Mission

Small amounts of capital can effect lasting changes, especially when invested consistently in people and the intangible capital.

Social Synergy Deutschland e.V. (SSD)'s mission is to contribute to the creation of steady, consistent, and durable impact over time through institution-building of matured, small, and medium non-profits' and enterprises by enhancing their intangible (institutional) capital.

Our mission builds on the unique and proven approach ’Investing at Margin’ as developed and continuously refined by the Social Synergy Foundation (SSF), our sister concern based in Mumbai, India. SSF has been working since 2013 in institution building of small and medium-sized non-profits in India through multi-year engagements.

Social Synergy Deutschland was launched in December 2018 and registered in Freiburg, Germany, as a not-for-profit charitable organization ("Verein") under German Law with the aim to promote this unique approach to supporting non-profits as well as social and impact-driven enterprises.

Investing at Margin

More money doesn’t mean better outcomes.

Investing (or Funding) at Margin has been developed by SSF for the particular context of small and medium-sized grassroots organizations, it is defined as leveraging all the historical investments. If practiced this consciously, deliberately and systematically allows for effective capital allocation. Our idea behind 'Investing (or Funding) at Margin" is very simple:

Leveraging historical investments

Over the years, donors and funders invested substantial amounts in non-profits and development programmes for achieving specific outcomes. In many cases, this has resulted in organizations that possess an enduring ability to generate impact. We leverage these historical investments by building institutional capital through the continuous deployment of smaller amounts of capital.

Building institutional Capital

For us 'Investing (or Funding) at Margin' means that consistently deploying smaller amounts of capital nurtures their core capabilities and fundamental abilities. This may include improvisation, replicability, micro-contextualisation practice, supporting a strategic programme, hiring of key persons or building their specific potential, or running a straightforward organizational development process.

Mangrove plants on a muddy shore at low tide

Want to see our approach in action?

Learn more about VIKAS Centre for Development (India) and its founder Rajesh Shah, a United Nations Climate Change COP Impact Maker, illustrating one of our long-standing portfolio organizations.

Principles

Our approach aims for steady, consistent, and durable impact over time to deepen the quality of impact. We offer a complimentary approach to many prevailing market-based solutions which often focus on scale, innovation, accelerated impact and financial sustainability.

  • Systems-oriented

  • Long-term

  • Partnership-based

  • Context-specific

  • Learning-driven

What distinguishes us from the market

Many of the things that you can count don’t count, many of the things that you can’t count really count.

Traditional Approach

  1. Recognize the cause.
  2. Develop an explicit or implicit theory of change (ToC).
  3. Find the agents of change and means (non-profits) to realize the ToC.
  4. Define concrete, quantifiable and time bound outcomes and outputs.
  5. Create and implement the project.

Funding becomes a series of projects to meet an end goal (e.g. specific SDGs).

Funding at Margin

  1. Recognize the cause
  2. Find agents of change (esp. small and medium-sized non-profits) to realize the cause.
  3. Build a perspective on internal capabilities.
  4. Explore & grow 'intangibles' (institutional capital).
  5. Continuously engage in organizational development processes.

Funding builds a permanent system of change.