INVESTMENT PROPOSAL TIMELINE
Call for Investment Proposals: February 8, 2012
Proposals Due: March 23, 2012
Review by Lube-Tech Grant Team: March 30 – May 31, 2012
Investee Announced: June 1, 2012
ABOUT LUBE-TECH and the PHILANTHROPIC PARTNERS PROGRAM
Lube-Tech produces and distributes a wide range of petrochemical products for the automotive, fleet, industrial, and custom blend markets. Lube-Tech’s history dates to 1925 with the founding companies Gopher State Oil, Hallman Oil and Jennison Rollins Oil. In 1973, Fred Bame purchased Gopher State and grew it to become Minnesota’s leading automotive lubricant distributor. In 1993, Lubrication Technologies, Inc. was formed by Chris and Marna Bame, who expanded the company’s offering to include automotive, industry, fleet and custom brands divisions as well as Liquid Recycling. Chris helped combine high technology with personal service which are the core values that define Lube-Tech today. The company has grown yet remains a family business in every sense with both customers and employees that have been with them for multiple generations.
Lube-Tech is not only committed to helping our customers succeed, but also to helping our community succeed. Our employees personally donate time and money to charities around the Twin Cities and across the globe. Lube-Tech supports these efforts and countless volunteering hours, by donating over 5% of annual profits to both local and national charities. As a technology driven business, Lube-Tech is committed to developing science, technology, engineering, and math skills among Minnesota youth to ensure Minnesota’s competitiveness in the global marketplace.
We conduct our grant making process as a participant in the Philanthropic Partners Program sponsored by Social Venture Partners Minnesota (SVP). SVP is an engaged philanthropy organization that leverages the money and talents of its members to promote philanthropy and improve the lives of ‘at risk’ children and youth in Minnesota. Their members are successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and professionals skilled at growing organizations with a heart for making a better world. In the Philanthropic Partners Program a team of Lube-Tech employees are trained by SVP to act as a grant making team to solicit and select grant proposals from nonprofits that work with at-risk children and youth. The recipient of the Lube-Tech grant will receive a $25,000 general operating grant and the services of Lube-Tech employees on a project to help strengthen the nonprofit.
ELIGIBILITY
Lube-Tech seeks to support innovative 501(c)(3) organizations and grade 6 – 12 schools that improve the lives’ of at-risk children and youth. We provide both financial and technical assistance for the organizations we support. We have found the combination of financial investment and investment of our employee’s business skills for organizational capacity building produces the best long-term results for our grantees. We provide multi-year funding in the form of grants up to $25,000 per year to be used for general operating support. Lube-Tech is committed to performance based multi-year funding of its grantees (3-4 years) because we believe that this creates the greatest potential for improving the grantee’s organizational effectiveness. Grantees are required to develop mutually agreed upon performance milestones and report on their attainment to determine if another round of investment will be awarded.
WHAT LUBE-TECH DOES NOT SUPPORT
Lube-Tech will not consider grant requests from individuals; organizations that discriminate; religious organizations for sectarian purposes; sports teams; and political or lobbying organizations. Furthermore, it does not make grants to organizations for the sole purpose of fundraising events/auctions, debt reduction, endowment funds, or litigation/legal expenses.
2012 INVESTMENT PROPOSAL GUIDELINES
During 2012 Lube-Tech is investing in non-profit organizations and schools that provide science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programming for youth in grades 6 – 12 in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan region. A significant number of youth served should be from at risk populations.
We define STEM as learning and experiences that give students the ability to identify, apply and integrate concepts from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to understand complex problems and to innovate to solve them. Lube-Tech will consider investing in organizations that meet the following attributes. They must:
- Have an innovative program model that allows them to deliver outcomes for children / youth superior to other organizations working in the STEM field.
- Demonstrate the efficacy of their programs using outcome data as well as anecdotes.
- Be committed to growing their organization and expanding their reach to new markets, geographic areas, or larger numbers of youth served.
- Be at or beyond the ‘proof-of-concept’ stage of development. ‘Proof-of-concept’ means that the organization is not a start-up, but has some operating history and can demonstrate how it has improved the lives of the children or youth it serves.
- Seek capacity building assistance as well as financial assistance. Lube-Tech’s investment in the investee is a ‘package deal’ in that we provide both financial investment and technical assistance to improve the organizational capacity of the nonprofit. We define capacity building as efforts that improve an organization’s ability to achieve its mission and could include such things as marketing, strategic and business planning, financial analysis, human resource systems, product development, information technology, or executive coaching for investee managers. Proposals that are most clear about what capacity building assistance is requested have a much better chance of being selected for investment.
- Offer Lube-Tech employees the opportunity for direct service volunteering experiences with the children or youth you serve. Lube-Tech can offer participating youth job shadowing and internships in our engineering and laboratory operations as well as provide employee volunteers as presenters in classes, lab assistants, STEM related competition coaches, and other roles.
- Additionally, while collaboration with other organizations is not a requirement we welcome proposals that seek support for such work. Collaboration can include joint ventures, mergers, shared services, and other projects that combine and leverage one organization’s resources with anothers.
TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL
- Answer the questions in the proposal limiting your responses to a maximum of 6 pages, using a font size no smaller than 12 pt. Submit the proposal summary and proposal as a single document, not two separate documents. Please label your responses to the questions with the numbers corresponding to the question, e.g. 2.1, 2.2, etc.
- Do not send brochures, DVDs, CDs, annual reports, or other materials not specifically requested. You may embed links to videos, photos, web sites, etc. in the body of your proposal.
- All proposals must be in the Social Venture Partners Minnesota office no later than 5:00 pm CST, March 23, 2012. Any proposals received after that time will not be considered. Submit your proposal as an email attachment to bbrown@svpmn.org placing Lube-Tech proposal and your organization’s name in the subject line. Do not mail hard copies of the application.
If you have questions about completing the proposal please contact Brad Brown, Social Venture Partners at (952) 844-5230 / bbrown@svpmn.org.