NEW YORK, June 6 — At a ceremony at NYU School of Law yesterday evening, a project submitted by nonprofit organization Social Finance was named winner of the 2019 Grunin Prize for Law and Social Entrepreneurship. The prize recognizes lawyers’ participation in the ways in which business is increasingly advancing the goals of sustainability and human development, and rewards the innovation and potential impact of projects and solutions developed by lawyers to advance the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investing. The award ceremony took place at the 2019 conference of NYU Law’s Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship, co-organized with the Impact Investing Legal Working Group.
The winning project, the Veterans Coordinated Approach to Recovery and Employment (Veterans CARE) initiative,is the first Social Impact Bond dedicated to serving our nation’s Veterans. The unique public-private partnership brings together impact investors and multiple jurisdictions (the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, New York City, and the City of Boston) to scale a proven, employment-first model and support Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder to achieve economic stability. The project created a new corporate structure and contracting mechanism that addresses the legal challenges of weaving together the payment obligations of disparate government payors, each of which is governed by a unique legal and financial structure. Members of the Grunin Prize-winning team are Social Finance’s Navjeet K. Bal, Managing Director and General Counsel, and Leslie Cornell, Associate General Counsel. More information about the project is available on Social Finance’s website.
Established in 2017 with a generous endowment from NYU Law graduates Jay Grunin ’67 and Linda Kalmanowitz Grunin ’67, and the Jay and Linda Grunin Foundation, the Grunin Center is dedicated to enhancing the community of lawyers and legal institutions engaged in social entrepreneurship and impact investing and accelerating its effective participation in these fields. The Grunin Center does this through education, knowledge dissemination, and field-building collaborations.
“The Grunin Center is committed to fostering innovation in law and social entrepreneurship,” said NYU Law Dean Trevor Morrison. “It has quickly become a true leader in this increasingly important field and a vital part of the NYU Law community.”
“Each year we see a growing number of remarkable achievements by lawyers working in the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investing, as evident by our six Grunin Prize finalists,” said Deborah Burand, associate professor of clinical law and co-director of the Grunin Center. “With today’s award of the Grunin Prize, we celebrate the creativity and expertise of the members of this legal community of practice as they and their clients tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges.”