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Cynthia Gair
Director, Portfolio and Field Advancement
Cynthia Gair oversees the comprehensive business support provided to the REDF portfolio of social enterprises. This includes business assistance from REDF staff as well as from consultants in specialty areas. In addition to her work at REDF, she has provided training in business management to hundreds of urban entrepreneurs, and has served on the Board and Loan Committee of the Northern California Community Loan Fund.
Prior to joining REDF, Cynthia managed businesses in book distribution, retail clothing, health products and light manufacturing. Her previous activities include serving as Operating General Partner of Terranomics Ventures, a San Francisco venture capital firm. She holds a BS in Finance and an MBA from George Washington University. She studies Italian, Zen Buddhism, and music in her spare time.
REDF provides guidance, leadership and investment to a portfolio of nonprofit social enterprises, changing the lives of people who face poverty, homelessness, mental illness and other barriers to employment.
REDF funds programs through long-term commitments to help move people out of poverty. Our approach, called “high-engagement philanthropy,” places emphasis on making an organization more sustainable over time, using best business practices and building its capacity to help others.
For every dollar donated in the San Francisco Bay Area last year, three cents went to homelessness. Of that, less than one cent was spent on sustainable, lasting solutions. While REDF is a nonprofit organization, we view all of our grants as investments. Therefore, we refer to the tax-exempt organizations receiving our support as "investees" instead of the more traditional "grantees." The "return" REDF receives for this investment is not financial, but rather investing vital philanthropic resources in helping to build the capacity of the nonprofit sector. While this may seem like simple semantics to some, we feel it is important to affirm the fact that we are not simply making charitable gifts, but rather investing precious philanthropic resources in helping to build the capacity of the nonprofit sector.
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Cynthia Gair, formerly of modified venture capital model, Keystone Community Ventures which provides financial, technical and management assistance to nonprofit groups starting enterprises.
Typical. Every Western convert to Buddhism I've met -- without a single exception -- is a self-absorbed, pacifist moonbat who regularly spews mindless, condescending cant like this*.
So the U.S. military needs to be "taken away," Cynthia? Who's going to "take away" a huge, well-armed military? An even bigger and better-armed military! And who, pray tell, might field such a force? Could it possibly be the nations who march under the Crescent and Star, and who would slap a burkha on your privileged hipster butt the moment they took power?
*If there are any Freeper Buddhists here, speak up now and be the proud exception to this rule. Western converts only -- cradle/Asian-ethnic faithful are a whole different kettle o' fish.
