In June 2000, VPP’s co-founders, Raul Fernandez, Mark Warner, and Mario Morino, along with 26 other technology and business leaders and several foundations, came together to contribute more than $30 million to capitalize VPP’s first investment fund. These donors united behind a bold vision to alter the status quo for children in need of opportunity and, at the same time, create a different, innovative approach to philanthropy.

We believed we could adapt the relevant principles of private investment firms and apply them for investing in the nonprofit sector. This approach would invest in good leaders to help them build stronger, more effective nonprofit institutions and generate a superior social return by improving the lives of low-income children. By demonstrating these returns, this way of investing could help trigger a long-term reallocation of capital, talent, and other resources to those high-performing organizations making the biggest impact.

VPP’s successes would encourage its high net worth investors to be more effective with their own philanthropy and to use their significant political, social, and financial influence to drive lasting change in the field. And, as our nonprofit partners grew stronger, our investors got more engaged, and we developed our web of relationships with foundations, businesses, and government agencies, VPP would be in a position to significantly leverage the effectiveness and impact of all involved.

Armed with these goals, we set about the task. We targeted our different way of investing toward improving the lives of children of low-income families—the working poor and those living in poverty. Our investments focused on meeting the core educational, learning, and healthy developmental needs of children and youth, so that these children had the opportunity to grow into adults leading productive, healthy lives. And we targeted our efforts on the National Capital Region—Washington, DC, and its surrounding suburban areas in Maryland and Northern Virginia.