Why we’re giving up 1% of our carry
We at Accomplice pledge to give 1% of our carry to TUGG nonprofits InnerCity Weightlifting and Resilient Coders. They’re two Boston-based organizations fighting to bring social and economic equality to under-resourced youth, and they’ve done amazing work.
The Pledge 1% campaign asks startup employees to commit to giving 1% of their equity, time, or product to nonprofits in their community. It’s a pledge to pay it forward if you become successful.
VC firms don’t have equity the same way that startups do, so we give our employees carried interest (or “carry”) in our funds. Carry is complicated, but think of it as our share of the profits we generate from our company-building and investing efforts.
We’re splitting our 1% pledge between InnerCity Weightlifting (ICW) and Resilient Coders, two nonprofits that started with TUGG and have grown to become part of the Boston tech community and our culture at Accomplice. TUGG supports nonprofits at the earliest stages through crowdsourced grants. These nonprofits are often the riskiest — and boldest — out there. And just like tech startups, they need someone to believe in them when they’re just a big idea and a tiny group of motivated people.
ICW and Resilient Coders took that initial funding and went on to do incredible things. ICW’s student trainers have learned a craft and gained a livelihood in personal training, with 3,335 sessions booked in 2015 and 96% of students reporting increased hope for the future. Resilient Coders has taught hundreds of young people from underserved communities how to code and helped them land jobs at local tech companies like The Grommet and Fresh Tilled Soil. We’ve seen these wins over the years and are incredibly proud. As investors, we get behind companies when we see a signal that things are going well. Nonprofits are the same: ICW and Resilient Coders’ strategies are working. We see their growth and we’re leaning in behind them.
Pledging 1% of our carry to these nonprofits means that we’re thinking of them every day we come into work, with every company we invest in, and with all the time we put in. We know that we’re part of funding the great things they’ll do with it. And we’ll work even harder.
