CYNTHIA RINGO TO JUDGE NEW MACARTHUR FOUNDATION COMPETITION FOR $100 MILLION TO HELP SOLVE A CRITICAL SOCIAL PROBLEM

San Fran­cis­co, CA June 2, 2016 – Cyn­thia Ringo, Senior Part­ner, DBL Part­ners will serve as an eval­u­at­ing judge for a new com­pe­ti­tion launched today that will award a $100 mil­lion grant to a sin­gle pro­pos­al designed to help solve a crit­i­cal prob­lem affect­ing peo­ple, places, or the plan­et. The John D. and Cather­ine T. MacArthur Foundation’s com­pe­ti­tion, called 100&Change, is open to orga­ni­za­tions work­ing in any field of endeav­or any­where. Appli­cants must iden­ti­fy both the prob­lem they are try­ing to solve, as well as their pro­posed solu­tion. Com­pet­i­tive pro­pos­als will be mean­ing­ful, ver­i­fi­able, durable, and feasible.

“It’s an hon­or to be a judge in the MacArthur Foun­da­tion 100&Change com­pe­ti­tion and to have the priv­i­lege of eval­u­at­ing today’s most inno­v­a­tive social entre­pre­neurs and their solu­tions to press­ing glob­al prob­lems,” said Cyn­thia Ringo, Senior Part­ner, DBL Partners.

As a judge for 100&Change, Cyn­thia Ringo will eval­u­ate valid pro­pos­als ran­dom­ly assigned to her accord­ing to a strict set of cri­te­ria designed to favor pro­pos­als that max­i­mize mea­sur­able impact in their cho­sen areas. More infor­ma­tion about the judges and their eval­u­a­tion method­ol­o­gy will be shared pub­licly via the com­pe­ti­tion web­site, www​.100and​change​.org. Par­tic­i­pants sub­mit­ting valid pro­pos­als will receive feed­back from the judges.

Cyn­thia Ringo is Senior Part­ner of DBL Part­ners, and Man­ag­ing Part­ner of the pri­or fund man­aged under DBL Investors. Ms. Ringo cur­rent­ly sits on the board of direc­tors of RubyRib­bon, The Real­Re­al, Urban­Sit­ter, Maiyet  and Siva Pow­er,  and works with View Glass, Yer­dle, and Katee­va.  Ms. Ringo was for­mer­ly a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Van­tage­Point Ven­ture Part­ners where she was Group Leader of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Sys­tems, Inter­net and Media Prac­tice.  She also serves as an advi­sor to sev­er­al orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing: the NVCA Diver­si­ty Task Force, SVFo­rum, a Sil­i­con Val­ley lead­er­ship forum, Astia, sup­port­ing women-led entre­pre­neurs, and is a mem­ber of the Emer­i­tus Board, Water­mark.  Ms. Ringo received a BS in Legal Sys­tems from Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty and a JD from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law.

“Solv­ing society’s most press­ing prob­lems isn’t easy, but we believe it can be done,” said MacArthur Pres­i­dent Julia Stasch. “Poten­tial solu­tions may go unno­ticed or under-resourced and are wait­ing to be brought to scale. Every three years, we plan to award $100 mil­lion to help make one of these solu­tions a real­i­ty. Through 100&Change, we want to inspire, encour­age, and sup­port oth­er people’s ideas, here in our home­town Chica­go, across the nation and around the world, about how to address major chal­lenges and enable real progress toward a solution.”

100&Change will con­sid­er appli­ca­tions from across the Unit­ed States and around the world. Non­prof­it and for-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions can apply, sub­ject to eli­gi­bil­i­ty rules. The com­pe­ti­tion will not accept appli­ca­tions from indi­vid­u­als or gov­ern­ment agencies.

“We believe that 100&Change can have a rip­ple effect beyond what a sin­gle $100 mil­lion grant enables,” said Cecil­ia Con­rad, MacArthur’s Man­ag­ing Direc­tor lead­ing the com­pe­ti­tion.  “Set­ting auda­cious goals is inspir­ing. Clear evi­dence of impact can encour­age oth­er fun­ders to invest in solv­able prob­lems more broad­ly, and appli­cants who do not receive the $100 mil­lion grant will still receive valu­able feed­back on and atten­tion to their ideas.”

To par­tic­i­pate, appli­cants must first reg­is­ter on the web­site by Sep­tem­ber 2, 2016. Then they must com­plete a sub­stan­tive online appli­ca­tion, detail­ing the prob­lem, solu­tion, and bud­get, along with post­ing a video pitch. Pro­pos­als will be accept­ed through Octo­ber 3, 2016. Semi-final­ists will be announced in Decem­ber. Each semi-final­ist will receive assis­tance from an expert team to iden­ti­fy and address ques­tions about tech­ni­cal and orga­ni­za­tion­al capac­i­ty required to imple­ment each pro­posed solu­tion, includ­ing spe­cif­ic plans to mon­i­tor, eval­u­ate, and learn dur­ing imple­men­ta­tion. Each semi-final­ist will also be asked to show sig­nif­i­cant, authen­tic engage­ment with affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties. MacArthur’s Board of Direc­tors will select final­ists in the sum­mer of 2017. Final­ists will present their solu­tions dur­ing a live event in the fall of 2017, after which the Board will make the final deci­sion about the $100 mil­lion grant recipient.

DBL Part­ners is a pio­neer of dou­ble bot­tom line ven­ture cap­i­tal, a grow­ing field of invest­ing that seeks to opti­mize both finan­cial return (First Bot­tom Line) and pos­i­tive social impact, includ­ing social, envi­ron­men­tal and region­al eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits (Sec­ond Bot­tom Line).  The firm focus­es on sus­tain­able ener­gy, prod­ucts and ser­vices, dig­i­tal media and imag­ing, health care, and IT. The team has invest­ed in a wide range of suc­cess­ful port­fo­lio com­pa­nies, includ­ing Pan­do­ra Media (NYSE:P), SolarCi­ty (NASDAQ:SCTY), Tes­la Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA), Rev­o­lu­tion Foods, SpaceX and many oth­ers, which have cre­at­ed more than 45,000 jobs.  More infor­ma­tion is at www​.dbl​.vc.

The MacArthur Foun­da­tion sup­ports cre­ative peo­ple, effec­tive insti­tu­tions, and influ­en­tial net­works build­ing a more just, ver­dant, and peace­ful world. MacArthur is plac­ing a few big bets that tru­ly sig­nif­i­cant progress is pos­si­ble on some of the world’s most press­ing social chal­lenges, includ­ing over-incar­cer­a­tion, glob­al cli­mate change, nuclear risk, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­ing finan­cial cap­i­tal for the social sec­tor. In addi­tion to the MacArthur Fel­lows Pro­gram, the Foun­da­tion con­tin­ues its his­toric com­mit­ments to the role of jour­nal­ism in a respon­si­ble and respon­sive democ­ra­cy; the strength and vital­i­ty of our head­quar­ters city, Chica­go; and gen­er­at­ing new knowl­edge about crit­i­cal issues. More infor­ma­tion is at www​.mac​found​.org.

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