Acumen Fund is a nonprofit venture fund focused on building businesses that solve the problems of poverty.

Grantee Profile

Acumen Fund is a nonprofit venture fund focused on building transformative businesses that solve the problems of poverty. Their investments are aimed at delivering affordable, critical goods and services—like health, water, energy and housing—with a goal of improving the lives of 50 million of the world’s poorest people through innovative market-oriented approaches. Over 170 investors have pledged philanthropic capital, which Acumen Fund in turn invests in scalable, sustainable enterprises – nearly 30 to date – that are enabling more than one million rural Indians to have access to safe water; seven million families in East Africa to be protected from malaria; tens of thousands of women to receive microfinance loans in Pakistan; and more than 100,000 farmers in India to increase their income by purchasing drip irrigation systems.

About Our Grants

The Woodcock Foundation’s 2009 $125,000 grant is the second payment in a three-year effort to help Acumen Fund further expand and refine its innovative Fellows Program, which offers post-graduate fellowships for outstanding individuals committed to the Acumen Fund vision. This year’s installment will be used to build upon the success of the previous three cohorts, comprised of fellows who complete a two-month training course in New York before beginning work at Acumen Fund investments overseas.

Woodcock is also providing an additional one-time grant of $70,000 to assist Acumen in a pilot effort to better understand how online community platforms and new media can be used to support social change.  Over the next year, Acumen Fund will utilize the latest in social networking vehicles to “flip the funnel,” that is, reach out to and recruit its community of online supporters as ambassadors of Acumen’s mission.  By moving beyond traditional communications, Woodcock and Acumen Fund see an opportunity to activate others in pursuit of our shared goal:  changing how the world tackles poverty.