Social Justice - Alan Khazei and Vanessa Kirsch

Around 1992, both Khazei and Kirsch began to feel crunched: They had outgrown their startup phases, but they lacked the resources to grow. Kirsch had more requests than she could meet to expand Public Allies into new cities. Paradoxically, though, "Some of the foundation people were saying to me, 'Vanessa, you're getting too successful. We can't fund you anymore,' " Kirsch says. "And I was thinking, 'Now, that makes a lot of sense.' Others were saying, 'Vanessa, you're raising enough money, and you're showing surpluses. We can't give you money.' And I'm thinking, 'If I were showing deficits, then you'd give me money. But you're not going to give me money because I did what I said I was going to do?' "

Khazei, though extremely proud of City Year's success, had grown more impatient with its limitations. "I want to see a million young people in service. City Year's great, I love it, but it's only 1,000 people. AmeriCorps is great, but it's only 25,000 people. The money's there now, and the president just vetoed a $792 billion tax cut. Well, if there's $792 billion for a tax cut, then there's $10 billion for national service. There has to be."

In April 1992, Wofford suggested that Kirsch meet one of the founders of a service program similar to hers in Boston. Wofford started egging Khazei on as well. "He told me, 'This woman started an organization called Public Allies, and it's really hot. She's going to blow by City Year. You've got to watch out because she's young, entrepreneurial, aggressive, dynamic, beautiful, and talented,' " Khazei says, mimicking Wofford's teasing warning. "And so I said, 'Well, I've got to meet this person.' "

Fate collaborated with circumstance at a June 1992 conference for social entrepreneurs in Concord, Massachusetts. "I was a little late, so when I came in, everyone was already seated for dinner," Khazei remembers. "There was this incredibly beautiful, energetic woman at one of the tables. She was glowing with positive energy, and there was an empty seat next to her at that table. And I thought to myself, 'I bet that's Vanessa.' And lucky for me, it was. I sat down at her table, and we started talking. And we hit it off. She talked about Public Allies and what she was doing and how she started it. I talked about City Year. We both talked about the political campaigns that we had worked on. We ended up staying up until 2 am. Dinner was long over, they'd closed down the bar, and everybody had gone to bed."

Soon after meeting, the two began a long-distance relationship. They kept it quiet, not wanting nonprofit-world gossip to overshadow their work. They commuted between Washington, DC and Boston, and scheduled flight layovers in the same city whenever their travels permitted. Their mutual travel agent was the first to guess. "He busted Vanessa," Khazei says, grinning. "He asked, 'Are you and Alan dating?' and she was shocked. She asked him how he knew, and he said, 'Because no one except you two ever requests layovers.' "

Breakthrough on the Beach

Two years after they met, Khazei and Kirsch decided that they needed to step back from their cherished nonprofit projects to seek out new ideas and perspectives. Drawing on the experience of matchmaker Wofford, who had traveled to India with his wife shortly after the two were married, Kirsch and Khazei decided that a pilgrimage around the world would be the perfect tonic for their stagnation. The nine-month-long trip served as a celebration of their engagement -- and of their shared mission. "We thought that this would be a great way to start our life together -- by traveling abroad, trying to meet change agents and future leaders and learn from them," Khazei says.

They were on a beach in Thailand, two and a half months into their travels, when it came to them: They would create a second-stage capital market for nonprofits. During their travels, Khazei and Kirsch interviewed more than 350 social entrepreneurs, businesspeople, and government leaders in 20 countries. And after seeing their own difficulties mirrored in their compatriots' experiences and witnessing how far American capitalism had reached into even the developing countries that they had seen, the answer seemed obvious.

"There's lots of startup money for nonprofit work," Khazei explains. "There's lots of money for the really big, established groups. But there's almost no money for those organizations in between -- those who need bridge money to sustain and to grow."

Because of that lack of second-stage funding, nonprofits and philanthropists remain locked into the startup-phase mentality -- rewarding need and new ideas rather than performance and tested models. "With all of the effort and money that goes into the nonprofit sector, why aren't we solving more problems?" Kirsch asks. "Because the system is broken. This is not an intellectual argument. I'm talking about thousands of people not getting immunized or thousands of kids not getting access to childhood-development intervention so that they can learn to read. It's about how to have the greatest possible impact; how to effect large-scale social change."