You Can’t Steer a Parked Car
Momentum. That's the word of the day every day at Impact Foundation. We're trying to achieve and maintain enough momentum to accomplish our mission - helping donors invest in businesses that do good and make money. As we say a lot, "You can't steer a parked car." We've gotten going and now have enough activity so there's something to shape. It's exciting and sometimes we forget to share what's been happening. So here's a short update.
New Team Members
Jeff Johns joined as our CEO. He's the former EVP in charge of growth for National Christian Foundation. Jeff loves Jesus, his family, food, serving Donor/Investors - most of whom he knows because he's one of the most networked guys I know - building a great business, and adventure (in that order). As the former national collegiate skydiving champion, Jeff is reliving his glory days by jumping out of a steady job at NCF to do something brand new. Read his bio.
Bev Lathrop joined as our Operations Manager, or as she prefers "Queen of Covert Ops". With a high capacity for organizing chaos, Bev does a commendable job wrangling all the activity that Jeff and Aimee stir up. She spent the past 4 years working with Jeff at NCF and has enjoyed making the jump with him to Impact Foundation.
Launch Capital
Though we think of ourselves as business people and have a revenue model, we're fully a charity and can raise donations to fuel our launch. We are excited to report that we've recruited 10 of the 20 founders we need to provide sustainability over the next 36 months until our revenue model covers our operating expenses. We'll keep working to find the remaining founders but for now we celebrate God's provision. Yay! Paychecks are nice.
Closing Deals and Building Processes
As our friend Dan Viall reminds us, "innovation happens at the speed of execution". It's his nice ways of saying that no one cares how cool our ideas are unless we actually follow through and do something. For us, the critical moment happens when we help a donor invest charitable capital in a business that makes money and has spiritual/social/environment impact. Happily, we've completed investments for 11 Donor/Investors with 3 more set to close in the next week. Talk about momentum.
To keep up with all these investments is no small task, which is why we're so pleased to be working with Capin Crouse, a prominent national accounting firm. Capin is helping build our accounting processes and will perform quarterly mini-audits to make sure we're following them. We've also hired Sunesis Advisors, a multi-family office that is expert at helping their clients vet, make, and manage private investments. This team provides those same services to Impact Foundation. As amazing as Jeff and Bev may be, we will never be investment experts, which makes Sunesis a very important part of our secret sauce.
