10 Great Social Innovation Reads: September

There were lots of great discussions and developments in the world of social innovation in September. So much so, that I had a really hard time narrowing down to ten. But alas, here are my top 10 of the last month. As always, please add what I missed to the comments. If you’d like to see the expanded list of what catches my eye, follow me on Twitter @nedgington.

You can also read the lists of Great Reads from previous months here.

1. Two really interesting divergent reports on the results of social change work. First, a $1 million, 6-year study of nonprofit After School Matters shows that the program doesn’t really change lives.




2. And a year after Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million grant to Newark public schools, some positive results are trickling in.




3. After the August resignation of Steve Jobs from Apple due to health reasons, people came out in droves to criticize him for his poor philanthropic record. Dan Pallotta rose to his defense, arguing, in a thought-provoking way, that Jobs’ contributions to the world at large make him the World’s Greatest Philanthropist.




4. In an exciting move to kick-start social impact bonds (a government bond that allows private investors to invest capital in nonprofits and then gain a return if the nonprofit achieves promised outcomes), the Rockefeller Foundation granted Social Finance $500K to develop the social impact bond market in the US.




5. September was the month of the 4th annual Social Capital Markets Conference that brings social entrepreneurs and the funders of social entrepreneurs together. Over the course of the four SoCap conferences there has been a recurring tension between philanthropy and impact investing. Adin Miller reported from SoCap that the great convergence between philanthropy and impact investing has disappointingly not yet happened.




6. The Washington Post shows us the devastating impact of the economic crisis in five charts.




7. At long last, CharityNavigator, one of the best known nonprofit rating systems, unveils their Charity Navigator 2.0, an expanded rating system that includes financial health, accountability, and transparency measures. Every nonprofit should understand this important change and what it means for their organization.




8. Lucy Bernholz discusses a fascinating distinction between problems and difficulties and the implications for social change efforts. “Problems have solutions; solve them and problems go away. Difficulties don’t have solutions; they require continual address.”




9. On the Harvard Business Review blog Lucy Marcus argues In Troubled Times, Boards Must Step Up.




10. In a similar vein, Mario Morino from Venture Philanthropy Partners argues that Board Members Cannot Check Their Courage at the Door.

Photo Credit: MMcQuade

Tags: Adin Miller, After School Matters, CharityNavigator, Dan Pallotta, Facebook, impact investing, Lucy Bernholz, Mark Zuckerberg, Newark public schools, nonprofit board of directors, program evaluation, SoCap, Social Capital Markets conference, social impact bonds, Steve Jobs philanthropy

Unlocking Philanthropic Capital: An Interview with Sean Stannard-Stockton

In this month’s Social Velocity blog interview, we are talking with Sean Stannard-Stockton, one of my favorite people in the social innovation world.

Sean is a visionary leading the charge to transform philanthropy. He is CEO of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors, a philanthropy advisory firm. He is also the author of the very popular Tactical Philanthropy blog and writes a monthly column for the Chronicle of Philanthropy. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Council on Philanthropy & Social Investing and his insights on philanthropy have been referenced in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Financial Times.

You can read our past interviews with Clara Miller, Kevin Jones, Lucy Bernholz, Paul Tarini, George Overholser.

Nell: At the first Social Capital Markets Conference (SoCap) in 2008 one of the keynoters said “we’re not here to talk about nonprofits.” We’ve come a long way from there to this year’s devoted track around philanthropic capital and the nonprofit space at SoCap. Where do you think the initial hesitance to connect philanthropic and impact investing came from? And how do we continue to integrate the two worlds?

Sean: I think that one of the segments of people who are attracted to impact investing are people who think philanthropy doesn’t work. While I view philanthropic and for-profit social capital to be part of a single continuum of capital, many people seem to feel that they are fundamentally different. Like most new ideas, early adopters often think it is a silver bullet that will “change everything”. Some early adopters of impact investing or other forms of for-profit social capital wrongly believe that impact investing will replace philanthropy. I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding. Continuing to integrate the two worlds will require helping the various points on the capital spectrum better understand each other. At the end of the day, capital shouldn’t be viewed through an ideological lens, but should simply be deployed based on what sort of capital fits the situation.

Nell: The SoCap session on nonprofit rating systems like Charity Navigator and GiveWell demonstrated that there is still quite a divide between GIIRS (the impact investing rating system) and nonprofit rating systems. What is your sense of this? Do you think there is potential to somehow combine GIIRS (or something else) and nonprofit rating systems so that there is one comparable impact measurement system?

Sean: I would guess that any truly effective impact measurement system should be functional across both for-profit and nonprofit activity. A good impact assessment system wouldn’t care about the tax status of the entity producing results, it would just care about the results and the cost of obtaining them. That being said, I think evaluating a nonprofit organization is really quite different from evaluating a for-profit organization. So even if we have a unified impact assessment framework some day, I would guess that organizational assessment will utilize different systems and approaches for nonprofit and for-profit organizations.

Nell: How would you like to see the conversation about connecting philanthropy and impact investing evolve at SoCap11? What are your hopes for next year’s conference?

Sean: I’d like to work to profile more examples of ways that for-profit and philanthropic capital worked together to produce social impact. Our session on Evergreen Lodge at this year’s conference looked precisely at this question, but I’d like to see more examples. I’d also like to see examples of ways philanthropic entities have used for-profit investments or subsidiaries well or for-profits have effectively used philanthropic activities to drive profit and social results. However, one of the most important goals is simply getting the different players into the same room and getting them to come to understand each other better. While Kevin Jones and I had a good time talking about the Social Capital Markets as a meeting ground for the Barbarians and Byzantine, in reality none of us are barbarians.

Nell: Beyond SoCap where do you think the important conversations about unlocking philanthropic and government capital for social impact are happening?

Sean: This is an interesting question. SoCap is special because it is one of the only (the only?) conference that is specifically about capital for social impact without regard for sector. But versions of this conversation are happening around Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, The Social Innovation Fund, online and in a different sort of way at the PopTech conference.

Nell: At the last general session of SoCap Woody Tasch of the Slow Money movement said he doesn’t think mission-related investing will ever be adopted by the majority of foundations. What are your thoughts on that?

Sean: Social Responsible Investing, the practice of screening out stocks of tobacco companies, defense contractors and the like from investment portfolios, is not practiced by a majority of investors. Yet, SRI is very mainstream and has significantly altered the behavior of publicly traded companies. Today, SRI mutual funds are one of the fastest growing areas in money management. So I don’t think that the majority of funders have to adopt mission related investing for the concept to be deemed a success. It should be noted that SRI took a good 20 years or so to go mainstream. So it could be some time before mission related investing is considering mainstream.

Nell: And more broadly, what do you think it will take to change how philanthropists (both foundations and individual donors) use money to support social impact? How do we make more donors builders instead of just buyers?

Sean: Today, I think that very few people in the social sector really understand what “philanthropic equity” is and how capital differs from revenue. Nonprofit accounting does not acknowledge that capital even exists in the sector. Nonprofits can only book cash coming into their business as revenue or a loan. There’s no official way to account for equity-like capital. So I think that there needs to be a pretty major education effort to get the whole sector very clear on how fundamentally different it is for a funder/donor to “invest” philanthropic equity in a nonprofit vs paying a nonprofit revenue to execute programs. Personally, I don’t think much progress will be made until nonprofit accounting changes. Until that happens, it doesn’t matter much what we call “growth capital”, it is all just revenue to the nonprofit.

Tags: builders vs. buyers, Charity Navigator, Chronicle of Philanthropy, GIIRS, GiveWell, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, impact investing, Mission-Related Investing, nonprofit accounting, nonprofit growth capital, philanthropic capital, philanthropic equity, Sean Stannard-Stockton, SoCap, Social Innovation Fund, social responsible investing, Tactical Philanthropy, Woody Tasch

My Wish List for SoCap 2011

Despite my frustration in an earlier post about this year’s Social Capital Markets Conference inability to fully integrate philanthropic and government capital into the discussion, I was reminded by a friend that we have actually come a long way in three short years. A keynoter at the first SoCap conference in 2008 noted that “we aren’t here to talk about nonprofits.” The fact is that just two years later not only were nonprofits and their philanthropic and government funders present in large numbers at the conference, but they had their own track. It was a huge step forward to have a devoted track focusing on the philanthropic capital market with Sean Stannard-Stockton at its head this year. The track brought some great work to light and started some important conversations.

In the spirit of continuing and expanding that conversation, here are the conversations/sessions I’d like to see at SoCap 2011:

• More case studies like the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland and the Evergreen Lodge in Yosemite (not related) that demonstrate innovative collaborations of capital across the philanthropic, government and private sectors
• A working session that looks to compare/combine the nonprofit rating systems and GIIRS (Global Impact Investing Rating System)
• Case studies of nonprofits who have crafted a growth or capacity capital campaign to unlock philanthropic capital for scale and change
• A discussion about venture philanthropy. New Profit, Venture Philanthropy Partners and others pioneered the nonprofit capital space. Where are they now, what have they learned, and what are they doing to revamp the venture philanthropy model?
• An update on the Social Innovation Fund (SIF), what they’ve learned, what the government’s plans are to revamp and scale it.
• Beyond SIF, examples of what local, state and federal governments are doing to partner with philanthropists to expand capital for social entrepreneurs. Council of Foundation’s Public/Philanthropic Partnership is a place to start.
• Stacked deals involving philanthropic and private capital are very tricky to create, as Julie Sunderland and others have argued, but what can we do or develop to make this less difficult? What sorts of terms are people playing around with? What’s working and what isn’t and how can we evolve this?
• Donor-Advised Funds hold tremendous opportunity to unlock philanthropic capital, but are underused currently. What can we do to unlock that potential?
• Where do community foundations fit into all of this? Often the nexus of a city’s philanthropic activity, they have been slow to climb aboard the social capital market train.  How can we unlock this potential capital for social impact?
• Discussions about how we educate philanthropists about the need for capacity and growth capital in the nonprofit world. How do we make more philanthropists builders instead of buyers?
• How do we get more foundations to use Program Related Investments and Mission Related Investments?

SoCap10 did a great job of starting the conversation, now I’d like to see that conversation move to the tactical. Let’s create new structures, incentives, partnerships, tools to unlock philanthropic and government capital for social impact.

What do you want to see at SoCap11? Add to the list in the comments.

Photo Credit: paratiger

Tags: builders instead of buyers, community foundations, Council of Foundation Public Philanthropy Partnership, Evergreen Cooperatives, Evergreen Lodge, GIIRS, Julie Sunderland, Mission Related Investments, MRIs, New Profit, philanthropic capital, PRIs, program-related investments, Sean Stannard-Stockton, SoCap, Social Capital Markets conference, Social Innovation Fund, Venture Philanthropy Partners

Socap Day 2: Unlocking the Nonprofit Capital Space

Day 2 of SoCap was by far my favorite. It started with an interesting keynote from Julie Sunderland of the Gates Foundation. She offered a perhaps more realistic, bordering on the pessimistic, view of the social capital market space. She said that Gates struggles to find entities that can absorb the size investments they want to make. They get excited about the idea of bringing together foundation, government and private dollars in stacked deals, but that the work is complicated and hard and they have yet to craft one of these deals simply because it is extremely difficult to determine the terms. All of this underlines what I’ve said in a previous post: in the nonprofit, philanthropic and government worlds there is still much work to be done to unlock capital.

The first session of the day for me was “Lessons of Behavioral Finance: Understanding and Overcoming Barriers to Impact Investing” with Hope Neighbor and her ground-breaking research, Money for Good, released earlier this year calculating a $120 billion pool of potential impact investing money that is sitting on the sidelines. Hope said that despite our desires to the contrary, people still very much think of their charitable giving as separate from their impact investing, “the reality is that people compartmentalize their money.” And only 3% of the population uses data to compare the organizations they give to.

My favorite session of the day, by far, was “Deep Dive Into the Evergreen Cooperative Initiative.” This session was exactly what I was hoping to see more of at SoCap this year. A group of leaders in Cleveland realized that the heart of their city was quickly deteriorating and no one was doing anything about it. They formed a coalition of the anchor institutions in Cleveland (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Clinic, etc), foundations, city leaders and others to create the Evergreen Cooperatives that brings career-track jobs and green, employee-owned businesses to the inner city, transforming a city that has lost 50% of its population in the last 50 years. Beyond the fascinating coalition, business model and results this project is achieving, lies its impressive financing. A combination of bonds, foundation grants, loans, HUD money and others launched this project and financed the 3 businesses they currently operate (a green laundry, an organic greenhouse, and a solar power company).  According to Evergreen leaders, “Cleveland wants to be where the world is going, not where the world is.”

To scale this project to create 5,000 jobs (the area needs 46,000 jobs), which will be the impetus to truly transform the inner city economy, they are creating a CDFI and looking to use PRIs and MRIs. What excites me so much about this project is not the spirit of collaboration and tremendous results, but how they are bringing public, private and philanthropic money together in a truly innovative convergence. THIS is the kind of social capital market I’m talking about. Impact investing is great, but it is only ONE piece of the puzzle. I would love to see more examples like Evergreen at SoCap.

The last breakout session I attended for the day was “Nonprofit Analysis: Beyond Metrics,” which gave a great overview of the growing nonprofit evaluators market through the lens of rating one nonprofit, DC Central Kitchen. It was interesting to see how Charity Navigator, the most well-known nonprofit evaluator, has evolved from a system driven purely by IRS 990 form overhead ratios to a three-pronged review including transparency and impact evaluations.

The end of the session gave me serious pause, however, when a member of the audience asked whether any of the evaluators might use the GIIRS system coming out of the impact investing world to rate nonprofit impact. Ken Berger admitted he wasn’t familiar with GIIRS and Tim Ogden of GiveWell said he was skeptical of social return on investment (SROI) calculations in general. Again, my point that the philanthropic and impact investing worlds aren’t communicating and collaborating becomes apparent. Wouldn’t that be amazing if impact in both the philanthropic and impact investing worlds could be measured in a comparable way? That would be truly innovative!

So, although Day 2 of SoCap provided much more conversation and examples of how the philanthropic and government capital markets are evolving, there is still much work to be done to bring both capital fully into the social capital market. Perhaps at SoCap 2011?

Photo Credit: Markets for Good

Tags: CDFI, Charity Navigator, DC Central Kitchen, Evergreen Cooperatives, Gates Foundation, GIIRS, GiveWell, Hope Consulting, Hope Neighbor, impact investing, Julie Sunderland, Ken Berger, Money for Good, MRIs, nonprofit capital, philanthropic capital, PRIs, Root Capital, SoCap, Social Capital Markets, Social Capital Markets conference, SROI, Tim Ogden, Willie Foote

SoCap Day 1: Building the Market

Now that I got that off my chest, I want to tell you about all of the great things happening at the Social Capital Markets Conference (SoCap). Day 1 provided a great update on all the work that has happened since we met at Fort Mason a year ago. Unlike so many other conferences that just regurgitate old information and bring the same people together to discuss how great they are, SoCap is very much a working conference. The sense of urgency is palpable. The attendees are the very people who are creating this new social capital market, and they don’t have time to sit around and theorize. So SoCap holds many exciting announcements about new initiatives, new infrastructure, new tools to strengthen and grow this burgeoning marketplace for money to create social impact.

Day 1 began with a passionate, inspiring speech by Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen Fund. She discussed their and others’ work to create new measurement tools for impact, like Pulse and REDF’s new tool (officially announced later in the day). So much of SoCap is about measurement, which is very exciting. How do we know social change is happening? What does it mean to say we created a job?

She also talked about the need for exit strategies and patient capital. Two critical elements to making impact and scale happen and be sustainable. But most importantly, Jacqueline provided the balance of passion, commitment, and inspiration that is so important to remember as we work to create what often is a dry, data-driven space. She encouraged us to remember that we are “building our own organizations while we are building a sector,” and “each of us can work to change a small sequence of events that together changes the world.”

Next up, Matt Flannery, co-founder of Kiva–the online micro-lending platform, described how Kiva has democratized and distributed risk-tolerant, patient capital, which again is such an enormous need to those working to create complicated, long-term social change. And he argued that online philanthropy is quickly becoming a huge economic force. This idea of democratizing capital through lots of people giving small amounts through new technologies is very exciting.

And finally, to drive home that point, Kushal Chakrabarti from Vittana, a Kiva-like platform for education loans to students in third-world countries, demonstrated that this idea of person-to-person small lending holds tremendous promise for transforming how capital flows to social change efforts.

In the “High Engagement Impact Investing” session I attended later in the day, there were great examples of new ways of engaging impact investors, but the highlight for me was Don Shaffer of RSF Social Finance (a true pioneer in the social capital market space) discussing “RSF Prime,” their community-based pricing for loans. Periodically they bring investors and borrowers together with staff to set the interest rate for borrowers. It’s a radical idea that is really working for them. Deval Sanghavi from Dasra described a similar community-based approach that they and others like Village Capital take where the entrepreneurs within their portfolio decide who gets funding. These community-based approaches to funding are fascinating and as Don said, they are truly “transforming the way the world works with money.”

The last general session of the day was packed with exciting new infrastructure announcements. B Lab’s Jay Coen Gilbert announced several exciting things:

• Their work to create a legal “benefit corporation” status in Maryland and Vermont. The benefit corporation is a legal corporate structure that marries the financial motive of the for-profit corporation with the social benefit of the non-profit corporation. Within one day of being a legal business structure, Maryland already had 11 benefit corporations.
• The work to develop the necessary infrastructure of a new impact investing asset class with things like IRIS, (the FASB of the social capital market space) and the GIIRS rating system that compares social impact results (the S&P or Moody’s of the impact investing world).

The standards and systems that B Lab and others are creating provide the necessary infrastructure to encourage investors to become impact investors.

Finally the Calvert Foundation and Ron Cordes announced the Global Impact 50 Index who’s goal is to drive $2 billion of capital into impact investing over the next 5 years by working with the gatekeepers to impact investing, the financial advisor community. The theory is that if financial advisors understand impact investing and have the products and infrastructure necessary, they will encourage their high-net worth clients to make impact investments, thereby unlocking this capital market.

It is so great to see so much progress, albeit in the impact investing part of the market only, in just one year. You really get the sense, at the edge of the San Francisco Bay, that something is happening, systems are changing, the social capital market is slowly becoming a reality. And it is due to this sharp, passionate, committed group of people who aren’t content to philosophize. They are out there building, brick by brick, this new capital market that will make social change a reality.

Tags: Acumen Fund, B Lab, benefit corporation, Calvert Foundation, Dasra, Deval Sanghavi, Don Shaffer, GIIRS, Global Impact 50 Index, impact investing, IRIS, Jacqueline Novogratz, Jay Coen Gilbert, Kiva, Kushal Chakrabarti, Matt Flannery, Pulse, REDF, RSF Social Finance, SoCap, Social Capital Markets conference, Village Capital, Vittana

The Awkwardness of it All: SoCap and the Nonprofit World

I’ll give a full rundown of my Day 1 experience at SoCap in a later post, but first I have to admit my excited anticipation of this year’s Social Capital Markets conference encountered some disappointment yesterday as the third annual conference kicked off. The day began with a co-keynote address by Sean Stannard-Stockton, from Tactical Philanthropy and organizer of this year’s first philanthropy/nonprofit focused track at the conference, and Kevin Jones, co-founder of SoCap. Kevin and Sean’s figurative two-step was a nod to the on-going confusion about where/whether philanthropy and the nonprofit sector fit, or how they fit, into a conference who’s heart and founding are heavily in the double bottom-line, impact investing camp.

Sean gave an eloquent speech arguing for the inclusion of the nonprofit/philanthropy sector in this movement to create a social capital market, arguing that “We don’t speak the same language, but we have the same goals,” and “We need to come together to be better able to find what we are both looking for.” But Kevin still referred to Sean and his track as the “nonprofit clan” and Sean as its “emissary.” I’m not sure why there has to be this awkward line between impact investing and philanthropy, but apparently there is still quite a bit of discomfort with the connection between the two worlds. As Stacy Caldwell, Executive Director of Dallas Social Venture Partners, so eloquently Tweeted yesterday:

I’m not sure that we are past the “awkward” stage yet.

To me, it seems so obvious that the nonprofit and government sectors, who hold the majority of money up for grabs in the social impact space, must be full and equal partners in the creation of the social capital marketplace.

But we are still speaking two different languages. And I’m not sure we’re pushing the conversation forward.

The first breakout session I attended yesterday was the Tactical Philanthropy Track’s “Decriminalizing Fundraising” session with two of the rockstars of nonprofit fundraising: George Overholser, from Nonprofit Finance Fund, and Dan Pallotta, author of Uncharitable. But I have to be honest with you, and it pains me to say this about two people I admire quite a bit, I was underwhelmed. The session was just a recap of the spiels George and Dan have given many times before, rather than a cutting-edge discussion and demonstration of how we change the broken funding of the nonprofit sector. If you missed the session, or haven’t read any of Dan or George’s writings, Adin Miller did a great job of summarizing the session on the Tactical Philanthropy blog. But the conversation didn’t go nearly far enough. As Adin said:

In general, the audience seemed to agree with the speakers’ position. There were little to no objections to their key points. The questions from the audience reflected more practical inquiries related to changing perceptions and attitudes toward nonprofits and freeing them up to truly grow the sector. And yet, I feel the conversation has just started and that we need a lot more insights into new strategies and tools to truly decriminalize fundraising.”

There ARE new tools and examples of organizations doing exciting things to finance their social impact in the nonprofit space. I would have loved to hear about those, instead of these old arguments about the need for new tools.  And I would have loved to see a discussion about what infrastructure and structural changes need to happen in the sector to push funding forward and how we make those happen.

In the sessions on impact investing and the general sessions later in the day there is a constant movement to push the conversation forward, to unveil new tools, to detail new approaches, to describe new infrastructure in order to push the impact investing sector forward. There is a very palpable sense that this new market is ours to create, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” as Lisa Hall from the Calvert Foundation said in a later session on impact investing. But yesterday at SoCap I didn’t see that same confidence, that same rigor, that same diligence, that same drive in the nonprofit/philanthropy side of the market to create new funding vehicles, new solutions to the broken funding structures we encounter every day.

Let’s see how today goes…

Tags: Adin Miller, Calvert Foundation, Dallas Social Venture Partners, Dan Pallotta, George Overholser, impact investing, Kevin Jones, Lisa Hall, nonprofit finance, Nonprofit Finance Fund, Philanthropy, Sean Stannard-Stockton, SoCap, Social Capital Markets conference, Stacy Caldwell, Tactical Philanthropy

The Future of Financing Impact: An Interview with Kevin Jones

I am launching a new regular interview series on the Social Velocity blog that will feature discussions with the leading thinkers and doers in the social innovation space. I will talk with philanthropists, social investors, social entrepreneurs (from the nonprofit and for-profit side) and others leading the way in this new space. What they all have in common is that they are doing really exciting,  interesting, provocative, challenging things that are pushing the social innovation movement forward.  We will discuss what they are contributing to the space, what excites them, what concerns them, what we should be thinking about, and what’s next.

Our inaugural interview is with Kevin Jones. Kevin is a visionary in the social investing and social entrepreneurship arenas having launched two important entities in the field. He co-founded both Good Capital, one of the first venture capital funds that invests in social enterprises, and the Social Capital Markets Conference (SoCap) which marks its third year with the upcoming October event. He is also part of the team launching the first US node of The Hub, a network of more than a dozen work spaces for social entrepreneurs in cities across the world from Cairo to London.

Nell: This is the third year of the Social Capital Markets conference. You have said that the first year defined the social enterprise landscape and the second year validated the space, so what are you hoping that this year accomplishes?

Kevin: We want to find out what the next thing is that this community, this movement, this asset class should do, the next big obstacles to overcome, the place where we could put our efforts to make the biggest difference. Now that people are taking us seriously there is a need to understand how we fit into the landscape and how impact investing can leverage its, uh, impact by partnering with nonprofits, foundations and public sources of funding.

Nell: There are an increasing number of conferences in the social innovation/social entrepreneurship space. How is SoCap different? What is the value add of this conference?

Kevin: SoCap brings together more people from a broader perspective and approach to the intersection of money and meaning than any other conference. It’s the place your most likely to run into people you don’t know but should know. Cross pollination and expanding the dialogue while keeping the conversation focused on making a difference in an increasingly intelligent, and increasingly collaborative way is what SoCap10 is about.

Nell: It’s true that SoCap brings together an amazing group of thought leaders, social entrepreneurs and social investors for 3 days in San Francisco, but what happens after the conference ends? What changes to the social enterprise/social investing space have you seen as a result of the past two SoCaps?

Kevin: I’ve seen startups get funding. I’ve seen people from the corporate world get jobs in social enterprise, I’ve seen funds raise multiple millions to achieve scalable social impact. I’ve seen deep and lasting partnerships form between people making a difference. I’ve seen the market fragment and pieces of SoCap pop up in either regional approaches or specific vertical markets, from community activists to nonprofit funders, to technology conferences about money. The market at the intersection of money and meaning is a meme, an idea that I see growing and finding a home within a lot of other groups’ frame of reference.

Nell: This year you have made a deliberate effort to include nonprofits and philanthropy in the conference with the new Tactical Philanthropy track, as opposed to a greater focus in past years on the for-profit side of social entrepreneurship and social investing. Why the shift and what are you hoping comes out of this widening of the net?

Kevin: Well, nonprofits and philanthropy are a big part of the market of money and meaning, now that’s been established as a real place, this intersection of money and meaning. You could even say the new for-profit impact investors have crashed a party long established by philanthropy. It was past time to acknowledge that, and by bringing in Sean Stannard-Stockton [CEO of Tactical Philanthropy], we’ve got an expert and convener with far deeper knowledge than I have in the area to lead the way. SoCap10 is a lot about translation as people learn to work together across boundaries and frames of reference to build a bigger social capital market than either philanthropy or for-profit impact investing could do on their own. And of course, we also have a much bigger public sector funding participation than we have before. Some of the practical thought leaders are joining us to think and talk about what the next thing to do is.

Nell: How has the social enterprise space changed in the last three years and where do you see it going?

Kevin: It’s bigger. People are taking it seriously. We are starting to see some of its limitations, and some of the areas where it needs to grow. It used to be the cutting edge, out there doing this new thing. Now it’s the leading edge, connected to other groups and partners. I think I see the old hero myth dying out and people recognizing that we need enterprises that go beyond the heroic visionary founders, that deal with necessary founder transition issues to grow organizations with scalable impact. Or maybe that last part is wishful thinking.

Nell: What do you hope the social enterprise landscape looks like when SoCap 2015 rolls around?

Kevin: I do hope we have grown beyond the heroic visionary entrepreneur as our model. I hope the cutting edge, change making, risk taking aspects of the movement meets asset class are still intact while it becomes more tightly coupled to public sector and philanthropic efforts to make a difference. I hope it has found a room for the crowdsourced capital, like more lending platforms, in new areas like fair trade, and beyond microfinance. I hope there is a deeper linking between efforts to eradicate poverty in the U.S. and internationally, market growth while preserving the upstart innovation nature of what makes social enterprise a great positive force for disruptive innovation.

Tags: Good Capital, Kevin Jones, Sean Stannard-Stockton, SoCap, Social Capital Markets conference, Social Entrepreneurship, social investors, Tactical Philanthropy, The Hub

Nonprofits and the Emerging Social Capital Market

Last week’s Social Capital Markets Conference was an amazing experience.  You really felt as though you were at the beginning of something pretty innovative.

The financial market collapse of the last year has given the emerging social capital markets, where social impact and money converge, a voice and credibility.  Indeed some social investments, like those in the microfinance arena, have actually far outperformed the financial returns of the traditional capital markets in the past year.

Will it last?  And will money begin to flow more readily to organizations and projects that promise a social return?  Will, as some at SoCap forecasted (or perhaps hoped), impact investing become a significant part of a normal investor portfolio in the next five years? Will social impact become a necessary and prevalent part of the traditional capital marketplace? Who knows.   This whole space is evolving, and it is much too soon to understand how it will all play out.

One thing, however, that was lacking in last week’s conversations, and is worth a larger discussion, is how nonprofits, those organizations that have been creating “social impact” since before it was cool, fit into this emerging market. As I mentioned in earlier post, attendees to the session I moderated, “Growth Capital for Nonprofit Social Entrepreneurs,” appeared hungry for information, tools, advice, insight about how their organizations could play in this emerging space.

If you think of the overall market as a continuum with traditional charities on one end and traditional businesses on the other, the social capital marketplace, then, is everything in between.  It most certainly includes social businesses–businesses that not only make a profit, but also contribute some sort of social impact (like wind farms or organic groceries).  And there are emerging investment vehicles that can provide investors a financial return (sometimes equivalent to a traditional market rate return) in addition to a social impact return.

But the social capital market must also include new financial vehicles for nonprofit organizations. In order to effectively provide the public goods that for profit businesses (both traditional and social businesses) can’t or won’t provide, nonprofit organizations require seed funding, growth capital, capacity capital, loans, equity, grants, operating revenue and so on.

Although there was some discussion of these financial needs, the nonprofit side of the social capital market discussion was not as prevalent last week. And indeed some at the conference, including conference co-f0under, Kevin Jones, refer to nonprofits as “our cousins” in this space.  Indeed, the keynoter at the first SoCap conference  last year encouraged the audience to “set aside” nonprofit organizations because they were not what that conference was about.  And I have had a few conversations with leaders in the social business space who have told me: “Innovation will never come from the nonprofit side.  It must come from the social business side.”

But nonprofit organizations are very much part of this conversation and this emerging market. Social impact is not a new thing.  As much as those of us assembled at SoCap last week would like to believe that we are pioneers in all things, we are not.   Many of the financial vehicles emerging in this new space are exciting and new.  But creating social impact through entrepreneurial efforts is not new.

Nonprofit organizations have been around for a long time.  And their reason for being has always been to create some sort of public good that was not addressed by the market.  That is not to say that it has been done right.  Many would agree that the nonprofit sector and the philanthropy that funds it are dysfunctional, even broken.  And I think most of us would agree the government sector is fairly broken as well.

But we cannot discount and dismiss either sector.  In the true spirit of the social innovation space, we must recycle and reuse the nonprofit and government sectors, just as we are refashioning the private sector.  We must reconfigure the assets of all three sectors to turn them into more effective, more productive, higher functioning sectors that can work with, not separate from, each other to create solutions.

What does that look like?  It means that venture philanthropy funds are sharing investor prospects with social venture funds and vice versa.  It means that investors interested in a social return have portfolios that include not only social businesses, but also nonprofit deals.  It means that foundations are investing in both for profit and nonprofit social impact organizations.  It means that the SoCap conference list of attendees and speakers come equally  from all three sectors (public, private, nonprofit).  It means that the majority of nonprofit organizations that have an interest in and capacity for growth have access to growth capital and management expertise to scale.  It means that a nonprofit that is solving social problems is just as sexy and gets just as many resources, respect and mind-share as a social business that is doing the same. It means that those working on changing laws to help social entrepreneurs look at both for profit and nonprofit structures, incentives and restrictions.

The creation of the social capital market is a bold, chaotic, possibly insane, but potentially game-changing endeavor that has the power to completely rework how money flows through the market to shape society. Let’s not get bogged down in dichotomies and factions, rather let’s take a bigger picture view of the essence of what we are attempting to do.  And that is to completely reconfigure, and create a productive convergence among, the three sectors. Now that would be innovative.

Tags: capacity capital, government, growth capital, investors, nonprofit, Philanthropy, SoCap, social business, Social Capital Markets conference, social entrepreneur, social return