Matt Harris and Dave Crozier, students in Simon Fraser University’s full-time MBA program, were the winners of the Vancouver for Acumen Fund Team Social Finance Case Challenge (MBA division) held on March 26 at SFU’s Surrey campus.

A total of 25 MBA teams competed in the competition. In the final round, Harris and Crozier edged out a team from the University of British Columbia to take the top prize.

The social finance showdown is geared for innovative students with a passion for social service, entrepreneurship, and social justice. The competition requires teams to submit responses to a case based on a company from Acumen Fund’s investment portfolio. The cases are based on social enterprise, the provision of public health goods, and the role of the government. Responses must exhibit originality, efficiency, and cultural awareness.

All competing teams were given a business case prior to the competition day. They were then asked to prepare an analysis and recommendation on whether or not Acumen should invest in the company. Presentations were submitted in Powerpoint format, with each team having 15 minutes to present their analysis to a panel of judges, followed by a 5 minute question and answer period. Leading up to the competition, all teams participated in 6 hours of workshop training — covering the fundamentals of case analysis, Acumen Fund’s investment model, a walk-through case example and
application of effective presentations.

About Acumen Fund

Acumen Fund is a pioneering not-for-profit venture fund that is changing the way the world addresses poverty. Vancouver for Acumen, a volunteer-run chapter, supports this mission by actively championing and fundraising to support Acumen Fund’s innovative model of investing patient capital in enterprises that solve the problems of poverty. Since its founding in 2001, Acumen Fund has invested more than $50 million in enterprises that provide access to water, health, energy, housing and agricultural inputs to low-income customers in South Asia and East Africa.