The Entrepreneurial Fund is the new Wiese Foundation program, created to boost social entrepreneurship nationwide.
The campaign to launch the program, as well as the process of selecting the 4 social endeavors that will make up the first portfolio of the Entrepreneurial Fund, began on November 15, 2018. The above-mentioned process seeks to ensure that the selected companies have a clear potential for growth and self-sustainability. But, above all, it seeks to ensure that, through their commercial operation, these companies address the social problems of some vulnerable group in the country.
Within the framework of the activities planned as part of the drive for the program, the representatives from the Entrepreneurial Fund visited some regions of Peru (Piura, Arequipa, Junín, Cusco y Lima), where, together with allied institutions, they organized workshops and meetings with local social endeavors. The purpose of these meetings was to present the program and to answer directly the questions regarding the application process. As of February 22, 2019, the date when the drive was closed, the Entrepreneurial Fund received 112 applications for the program.
All applications received were reviewed and qualified according to the criteria established in the program Application Bases. Once the above-mentioned process was concluded, 22 semifinalists were chosen, who presented their companies before an Evaluation Committee during the pitch sessions, held during the first week of last April. The above-mentioned committee was composed of representatives from the Wiese Foundation and NESsT, as well as independent evaluators with experience in evaluating social entrepreneurship projects and/or in the various sectors to which the semifinalist companies belonged.
As a result of the evaluations carried out, the 8 finalist businesses that will go to the last stage of the selection process of the Entrepreneurial Fund, known as Due Diligence, were chosen. The objective of this stage is to work, together with the team of each finalist endeavor, a business plan and a financial model that are summarized in a Memorandum of Investment (MoI), which will be submitted to an International Investment Committee. This committee will decide, ultimately, which are the 4 companies that will make up the first portfolio of the Entrepreneurial Fund.
Through the success of the social businesses that it supports, the Wiese Foundation seeks to contribute, in a sustainable way, to addressing urgent social problems and demonstrating to Peruvians that it is possible to conduct business with a social impact.
