Ventures
Over the years the Shaftesbury Partnership with its partners has launched multiple ventures. Here are three examples of our work that exemplify what we do.
Families Set Free
Families Set Free is a nonprofit focused on ending modern day slavery in brick kilns in South Asia and restoring hope for men, women, and children trapped in cycles of debt and coercion.
Working with its senior leadership, Shaftesbury Partnership has been mobilising funders, technology partners, supply chain leaders, and policy makers to address both the causes and consequences of exploitation. On the demand side, we are supporting the automation and modernisation of the construction industry in country so that production can move away from models dependent on indentured and enslaved labour. Greater transparency across supply chains helps ensure that ethical sourcing becomes the norm and that harmful practices are no longer hidden.
Alongside this systemic work, Families Set Free coordinates humanitarian support to help families build new lives once freed. Through a network of local partners, we are helping those leaving bonded labour receive practical assistance, including emergency relief, safe housing, access to education, skills training, employment pathways, and healthcare.
The Shaftesbury Partnership has played a convening and catalytic role. Our contribution has included coordinating stakeholders, shaping strategy, incubating new delivery vehicles and enabling technology, building capable teams, and mobilising funding and resources. By aligning vision, capital, technology, and on-the-ground expertise, we with Families Set Free aim to help remove the economic pull of slavery while ensuring that every family affected has a real path to safety, dignity, and opportunity.
A venturing programme we designed and ran: Big Venture Challenge
We were asked to establish and run a programme with a nonprofit foundation to support the scaling up of social enterprises to enable them to become more impactful at scale. Shaftesbury Partnership hired the team and oversaw the process from end to end, and created the incubation support model, leading to many more ventures helping more people, than Shaftesbury Partnership alone could have directly generated. This work has produced the inspiration for SPX, a new service to enable foundations, families, government organisations, and even businesses to develop their models for social venturing, with Shaftesbury Partnership as an advisor helping to design, implement, and operate platforms created with clients.
A catalyst we helped apprentice: Anonymous
We have been apprenticing over the years a number of high potential individuals who have worked on our staff, in our ventures, and in partner organisations - where we share the same vision to see systemic social reform realised. One individual, who works now in a very senior role within government and politics, trained with us to learn the craft, ethics, and the beginnings of the science of social reform, which has in part helped them accelerate their journey and rise to the position of influence they hold. The lessons they learned has in part helped them to be able to be a catalyst within government, bringing the insights, experiences, and relationships they have built up into daily use as a source of systemic reform where they work.
Hover over Case Studies in the menu above to view a list of current live venture projects we and our partners are involved with.