The National Venture Capital Association is spinning out a new nonprofit organization aimed at advancing diversity and inclusion in the industry and expanding access to venture capital, the association said Tuesday.
The new 501(c)(3) nonprofit is called Venture Forward and will be based at the NVCA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and at new offices in San Francisco. Its focus will be on advancing diversity, inclusion and access to opportunities in the venture and startup worlds, which continue to be heavily dominated by white men in a handful of coastal markets.
“A big part of our mission here is to make sure that we are expanding opportunities for women, for people of color, for people in geographies outside of California, Massachusetts and New York, to be able to learn about venture capital and participate in our ecosystem, whether as an entrepreneur or as an investor,” Maryam Haque, the executive director of Venture Forward, told the Silicon Valley Business Journal in an interview.
In the 2018 edition of the NVCA’s biennial Human Capital survey, which measures diversity among venture-backed startups and the VCs that fund them, clear ethnic disparities were laid out. According to that survey, 80% of investment partners at venture firms are white, while 15% are Asian or Pacific Islander. The Hispanic/Latino and Black demographics each make up only 3% of those leadership roles and women comprise only 15% of the investment partners ranks at VC firms. Read the full story here.
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