“The things that make me passionate about my work are issues of equality of opportunity and social mobility.” – why America’s most fundamental promise is not realized; and most peoples’ life outcomes can be predicted based on the street where they live.

Matthew Klein, Executive Director, Blue Ridge Foundation New York, New York, NY, USA

“In 1999, at the top of the New Economy/E-commerce boom, when incubators for technology start-ups were all the rage, John Griffin, a wall Street investor active in philanthropy, and I conceived of the basic concept of being an incubator for non-profit social enterprises” – Matthew remembers when we talk to him in his Brooklyn office. Once Blue Ridge Foundation decides to make a commitment, the Foundation, like an incubator, provides new social enterprises with the funding, necessary management, legal & fundraising know-how, and office space. This makes the process of starting up a venture much more efficient and leaves the entrepreneurs the space to focus on the social issue they are trying to solve. Compared with most for-profit incubators, Blue Ridge Foundation is not taking any stake in the companies and provides most services for free. As the success stories of companies that already left the incubator, like iMentor, show, the concept seems to work quite well.
Even so, Matthew continues to think about how he could improve his work and constantly asks himself where his biggest value add and leverage is possible. He enjoys his work every day and is quite satisfied with the development of his 10 portfolio companies, about half of which are still currently working next door.

Enjoy Matthew’s selected thoughts and statements of our discussion in the lines that follow. You may be able to read more about his work and the different portfolio companies in our book “MyImpact”.

Matthew’s selected quotations:
“I kind of randomly started to work with kids during college in New Heaven, a very poor community that shared characteristics of the neighborhoods in Boston where I grew up. . And I really enjoyed it; helping kids to acquire new skills and opening new opportunities for them felt really good.”

“Seeing all this inequality in our country, where the place you are born in and go to school will pretty much predetermine your life, I wanted to contribute to at least a little more social justice. And working with kids seemed to be a perfect place.”

"I would like to see innovation in the social area happen with support from private philanthropy, but to scale the models up government has to be involved strongly and has to take responsibility."

“Going to law school was mainly motivated by the connection of law to social justice, civil rights and similar issues.”

“From my own experience with the establishment of a social enterprise in the early 90’es I knew that money was important, but by far not sufficient. So, we had the idea of giving social start-up companies real hands-on technical assistance in many fields, in addition to money.”

“The things that make me passionate about my work are issues of equality of opportunities and social mobility. The biggest thing that moves me is America’s promise of “if you try hard, you can achieve anything in this country” - it is so obvious that we have not realized this vision. You can predict people’s life outcomes based on the street where they live. That this promise isn’t real is such a fundamental problem for me that I do what I can to make this promise real.”

“For me the question is not do I “non-profit” or “dot.com”, it is more about choosing the best vehicle to create change and getting as close as possible to this ideal of equal opportunities. That is why it was pretty easy for me not to work for a dot.com company and not to make the potential big money, but rather to start this non-profit incubator in the middle of the boom in 1999.”

“There are a lot of skills necessary to have real impact. Blue Ridge Foundation is helping people with good ideas develop their management capabilities and other necessary skills to implement and scale their ideas.”

“I think the biggest change within the social entrepreneurship scene is the ability to share information and knowledge of what is going on in the field made possible by the internet.”

“Obviously, I would like to make millions of dollars, just like anybody else. However, it is just hard to imagine for me to do something that does not have any broader purpose. So, I really don’t think about this other stuff. I rather think about how to do my current work better and better.”

“Becoming comfortable with this notion of making the difference that you can make, without necessarily being able to change the whole world, is sometimes a real challenge.”

“I am not sure if this trend of philanthropic investments in revenue-generating social enterprises is sustainable. I think there are not enough social enterprises out there that are profitable and able to pay back the loans or investments. Most of them provide a service that could not have been provided based on profit models and, therefore, probably still cannot be provided.”

“We always try to find some social challenges where we can have disproportionately large impact with our activities due to all the spill-over effects. For example, by fostering connections among our portfolio organizations, can we get more results than if the organizations operated totally independently? So we are interested in bringing together a multitude of social companies to address complex systems with complementary programs”

“When we invest, it is always about an idea, but especially about the person. It is always about people, people, people. So, the main challenge is how do you continue to develop a pipeline of people and how do you make sure they don’t burn out over time.”

Some background on Matthew Klein:
Matthew Klein is the Executive Director and first staff person of the Blue Ridge Foundation New York. Matt also serves as an adjunct professor of entrepreneurial studies at NYU Stern School of Business, where he teaches a practicum on social venture investing.

Matt's experience prior to Blue Ridge includes work in non-profit management and civil rights law. Matt is a co-founder of Leadership, Education, and Athletics in Partnership (LEAP), a nationally recognized youth development agency operating in high-poverty neighborhoods throughout Connecticut. During Matt’s tenure LEAP grew from a start-up to a multi-city agency serving over 700 children daily and garnered multiple awards for innovation and effectiveness. In his legal work, Matt focused on issues of equal opportunity, clerking for such organizations as the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He also served as a law clerk in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for the Honorable Robert L. Carter, one of the principal litigating attorneys in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit.

Matt currently serves on several boards, including the Steering Committee of the New York City Youth Funders Network (Chair, 2004), the Stewart Satter Social Entrepreneurship Fund at NYU Stern School of Business, iMentor (founding member), and Groundwork, Inc. (founding Chair). Matt has been a fellow of the Echoing Green Foundation and the Next Generation Leadership program of the Rockefeller Foundation, and he is a member of the bar in New York and Massachusetts. Matt attended the Boston Public Schools, Yale College and Yale Law School.

Some background on the Blue Ridge Foundation:
In 1993, Blue Ridge Foundation New York was founded by John A. Griffin, the founder and president of Blue Ridge Capital. The Foundation grew out of Mr. Griffin's deep commitment to philanthropy and social change.
Reflecting Mr. Griffin’s broad interests, the Foundation’s early grants supported organizations pursuing a wide range of charitable activities, though a special emphasis was given to educational institutions.
In late 1999, Blue Ridge Foundation New York added new dimensions to its grant-making. It hired its first staff person, Matthew Klein, and began to develop a model for Blue Ridge to take on a more engaged relationship with select grantees. In addition to providing cash grants, it determined that Blue Ridge would work intensively with organizations at the start-up stage to help talented leaders turn innovative ideas for social change into effective, sustainable organizations. It envisaged that the Foundation’s support would operate similarly to an “incubator” approach, and would include office space, funding, back-office support, and management assistance to a small portfolio of new, promising organizations.
Over time, the foundation hopes that its grantees demonstrate tangible ways that well-designed and well-executed strategies can positively impact children, families, and communities and move the society closer to achieving equal opportunity in New York City and beyond.

If you would like to engage with the work of Matthew Klein or get to know more about the Blue Ridge Foundation please visit http://www.brfny.org,
or, for more specific opportunities, contact joanna.stefanska@myimpact.ch or wolfgang.hafenmayer@myimpact.ch directly.