20 Years of Community-Driven Change

In their own words: GreenLight Fund Co-founders Margaret Hall and John Simon reflect on the organization’s beginnings and the path to today

In 2004, John Simon, a prominent venture capitalist and entrepreneur, and Margaret Hall, a nonprofit executive with deep knowledge of nonprofit leadership and effectiveness, founded GreenLight Fund. What started as an innovative approach to pull evidence-based nonprofits into Boston based on what the community identified was needed, has grown into a 13, soon to be 14 city network. Margaret and John share some reflections on the early days and the growth that’s led to GreenLight Fund as a national network.

Margaret, back when GreenLight Fund was just an idea, what were you most passionate about?

Margaret: The core idea of GreenLight that excited me the most was putting the community at the center of our approach to support scale and replication in the nonprofit sector. We knew there were innovative, high-impact organizations being created across the country, but we also knew those solutions weren’t getting where they were most needed. We saw stagnant or growing poverty levels in Boston and most cities in the country, particularly for Black and brown residents. We saw barriers to economic mobility that weren’t budging. Cities wanted innovative solutions that addressed the particular circumstances of their communities and could be adapted to fit their city.

I was also passionate about supporting nonprofit organizations so that they could achieve impact at a level we knew they were capable of. This meant learning from the best and most innovative approaches to philanthropy and providing our portfolio organizations with significant funding, supporting them over multiple years, and giving them flexibility in how they used funds to achieve results. It also meant trusting our portfolio organizations. We knew they would be the experts of their programs and what it took to achieve impact. We knew we would have and facilitate the community-level knowledge and connections they needed to achieve success in our city. This would be the basis of partnerships between GreenLight and our portfolio organizations that has been fundamental to GreenLight’s success, and, most importantly, the success of our now 62 portfolio organizations in 13 cities.

Looking back to when GreenLight Fund celebrated our 5-year anniversary, here’s what Margaret shared:

John, what was driving you to co-found GreenLight Fund?

John: Well, at its core the impetus for founding GreenLight and creating it was really the question, how do you create change in the city? Boston had all these unbelievable people doing great things. But, how do you get something different to happen to move the needle on issues that weren’t moving? What if we created a new entity, and every year we would look at something that wasn’t happening, and then we would bring something that moved the needle on that issue, and then we’d make it happen, and I realized, well, in 20 years maybe we could green light 15 changes in Boston. And that’s what we’ve gone and done.

Looking back to GreenLight Fund’s 5-year anniversary, John shared:

What challenges did GreenLight face early on?

Margaret: A big challenge, probably THE big challenge, we faced at the beginning was how we were going to fund the work. John’s philanthropic support meant we had stable operating dollars to run the day-to-day of GreenLight, but we needed to figure out how to fund the portfolio organizations we selected to address Boston’s needs.

Early visionary funders gave us the run room we needed to build a track record of impact in the first years: The Boston Foundation; The George and Marie Chabot Charitable Foundation (Polachi Family); The Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust; Randi and Joel Cutler; Nina and David Fialkow; F.C. Capital Partners LLC, now General Catalyst Partners (Joel Cutler and David Fialkow); The Paul & Phyllis Fireman Charitable Foundation; The Frank Reed and Margaret Jane Peters Memorial Fund, Bank of America, Trustee; Susan and John Simon; The Tudor Foundation (Jimmy Pallotta); and many other incredible individuals and families. This was truly catalytic funding for GreenLight and gave us time to see results. At the same time, we raised revenue from Boston events that was big enough to fund the $600,000+ commitments we made to our portfolio organizations in Boston.

As we have expanded, visionary funders in each GreenLight city have provided this kind of critical, leading support.

What do you think was a real turning point for GreenLight Fund in the first 20 years?

Margaret: From the beginning, we envisioned GreenLight as a national organization working in cities around the country to find and spread the best nonprofit solutions out there. We knew we first had to create a model that worked in Boston before we could take it to other cities. In 2012, after eight years in Boston, we were one of four organizations selected nationally as part of the federal Social Innovation Fund (SIF). The SIF had been created by the Obama administration to invest in “experienced grantmaking ‘intermediaries’ that are well-positioned within communities to identify the most promising programs and guide them towards greater impact and stronger evidence of success.”

The Social Innovation Fund, along with national matching support from Bank of America and John and Sue Simon, allowed GreenLight to launch our work in Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area. This was the catalyst for our national expansion that continues, now at 13 sites and counting.

John, how did the organization grow from its early days in Boston to becoming a national network spanning soon to be 14 cities?

John: I always say in order to do things really right it’s probably gonna take a little longer than you think, and, so, we always had the intention that GreenLight would get to many cities. So, for eight years we were only in Boston. Just every year looking at an issue, finding something great, green lighting it, having that be successful and then learning. We continued to iterate and improve and get all the elements of the model established. At the end of eight years we looked at all the data and to our surprise it was even better than we thought.

As a next step, we needed to prove this would work in two other cities, that it can really be localized and work equally as well in cities that were different from Boston. And, so, we raised about $7,000,000, and created a GreenLight Philadelphia as our second city and a GreenLight Bay Area as our third city. That was the beginning of our expansion. We operated in those three cities for four years, and, because this is a learning network, the model was even more successful in Philadelphia and the Bay Area.

And with that all under our belt we started to add one city a year. Cincinnati, then Detroit, then Charlotte and so on, just really intentionally one city a year. The key is to basically do everything the best you can every year, and then learn from it, and scale only when you’re ready.

After 20 years, what are you most proud of?

Margaret: I am most proud that so many people have joined with GreenLight and embraced this mission to build inclusive prosperity and greater equity through the GreenLight Method. Hundreds of funders have helped us grow GreenLight in Boston, have propelled the launch of GreenLight in new cities, and have sustained the work over the years. Community members in every city join our local Selection Advisory Councils and contribute their community knowledge and their substantial connections to guide what issues we focus on and the portfolio organizations we select. Partners including nonprofits, local government, school systems, and businesses help ensure our portfolio organizations make the biggest impact possible and are deeply rooted in the community. GreenLight’s Board members and staff through the years have poured themselves into the work with passion for our mission and commitment to our values. The alchemy of this diverse, deep and wide network is incredibly special and is the key to creating lasting change for young people, families and communities.

John: I think what we’ve done is we’ve really established a new community element. Communities have United Ways, community foundations, food banks, school systems, governments, etc.

I think what we’ve really proven over a 20-year period is that there’s an additional community element that’s a really important, additive thing to have, a GreenLight Fund. GreenLight Fund is a change layer that can make, in a community and resident-directed way, one reliable change that shifts outcomes each year so that in 20 years, 15 or 16 things can change. In 50 years, 40 things can change.

So, we now have 13 – very soon to be 14 – cities seeing tremendous impact as a result of having this community element in place and we’re on track to continue adding a city a year, spreading the learnings and spreading what works, driving towards massive, positive change.