When evaluating potential candidates, VPP first screens organizations with these basic criteria: Is the organization in fact based in the National Capital Region? Is the mission of the organization focused on or around the educational, learning, and developmental needs of children (toddlers through high school age)? Is the organization large enough to benefit from VPP’s leveraged approach? Does the organization have a diverse funding base so that it is not reliant on a single public or private funding stream?

If these basic criteria are satisfied, then we proceed to a more rigorous examination.

▪ Does the organization have a clear sense of purpose, i.e., mission clarity and focus?
▪ Do they have a compelling product, already achieving, or having the potential to make, a meaningful difference for those they serve?
▪ Does the leadership understand and focus on outcomes and show a strong desire to better define, assess, and use outcomes?
▪ Does the organization have strong executive leadership?
▪ Is the financial health of the organization sound?
▪ Is there a track record of demonstrated performance?
▪ Does the organization and opportunity provide VPP the platform to demonstrate its value and offer the basis of an effective partnership?
▪ Has the organization fulfilled significant compliance and oversight matters?

We at VPP do not feel that we are qualified to make such difficult and sensitive judgments on our own. Therefore, we reach out to many others to help us make informed judgments, including the organization itself, its current funders, community and government organizations that the organization regularly works with, regional and national experts in the organization’s field of focus (e.g., after-school programs or developmental daycare), respected community-level practitioners, professional evaluators, and, at times, the children and families served.

With their help, we try to find answers to three questions:

Answering these questions is extremely difficult. Several of the fields in which we are investing are relatively new and have not had the time—or, frankly, the financial support—to develop sophisticated outcomes measures and tracking systems, much less to engage in longitudinal research to ascertain whether positive outcomes are truly the product of the intervention or whether they would have happened on their own.

In most cases, the organizations we consider for investment have not yet begun to collect this outcomes information in a comprehensive way, so we try to gather the best information available—including supportive anecdotal information—from the organization, its stakeholders, and others in the community who know it and its leaders well. Once we have had a chance to consider these findings, our task is to reach out to experts in the field to get a sense for whether there is solid evidence to support the notion that these outcomes address core needs and have the potential to lead to lasting positive change in young lives.

As we move to formalize the investment agreement, we continue the analysis to gain a comprehensive understanding of the organization and help prepare them (and us) for what it will take to build and strengthen their organization to achieve their aspiration. And, finally, we conduct a rigorous assessment of the organization’s risk management profile, regarding financial controls, compliance, and legal matters to develop a set of recommendations for their leadership and board to consider.

Checks and balances along the way ensure that each decision is tested as thoroughly as possible so that the most appropriate selections can be made.

At the end of the day, our investments, just like any investments in any sector, are imprecise, somewhat subjective decisions based on the best information available and inherently involving a degree of risk. We simply aim to make the best decisions we can, based on the best information we can collect and on our subjective judgment of the leadership and potential of the organizations.