Thinking like an investor in the Social Sector

The term ‘investor’ makes most social sector professionals cringe. It sounds like the private sector, it sounds mercenary, it sounds like people who work for banks. This word only enters our social sector dialogue when it’s related to a government investing in infrastructure, or an organization making an investment in training its people. 

Social Sector Titans love the investor mindset. We apply it to ourselves and our work to move to the next level of service to the cause. 

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What is the investor mindset?
I’ll share a drawing that changed my life. It is an adaptation of the cashflow quadrant from Robert T. Kiosaki’s book Rich Data, Poor Dad. At first glance this looks like the business basics of cash flow. It is simple, yet profound. 









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​This graphic has value to Social Sector Titans because we can use these principles within our social organizations to be better and work smarter. The picture describes systems that create value on their own,  versus systems that require constant input. Investor systems in your life and work make things better. Many of the top performing Social Sector Titans think about creating and maintaining these systems rather than simply working hard at a job. 

How can you adopt the mindset?
The first step is recognizing that your most valuable asset is time. You can replenish many of life’s currencies, but time is finite in the Social Sector Titan’s career and life. Having available time to dedicate to the right things pushes you toward your goals in the long run. 

If you work outside of a traditional job as a social sector entrepreneur, you can use these principles to create a social enterprise that you own, (alone or with others), to leverage the growth of your ideas and impact. Using the investor mindset in a social sector enterprise would mean creating a set of ideas such as books, trainings or software on an open website to multiply your impact and increase your professional profile, rather than creating one-off versions of these products for individual organizations. The design firm Ideo is a classic example of this open investor approach. 

If you work within an organization as an employee, you can create systems that use the same principles. This means identifying opportunities and pitching ideas, new projects and improvement to existing systems that help exponentially increase your impact and network. Even as an employee, the ideas that you create, share and implement make you an invaluable ‘idea investor’ within your organization that is indispensable to the agency. Having and acting on good ideas builds your network outside of your current organization and raises you above the standard employee in terms of influence and impact. 

An example of this type of approach is the Humanitarian Data Exchange. This platform uses  an innovative and entrepreneurial approach that helps disaster response organizations share and analyze data. The founder and team work as employees of a United Nations agency. The team uses an investor mindset to build a system using new ideas that creates massive value for the organization and humanitarian response community. 

Social Sector Titans can also use the investor mindset to create new types of organizational platforms. The social enterprise Kiva uses this strategy to create a peer to peer lending platform connecting supply from high income nations, with demand in low income environments.  In addition to the investor mindset forming the basis for the organization, Kiva’s founders invested in and constructed a new type of platform that connects and helps people across the world. 

Finally, Social Sector Titans apply the investor mindset to their personal finances to make sure they take care of the basics of working towards standard retirement or achieving earlier financial independence to support their message and families. Financial independence means being able to multiply and increase your impact by controlling your focus and time rather than being reactive to financial survival needs. 

How you act differently when you have the mindset
Social Sector Titans act differently when they have adopted the investor mindset in two key ways:

1. We know that time is our most important asset - We build systems, networks and processes that save us time by using smart technology, comparative advantage, and good design, so we can maximize our positive impact in service of our mission.
   
   
   
2. We know that our ideas and the execution of these ideas have the potential to be used beyond our current organization - The organization or social entity where we work is a shell. It holds people with ideas around a known structure. Our ideas are larger than this container and we think and act on these ideas to maximize our professional mission and to enable ourselves to live a life of maximum impact, tranquility and meaning. 

Social Sector Titans strive to reach tranquility and maximum social impact. Internalizing and acting on the investor mindset helps you get there. 

Happy trails!

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