In an effort to improve the education standards in the United States and to bring these standards to international levels, the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) in collaboration with NewSchools Venture Funds have decided to create a multi-million dollar philanthropic venture fund. Primarily, the start-up organizations would be the ones benefiting the most from this K-12 Infrastructure Fund. These two associations will be investing in those start-up organizations that have aimed towards building high-performance public schools. These small organizations are planning to achieve their goals by developing innovative human capital solutions and performance tools. This massive project was unveiled in front of 700 eager venture capitalists at the NCVA Annual Meeting In Santa Clara, California.

According to Mark Heesen, “The K-12 Education Infrastructure Fund offers a meaningful way in which the venture capital community can engage in the critical process of improving education in our country in a manner that is highly relevant to our business. We are very enthusiastic about partnering with NewSchools, an organization that has a proven track record of identifying and investing in education entrepreneurs who can make a real difference. We believe the NVCA membership will bring their strong ideals and commitment to success to this exciting project."

This new opportunity broadens the horizon of venture capital as the NVCA members can now invest funds in this project on an individual basis as well as on behalf of their firms. These members will also have the opportunity to guide the new upcoming companies in which the proposed Fund would be invested.

The NVCA/NewSchools will have a seat on the board of directors in each and every firm that they would invest in. The goal is to work with invested company’s management to formulate a high-quality and sustainable enterprise that would be capable of providing a positive effect on students’ results in areas where the education rate has become a matter of grave concern.

Some of these funding would be targeted specifically towards new recruitment training programs for teachers and principals, assessment and data systems to guide instructions and inform parents and open source solutions for curriculum and assessments.

NewSchools has been managing three funds for the last 10 years amounting to a total of $125 million as of now. These funds have been appropriately used to help 40 high-performing organizations. Some of these organizations are Teach for America, New Leaders for New Schools and Revolution Foods. Apart from the above mentioned organizations, there are also 16 charter school management organizations that are designated to operate 300 schools and serve more than 100,000 children.

As Ted Mitchell (CEO, NewSchools) said, “Entrepreneurs backed by NewSchools are proving that all children can meet high standards if given the right tools and the right environment. We are thrilled to partner with NVCA, which has been a hub of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activity across the economic spectrum."

In 2006, the NVCA MAGNET USA program was announced that was designed to promote U.S competitiveness via enhancements in the fields of education, immigration, research & development and the capital market. This newly formed alliance between the National Venture Capital Association and the NewSchools Venture Fund aims to advance the goals of the NVCA MAGNET USA.

About NVCA:

Approximately, 480 venture capital and private equity firms make up The National Venture Capital Association. Its primary goal is to nurture the importance of venture capital in the American economy and support entrepreneurial activities and innovations. In 2007, according to a study conducted by the Global Insight, all those companies that were invested in by venture capitalists accounted for 10.4 million jobs and $2.3 trillion in revenues in the United States. Further details and information on NVCA is available at www.nvca.org.

About NewSchools Venture Fund:

NewSchools Venture Fund is a national non-profit venture philanthropic firm. Since 1998, its main goal has been to transform the public education system for underprivileged children by supporting education entrepreneurs that create non-profit and for-profit educational institutions. At present, its focus is on the supply of high-quality public schools for the underprivileged children, enabling conventional and charter school systems so as to make these organizations performance driven and improve the number of talented people into and across the public school system. Sub-urban communities such as New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Oakland, California are on the priority list of the NewSchools Venture Fund, where it hope to bring about a significant systemic change. For more details on NewSchools Venture Fund, visit www.newschools.org.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 8:20 am and is filed under Venture Capital News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.