When Michael Howse joined the UCLA Venture Capital Fund, he wanted to bring young entrepreneurs into the fold who could help nurture even younger companies that had connections to the Westwood campus. But since the entrepreneurs were still bankrolling their own startups, they generally didn’t have the $50,000 minimum donation.

But they did have something of value: equity in their companies.

So Howse, a Bruin alumnus and Silicon Valley veteran, brainstormed with the fund’s executive chairman, Michael Silton, who decided to accept charitable contributions of illiquid stock in startup companies instead of cash. When those companies did turn their stock into cash, either by going public or selling shares to later investors, the fund gets money that it can use to invest in startups.

Proceeds from a liquidity event in those investments are not distributed to individual investors, as is typical in a private equity fund, but to the fund itself. Due to this charitable structure, donations to the fund are tax-deductible, which has helped recruit new members.

“We wanted to make the fund much more accessible to up-and-coming entrepreneurs,” Howse said.

That was in 2007, when they first pioneered the concept of cashless giving. Since then, the UCLA VC fund has thrived. Its membership has grown by 30 percent in the last 18 months and it has invested in dozens of companies, the latest being Neural Analytics, a UCLA-based company trying to revolutionize the way doctors treat severe brain injuries.

Read the full story in the June 16 weekly edition of the Business Journal.