The inspiration for Venture Philanthropy Partners came from years of private-sector experience and nonprofit work by Mario Morino and the Morino Institute. Since its inception in 1994, the Morino Institute has been dedicated to finding ways to better support and enhance the lives of young people from low-income families. Because it is impossible to make fundamental change without addressing the larger social and economic context, the institute sought to understand the forces in these young people’s lives, with particular emphasis on opportunities and challenges presented by new waves of technological innovation, wealth creation, and the accelerating transfer of responsibility for social-service delivery from government to the nonprofit sector.

In 1998, the Morino Institute joined forces with Community Wealth Ventures (CWV), an innovative consulting firm dedicated to helping the nonprofit sector create financial sustainability through new revenue sources, to explore the feasibility of establishing a social venture fund—making capital available for the explicit purpose of helping established nonprofit organizations grow in scale and effectiveness. CWV was founded by Bill Shore, who also founded the renowned anti-hunger organization Share Our Strength, and was then led by Gary Mulhair, the former president and CEO of Pioneer Human Services, in Seattle. The experiences of Bill, Gary, and Mario gave each of them different perspectives that led to the same conclusion: that support for organizational capacity building was desperately needed in the nonprofit sector. Together, they began to discuss the prospect of starting a social-venture fund to support this kind of work, and CWV undertook a significant exploratory research effort.

The institute next joined forces with the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region and its president, Terri Freeman, who had deep ties to and a valuable perspective on the philanthropic and nonprofit ecosystem in the area. These three groups made up the formation team that would be charged with defining, and eventually creating, Venture Philanthropy Partners.

In 1999, when the exploratory research was complete, Mario Morino teamed up with e-business entrepreneur Raul Fernandez, founder of Proxicom, and Columbia Capital partner Mark Warner, who was later elected governor of Virginia, and the three made the initial financial commitments to get the organization, provisionally called Youth Social Ventures, off the ground. Once formed, the organization was incubated by the Morino Institute, which continues to provide operating capital, management assistance, and significant professional resources to VPP.

In June 2000, Youth Social Ventures was officially incorporated as a nonprofit public charity, operating as a support organization to the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, which had been an important advisor to the fledgling organization from the start. A month later, the organization changed its name to Venture Philanthropy Partners. Also in 2000, Morino, Fernandez, and Warner began sharing their vision for social change with some of the region’s most engaged and committed business leaders, many of whom joined VPP as founding investors. Together, VPP’s investors have committed in excess of $30 million to VPP’s first fund, the Children’s Learning Fund for the National Capital Region. To date, $30 million of that sum has been collected and the remainder is scheduled to come in over the next three years. The funds are now being invested in some of the region’s most promising nonprofit organizations serving children and families.