The 10 Most Popular Articles Of 2017
Our goal for the journal is to provide articles filled with resources and stories that highlights real stories of impact within our portfolio and work. Last year we wrote over 50 original journal and portfolio articles on our website covering topics ranging from entrepreneurship to benefit corporations to how we manage our money. Maybe you didn’t have time to read them all or, if you’re like us, need a little refresher on everything we covered last year. If so you are in luck. Compiled here are the top articles from the Access Ventures website in 2017.
1. Sunshine and Shadow Portfolio
In 2015 we invested in a local artist and teacher, Gibbs Rounsavall. Gibbs worked to create an original mural on the side of one of our buildings in Louisville’s Shelby Park neighborhood. The 750-square-foot mural was a colorful addition to a busy intersection. It took a few months to complete but was well worth the wait.
What makes an entrepreneur and entrepreneur? Entrepreneurship can be interpreted by people in many different ways. We asked local entrepreneurs how they thought through what it meant to be an entrepreneur.
3. Founder Stories: Jonny Price
In 2017, we started a new series on journal called Founder Stories where we asked questions of founders of some our portfolio companies and accompanied their answers with a day-in-the-life style photo story. These stories present a fresh perspective on the people who make our companies and partner organizations tick.
Our Growth Loan program is part of our Innovative Finance focus area. We want to connect small business owners to the capital they need to help take their venture to the next level. Often times, access to capital is one of the main problems stopping a business from growing as it has become increasingly difficult for some in our economy to receive loans from a traditional lending institution.
Catchafire is a New York City-based, for-purpose social mission business and a certified B-Corporation. The company is transforming the nonprofit sector by mobilizing skills-based volunteers to produce tens of millions of dollars in donated time each year. Catchafire makes it easy for anyone to use their talents for good and provides nonprofits with access to high-quality talent.
6. Founder Stories: Gabe Cooper
Our very fist Founder Story this year featured Gabe Cooper, the founder of Virtuous, a nonprofit CRM that helps charities build better relationships, raise more money, inspire more action and create more good in the world. We spent sometime with Gabe and his team at their Phoenix headquarters and got a behind-the-scenes-look at what it takes to run a fast-growing company.
We place a high value on internships at Access Ventures and are proud to have had some great young people help us build more inclusive economies over the past few years. We are always looking for motivated, impact-minded individuals to help us carry out our mission.
8. Helping Entrepreneurs Grow Small Business
Earlier last year we completed a video story on our Growth Loan program that helps create access to capital for small business owners. We followed three small business owners on their journey to grow their business and interviewed them about how Access Ventures helped them to take things to the next level.
In 2017 we took to our journal to help go more in-depth into our different focus areas. This article, which covers our Technology for Social Good focus area, explains what we mean when we say technology for social good, the mission behind the focus area and some of the portfolio companies that our marked with this distinction and why.
B Corps and public benefit corporations have been around for almost a decade now and yet there are still a ton of questions surrounding them. What does this mean for the current and future landscape of business? How do we measure and track a company’s social impact in the same way we measure and track financial impact? How might this affect the investors and the broader community?
Thanks for following our work this past year. We look forward to creating more content in 2018 and continuing the conversations that will help create a more inclusive economy.
