FMS Impact

 

We walk the ranks of emerging and frontier markets to HELP bring society forward

The Frontier Market Scouts (FMS), Sanghata’s flagship program serves 31 countries, has created 100+ social enterprises, and partners with over 400 social-impact organizations globally.

 

FMS was founded in 2011 as a joint venture between MIIS and the Sanghata Institute. The program was the first of its kind in the social impact sector.


FRONTIER MARKET SCOUTS 2012 - 2017

• 330 Social enterprise professionals trained
• 180 FMS Scouts and Fellows served in 31 countries
• 400 Partnerships activated with impact driven organizations
• 100+ Enterprises served in 31 countries

 

IN JANUARY 2012 SANGHATA BECAME VILLAGE CAPITAL’S GLOBAL FOUNDING PARTNER

• $800,000 raised for donor-advised fund by Sanghata/Village Capital partnership
• $1.6m deployed to date
• 33% are first-time impact investors
• Initial investment leveraged to over $20m by Village Capital
• 85% of entrepreneurs received first funding from Sanghata/Village Capital partnership
• $142m in follow-on capital from Village Capital
• $17.7m raised through a for-profit subsidiary, VilCap Investments

 

Until 2015, Sanghata’s flagship Frontier Market Scouts program (FMS) program was operated from the Graduate School of Policy and Management (GSPIM) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS). In 2015 MIIS made the Frontier Market Scouts program the foundation for their newly established Center for Social Impact Learning (CSIL) and launched CSIL under the chairmanship of Ron Cordes, with Jerry Hildebrand as director, and Erina McWilliam- Lopez and Annie Makela as senior staff. Building on Sanghata’s FMS program and reflecting Sanghata’s vision, CSIL aimed to “provide unique opportunities for a new generation of business, government, and non-profit leaders to learn, experiment, and research business solutions to some of the toughest global problems”.

During 2015-2O17 the Frontier Market Scouts (FMS) program further emphasised the impact-investing facet of training and internships by:

  • Expanding the complement of practitioner-instructors
  • Revising the curriculum to cover broader range of subjects
  • Deploying guerilla-marketing to double applicants; webinars for prospective trainees
  • Increasing hiring partners, post-training, to 600 (U.S. & global)
  • Closing the expensive Amsterdam facility and opening a no-cost Washington DC venue
  • In the January 2017 training the FMS program welcomed 40 participants, the largest cohort ever
  • CSIL announced that all operational expenses were covered.

 

Primarily because of the achievements of the FMS program, CSIL and MIIS gained membership in international action networks:

 

A strategic plan was drafted in 2016 and consequently Social Impact Career Coaching was initiated (as Sanghata had envisioned in 2011-2012) and CSIL Senior Staff and Advisory Council members provided the contacts, networks, internship opportunities, strategy coaching mentorship for over 300 students to get job offers in the social impact sector.

Sanghata’s partner the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) benefitted further from the introduction of a comprehensive Social Impact Program: 

  • Social Entrepreneurship (Frontier Market Scouts Training & Internships; Pioneer Impact Speakers Series)
  • Impact Investing (FMS Training & Internships and Consultancy Groups)
  • Domestic Microfinance (Student Consultancy Group)
  • Certified B Corporations (M Force Guest Speakers Forum; Student Consultancy Group)
  • Social-Franchising (M Force Guest Speaker; FMS and AC Internships)
  • Fair Trade (Student-led Groups: M Force and Fair Traders; Paul Rice, CEO, as Guest Speaker)

 

In 2017 Sanghata is taking management control of its Frontier Market Scouts (FMS) program and looking forward to steering it in directions that diversify and expand its impact more effectively than ever before.