Trailblazers

View Larger Map

Where—and how—we invest our time in people and organisations developing entrepreneurial solutions to sustainability challenges.

Volans focuses on the business of social innovation. Our purpose, while building the wider agenda (Outreach) and catalysing high-leverage partnerships (Connects), is to help social and environmental innovators and entrepreneurs (and those who fund them) do more, better and faster. To date our relationships with not-for-profit and for-profit organisations have evolved experimentally, but increasingly we intend to manage them as a series of blended value investment portfolios.

Our Trailblazers portfolio groups the for-profit and not-for-profit organisations that we serve as members of boards and advisory boards — or in similar capacities. These two groups are spotlighted separately below. The organisations supported run the A to Z gamut, from Aflatoun (which aims to make poor children bankable) through to zouk ventures (a venture capital firm that invests in clean technology). Please note that although we are represented on boards or advisory boards in most of these organisations and initiatives, we also help entrepreneurs, enterprises and initiatives where this is not the case — as in the Connects area of our business.

Not-for-profit

For profit