One of our community partners asked how we got started. Here’s our story:

The community for change started organically after ten years of Coburn Ventures existence. What I mean is this: we had been cultivating a community of professionals, academics and investors for over ten years in the spirit of studying monumental change in society. We then take this thinking and provide investment analysis as a service to our clients, most of whom are professional money managers.

In all this time and all this work, we had established a community of trust. This alone was unusual. Our industry is intensely competitive, with high turnover and therefore, a high degree of defensiveness. Within all this, we were able to provide a space in which trust and respect was perhaps the key identifying element. From there, we could work together on discussing issues at a much deeper level than any other professional forum I've witnessed. We were providing a space where real business dilemmas or key questions could be put on the table and worked with, where community members were freely forming their own bonds and partnerships, and where the spirit was one of a community, not networking, as each member came to give, not just receive.

 From this, we began to go even more fundamental: we wanted to see what this group could do, so to speak, when we put some real *human* problems on the table. What can we do to help the strategy team of the NGO that one of our community members is passionate about? What can we do to think more holistically about the power of education? What facets of economic development do we want to explore for our communities? What does generous, holistic giving mean in "everyday" life and how can this group embody such giving?

 We began all of this officially in November 2015, so we are just getting started, but at Coburn Ventures, we have somehow always been able to get freight trains like this moving swiftly from the get-go. One aspect that has been particularly rewarding is the discovery process: over the last ten years, in a purely professional setting, we may not have had the occasion to learn about the philanthropic and direct service work of our clients, friends and community members. Now that more people are coming to understand the work we are doing with the Community for Change, we are getting the privilege of learning about organizations they have been dedicated to for years, but never had the right context to mention it to us before! There was a bashfulness about philanthropic and service work that is now lifting. The fact that we can now jump in and provide services and thinking to this community in order to spur positive social change is incredibly satisfying.