From the start, we understood that before we could expect to influence others-the philanthropists of this new wealth, nonprofits, traditional foundations, or the field at large-our beliefs had to be put into practice and produce compelling results that would capture the interests of those actors who could drive change.

"VPP biggest accomplishment has been the bringing together of a team comprised of highly successful private sector individuals and non-profits, getting them to think as one and move forward to take on the challenges of changing the status quo and how we view our educational system and community. There were setbacks but we learned from them-VPP was not afraid to take calculated chances, and to make a difference you have to risk something."

- Brig Owens, Partner, Bennett & Owens

Our first five years have produced positive results. But one of the greatest assets to date may well be what we've learned and how we've applied it to build our organization and better serve our investment partners, investors, and others affiliated with VPP. The insights, adjustments, and lessons we've gained and made since our beginning to today include:

• Refocusing for greater impact: Originally, we primarily targeted our investing to support younger, entrepreneurial social innovators-leaders with workable solutions who wanted to grow their organizations serving children and youth. We later shifted our focus to include more established nonprofits-those with the potential for transformational change and the need to sustain, improve or scale their organizations-because it would have a greater impact on the region.
• More money over a longer period: We rightly understood the importance of providing large investments of growth capital and being long-term in our approach but realize now that achieving substantive, lasting change and growth in the nonprofit sector requires even more capital and more time than we envisioned.
• Trusted advisor: We knew that to maximize the value of our investment approach, it was critical to establish a relationship as a trusted advisor with those in which we invested. However, we were initially naïve in understanding what that really required, the time it would take, and the less-than-obvious impediments to overcome. A successful relationship is based on respect, transparency, shared learning, and mutually aligned expectations and accountability.
• Unexpected importance of a regional focus: We gained a much better appreciation of the region's formal and informal systems-political, social, economic, regulatory, and educational-and the importance of being able to understand and navigate these systems. We unexpectedly came to realize that one of our greatest assets was our understanding of the need to build relationships, strengthen the social fabric of the region, and help our investment partners navigate the complexities of the National Capital Region-circumventing impediments, spanning boundaries, expanding into new areas of the region, forming precedent-setting partnerships, and forging cross-sector partnerships and new relationships.
• Learning from our mistakes: We learned from and compensated for our early mistakes, which led to changes in how we built our organization, the seasoned executive level experience and skill required by our approach, the way we conducted ourselves, and a new respect we developed for the accomplishments of those in the nonprofit and philanthropy sectors who came before us and laid the groundwork for our approach.

This learning not only makes VPP a better organization today, but it also has greatly influenced what we will do going forward and the kind of impact we believe we can have on the nonprofits, children, the region, and the field.