Paul Basil, the founder and CEO of Villgro, started off my induction meeting like this:
Villgro was started in 2001 during a time when the concept of supporting rural innovations and providing products and services to the rural poor was unheard of. It was a good time to start. C.K. Prahalad wrote about the Bottom of the Pyramid in 2004 and brought a lot of attention to the sector. Acumen Fund and others also started proving themselves around that time. We started and grew at a good time.
My interpretation of the above set of facts is less positive than that of Paul’s. To me, the fact that Villgro predates much of the BoP movement means that it was in a prime position to take advantage of the recent focus on social enterprises to be installed as a top-of-mind organization. Yet, this is not the case. Even though Villgro has developed strong relationships with key grantmakers and foundations (e.g., Rockefeller, Lemelson, Ashoka), its presence within the greater social entrepreneurship community is still understated. Prior to accepting my fellowship, I asked friends in microfinance and social investing space in India for their opinion on Villgro. Aside from the one who worked with one of Villgro’s partner organizations, the others at well connected organizations were all unfamiliar with Villgro’s work. And so it was a surprise to me after becoming familiar with all the entrepreneur incubation programs and supporting services that Villgro has, to realize that it’s a still so unknown. Why is such an established organization so understated?
The converse example is Acumen, started the same year as Villgro, and functioning in a similar role in investing and supporting social entreprises in India. Until 2006 when the BoP concept finally started becoming mainstream, Acumen was also little known outside a small group of social entrepreneurs. It’s only suddenly within the last two years that Acumen has exploded onto the scene and has become a trending topic of its own. Everyone within the social entrepreneurship community has certainly heard of Acumen, but even more impressive is its brand awareness amongst the general young professional public. While Acumen certainly deserves recognition for all the great work that they’re doing, why is there such a great disparity between Acumen’s brand and that of Villgro’s?
There is no magic sauce. It’s all in the marketing efforts and dollars spent on brand building. Acumen has a 1:5 marketing/communications/business development personnel to total staff ratio whereas Villgro has 1:15 ratio. Acumen has spent a great deal of effort on building young professional communities around the U.S. to further increase their ripple effect. It’s fairly clear that the more you market your organization, the bigger your brand. And the side effects are that the bigger your brand, the higher the quality of talent you attract, the more funds you can raise, etc. There are a lot of positive externalities to building a brand, particularly at this juncture when social entreprises are spontaneously generating everyday.
So why doesn’t Villgro pump more into its marketing and outreach communications? The answer I’ve received to this question is that it hasn’t been a priority and the belief is that the good work with speak for itself which raises another question: Should social entreprises focus so much of their resources on marketing when it could be spent on directly increasing their impact work? I don’t have an answer for this question. But I do know that if the bar on marketing has been raised and not meeting those requirements will directly impact future success as a social enterprise, it’s time to put aside those idealistic beliefs and focus a little more effort on marketing.
