For the electronic band, see The Echoing Green (band), for the poem see The Echoing Green Echoing Green is a twenty year-old global non-profit organization operating in the area of early-stage social sector investing. Through a two-year fellowship program, Echoing Green identifies individuals with ideas for social change and provides them with seed money and strategic support to help them launch new organizations. These social entrepreneurs and their organizations confront social, economic, and political inequalities and work to ensure equal access to basic human and civil rights. Echoing Green is based in New York City.
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Echoing Green was founded in 1987 by the leadership of General Atlantic, LLC, a private equity firm focused on using entrepreneurial practices to work a towards social aims.
Since 1987, Echoing Green has invested $27 million to help more than 450 social entrepreneurs create positive change in 40 countries. Echoing Green has helped to launch model organizations working in education, youth development, health care, housing, environmental justice, human and civil rights, economic and social justice, the arts, and immigration. A recent study found that Echoing Green Fellows’ organizations have raised close to $1 billion in additional funding, delivering a return on investment (ROI) of approximately 44 times Echoing Green’s seed funding. Echoing Green helps fellows raise more money, more quickly than their peers: 46 percent of fellows’ organizations have budgets over $100,000 by year two, while only 20 percent of peer organizations reach that mark. Sixty-five percent of organizations launched by Echoing Green Fellows are still in existence and 85 percent of Echoing Green Fellows stay in leadership positions in the social sector.
Echoing Green has helped fund many nonprofits, including Teach For America, Embrace, the Empowering Spirits Foundation, City Year, College Summit, Genocide Intervention Network, Disaster Accountability Project, Mental Disability Rights International, One Acre Fund, Mercado Global and many others.
Echoing Green believes that the same entrepreneurial spirit that has driven the U.S. economy can also foster new solutions to complex social problems all over the world. That is why Echoing Green takes risks on undiscovered leaders when others won’t. Less than two percent of all foundation support is available for seed funding, making Echoing Green a premier global organization that supports new organizations at their earliest stages.
In 2006, Echoing Green published its first book, Be Bold. Be Bold is a uniquely designed handbook for young people who want to create powerful careers in social change. Be Bold is accompanied by a website as well as a campaign of conferences, partnerships, and curriculum development.