Rishi always had a strong connection to the community and always felt compelled to create new opportunities for engagement. After leading the Michigan chapter of the Kiwanis Circle K, he founded the nonprofit mentoring and tutoring organization, K-grams. After a string of other entrepreneurial efforts, he managed the Great Lakes Entrepreneur's Quest to support new business growth in the state of Michigan. He has also worked for numerous philanthropic organizations locally and beyond, such as the Chicago Public Education Fund.

Currently, Rishi serves as managing director of the University of Michigan's Nonprofit and Public Management Center, which is an interdisciplinary environment that brings together students in business, public policy, social work, and education. In addition to pro bono volunteering and developing local leadership programs, he is also a member of the Ann Arbor Community Foundation's Next Generation Philanthropists. Rishi enjoys exploring new passions and continues to leverage his interest in people and their stories through filmmaking.

Find him on Twitter at: @rmoudgil.



Funding for the Social Good: The How and Why

Our community is filled with people who are genuinely interested in improving society – many through launching, sustaining, or growing social initiatives. When I speak with them, ultimately most conversations revolve around one topic: how to get more money.

Of course, there are many other factors to consider when trying to achieve social impact, such as leadership, structures, and policies. None of these can be ignored. However, appropriate funding is often the key enabler that is most scrutinized. Considering there are multiple funding avenues for ideas, organizations, and even businesses with explicit goals of enhancing social good, why aren’t we taking advantage of them?

Because we tend to default to traditional thinking. Non-profits taking on debt? For-profit businesses pursuing social and environmental impact investments? Small dollar online donations leading to anything substantial? Government and innovation in the same sentence? These are foreign concepts to most, but they represent just a host of possibilities for social funding methods.

For those doing good, traditional philanthropy has led the way for generations. According to Giving USA, our nation’s charitable giving was over $316 billion last year. Today, avenues for donating and distributing this money are increasingly differentiated, ranging from bucket drives to crowdsourcing to bequests. Yet even with all these mechanisms to enable philanthropy, giving in the U.S. has remained around 2% of GDP for decades.

So as we seek more – or more effective – solutions to many of society’s problems, innovation in funding models is thriving locally and in our state. This doesn’t mean we should ignore philanthropy; rather, it’s time we work together across ideas, industries, and ideologies. Collaboration and collective action spur creative solutions for enabling social change. Here are a few examples:

• In order to maximize the impact on local human services programs, a unique coordinated funding plan was recently executed among the United Way of Washtenaw County, the Joint Office of Community and Economic Development, and the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation. In three years, this partnership between private philanthropy, government, and nonprofits has strategically dispensed nearly $15M that would not have been possible separately.
• Recently, Michigan joined a handful of states to pursue an emerging “Pay for Success” model of tackling large-scale societal issues by utilizing social impact bonds. Although such a partnership among state government, investors, and social agencies has a short track record, this is a great opportunity for leaders to work across sectors and confront major societal issues together.
• In our own backyard, University of Michigan students are pioneering the use of venture-capital investing for high-growth businesses that also have a social return. The world’s first student-led social venture fund is leading the way in supporting profit-driven enterprises that are in “the business of doing good.”

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Long-time philanthropic stalwarts in the region, such as the Kresge, Kellogg, and Skillman Foundations, continue to disperse millions in grants to worthy causes while also exploring new ways of impact investing. Community development finance institutions such as the Nonprofit Finance Fund and microlending organizations such as Kiva create alternative ways to loan dollars to low income residents and entrepreneurs. In fact, Kiva has piloted its first foray into direct domestic lending right here in Detroit.

So there is a multitude of ways in which Michigan leads the way in social funding methods. But as the landscape becomes more complex, we should both embrace innovation and also challenge these new methods to ensure that desirable outcomes are achieved.

At the University of Michigan, we’re convening different voices to address these topics at our Social Innovation Summit on Oct. 11 and will likely end up asking a lot more questions. We invite you to join and help us shape our future through funding social good.