Can Slow Money Launch an Austin Social Capital Market?

As I have written before, despite being the 3rd largest venture capital city in the country, Austin is slow to climb on the emerging social capital market bandwagon. Tremendous wealth and entrepreneurial expertise exist here, but there isn’t a lot of energy around creating a continuum of capital for social entrepreneurs. Perhaps that is about to change.

Slow Money is a national movement aimed at increasing the availability of risk capital to sustainable food-related social entrepreneurs. Austin recently established an affiliate of the movement here, Slow Money Austin, and their kick-off event is next month. Scott Collier, who has written on this blog before about mission-related investing and has been active in Austin’s venture capital community for years, is helping to lead this effort. I interviewed him about Slow Money Austin and what they hope to accomplish. Even if you don’t live in Austin, I think it is interesting to watch how one of America’s top 50 cities is responding to the increasing demand for a capital market for social entrepreneurs.

Nell: What is Slow Money Austin?

Scott: Slow Money Austin is a Central Texas affiliate of the national Slow Money Alliance focused on increasing the availability of risk capital to support the growth of sustainable food enterprises.

Nell: Why do you think Slow Money is a fit for Austin at this particular point in time?

Scott: Austin is one of several locations around the country where there is significant and growing interest in local food sources, organic farming that is better for people and planet, and sustainable food businesses that can provide much needed jobs and natural food alternatives. Slow Money is important to these businesses as they cannot grow to serve the increasing demand unless they have access to capital, especially patient risk capital that invests in partnership with food system entrepreneurs.

Nell: As part of a national movement, how will Slow Money Austin differ from other Slow Money organizations around the country?

Scott: Oh, I imagine we will find ways to make our Slow Money activities weirder than others. But seriously, Austin has such a national reputation for a healthy, entrepreneurial and well-educated population that I think it is obvious we should be national leaders in this process. Maybe it is because we are home to Whole Foods, the best entrepreneurial success story in the health food industry, or maybe it is because Austinites value community, health and a connection to nature like few other places in the country, but whatever the reason, this could be the start of a major new investment and entrepreneurship sector for Austin.

Nell: Your kick-off is in April, what do you hope to get out of this event?

Scott: The main objective is to get the Austin investment and entrepreneurial communities talking about the local and sustainable food sector in a serious way. The food industry, at over $600 billion, is a big part of the U.S. economy and it has a huge impact on hot-button issues like healthcare costs, carbon footprint and environmental health. With Slow Money, we want to awaken entrepreneurs and their funding sources to the great opportunity we have to use the power of free enterprise to tackle these major issues of our time.

Nell: What happens after the event? Where does Slow Money Austin go from there?

Scott: Great question. We are hoping to awaken some regional leaders to the opportunity with this event and after the event we would like to see ongoing events and investment activities proliferate that continue to build sustainable food enterprises. I like to draw a parallel to the efforts 20 years ago to bring attention to the opportunities for Austin entrepreneurs and investors to build technology businesses. As Texas struggled to come out of a dismal recession, thought leaders in this region launched the Austin Technology Incubator, The Capital Network, the Austin Technology Council and held events and venture conferences, all of which allowed Austin to claim a solid portion of the growth in the then-emerging tech sector. Cities all over the U.S. are still coming to Austin asking how we managed to pull that off. Well, hopefully this event will trigger some similar thinking as regional leaders see opportunity to create sustainable economic welfare in a large and growing sector: the sustainable foods market where margins and growth rates are high, but market penetration, at only about 3 percent, leaves tremendous room for further growth.

Nell: I’m fascinated by the funding piece of this. Is one of your goals to create a fund for sustainable food-related entrepreneurs in Austin? And if so, how does that fund work, how big is it, how are investments made, what do the investments look like?

Scott: I would again point to the example of 20 years ago and say it is not about creating a single fund to answer the opportunity. Instead, it is about creating a continuum of angel and fund investors and a support network of legal and other services that can support ventures ranging from dozens of small farms that want to bootstrap healthy lifestyle businesses all the way to scalable production, processing or distribution companies that can produce strong returns and substantial social benefits. What the funding for these business should look like varies from simple equity or unsecured debt investments of tens of thousands of dollars to larger amounts coming from investment firms managing tens of millions. Considering the scale of the opportunity across the country, it is not hard to see dozens of funds emerge managing amount of $10 million to hundreds of millions. This is pretty much what has happened in the Cleantech sector, which 10 years ago was hardly a sector at all and now accounts for about a fourth of the $20 billion in venture capital that is invested in a year’s time. Of course I think there is room in Austin for a couple of funds especially focused on Texas, and I would hope that some of the existing venture and private equity firms would allocate some attention to the sector.

Nell: How do you think such a fund or funds will fit into Austin’s current “emerging” social capital market?

Scott: That raises a very important distinction that will be made in Slow Money activities. The book that Woody Tasch wrote, called Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money, addresses this in a more comprehensive way, but in a nutshell, Slow Money investors will mostly be investors that are seeking a financial return as well as a social impact. This raises the potential for the sustainable food sector to be a major target for philanthropists and private foundations as they launch Program Related or Mission Related Investment practices deploying funds to generate not only a financial return but also a positive impact to human health, environmental and animal well-being, and employment opportunities. A dramatic example of such fresh investment thinking is the Gates Foundation’s recent move to deploy $400 million into such impact investments. While this represents just 1% of Gates Foundation corpus, imagine the impact that could result if the other $500 billion or so of foundation capital in America invested with similar expectations. We would see the deployment of $5 billion of investment capital seeking positive social impact and a financial return of capital, thus creating a sustainable, perpetual virtuous cycle.

Nell: Besides you, who is behind bringing Slow Money to Austin?

Scott: We have great underwriting sponsors in Whole Foods Market, a global leader in the healthy and sustainable food sector, and Barr Mansion, one of the country’s first USDA Certified Organic events facilities, where we will be holding an investor-focused local food dinner April 22nd. And of course we have great partners in the Sustainable Food Center and the City of Austin, who will host the Showcase event on the 21st in our own LEED Gold-certified City Hall. We have great support from Austin Ventures, The RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service, Greenling, Dai Due Austin, and too many others to name here. And of course we will have Woody Tasch representing the national Slow Money Alliance in attendance to kick things off. It should be an interesting discussion, and an amazing dinner! Sign up at www.slowmoneyaustin.org.

Tags: Austin, Austin Technology Council, Austin Technology Incubator, Austin Ventures, Dai Due Austin, Gates Foundation, Greenling, RGK Center for Philanthropy, Slow Money, social capital market, Texas, The Capital Network, Whole Foods, Woody Tasch

2010 and the Future of the Social Sector

Lucy Bernholz, head of Blueprint Research and Design, a philanthropy consulting firm, and thought-leader on trends in philanthropy is preparing a monograph on what 2010 will hold for the social sector. As a true adopter of social media, she is asking others to contribute, in essence crowd-sourcing answers, this year to her annual “what will next year bring” treatise. Last week, she asked her blog readers, Twitter followers, and all others the question: “What trend, change, entity, or idea will matter most to the social sector in 2010?”

She’s gotten a great set of responses, in blog, email, Tweet, and other forms, which she and others are collecting. It’s kind of an interesting experiment to ask a broad question to the universe and see what you get back, and whether it is intelligible and adds anything to what she may have already been planning to write. It is also interesting to navigate the very fine line between future-telling and wishful thinking. I probably tend to fall into the latter category, but if we don’t envision the future we want to see, we probably won’t get there.

I submitted my thoughts to Lucy via Twitter, but it is difficult to distill broad ideas into 140 characters, so I will elaborate on my thoughts here.

There are three things that I think will matter most to the social sector in 2010:

1. Increased Philanthropic Dollars Will Go to Organization Building. Donors will increasingly realize that they can achieve a greater social return on their investment (more social impact) when they invest in the capacity, or growth of a successful nonprofit.  That is to say that donors will increasingly realize the power of BUILDING organizations rather than BUYING services.  I don’t think donors will move away from buying services, there will still be a majority of that.  But I think donors will start to understand the difference between a “donation” where they are simply supporting an organization’s current program, versus an “investment” that makes the organization stronger, healthier, better positioned to address the social problem head on.




2. Nonprofits Will Move From Outputs to Outcomes. And in order to meet this trend of donors wanting to invest rather than donate, nonprofits will begin to understand that they will attract more capital if they can demonstrate a social return on investment, or a change in outcomes, not just outputs.  Outputs have been a favorite of the nonprofit sector, i.e. 500 kids went through our after-school program, 1,000 meals were served in our kitchen. But outputs don’t demonstrate social impact, or a change to a problem.  Outcomes do, which is what investors increasingly will want to see.  Outcomes are about changed lives, changed trajectories.  It is so much more powerful and compelling to be able to say that the 500 kids that went through our after-school program stayed in school and increased their academic achievement which was a marked difference from their cohorts that didn’t attend our program.  Then, if you can continue to track those children and demonstrate that they continued to stay in school at a higher rate than their contemporaries, you have a compelling change to a trajectory.  You begin to show how your organization is an intermediary between donors who want to invest in social change and a change you are making in the community.  I believe that philanthropic capital will begin to flow more readily to those nonprofit organizations that can demonstrate outcomes as opposed to outputs, and those nonprofits that can comply will be more successful at attracting capital.




3. The Social Capital Market Will Increasingly Include Philanthropic Capital. The social capital market to date has focused mostly on investing in social businesses that provide both a social and financial return. Philanthropy and nonprofit organizations have been somewhat left behind. But this will change with a growing recognition of the benefits of broadening the definition of social capital markets to include nonprofits and philanthropy.  There is much to be gained when ALL organizations working towards social impact and ALL investors interested in social return can pool resources and work towards closer collaboration, creation of new financial vehicles, sharing of ideas and information.

Perhaps 2010 is too early for all three of these trends to really take hold, but I think the beginnings are there. It will be interesting to see what Lucy comes up with, and what actually starts evolving in a few short months when the new year begins.

But in the meantime, what are your thoughts?  Where do you see the social sector going in the coming year?

Tags: 2010, Blueprint Research and Design, Lucy Bernholz, nonprofit, outcomes, philanthropic capital, Philanthropy, social capital market, social impact, trends

Two Weeks to SoCap

Two weeks from today the 2nd annual Social Capital Markets Conference kicks off in San Francisco.  I’m pretty excited about it because I think one of the biggest things standing in the way of social innovation is a social capital market–the financial tools and vehicles necessary to adequately capitalize social innovation.  The speaker’s list for the conference reads like a Who’s Who of the social innovation world.  There are some incredible sessions, too many to choose from.  I wish the conference were longer than 3 days.  I’ll be tweeting (as much as my multi-tasking challenged brain can handle) and blogging from the conference.

Just a few of the topics to be discussed at this year’s conference include:

• The Social Capital Movement Across the Globe
• Social venture funds’ prominent role in the new economy
• The sophistication of social investing pioneers
• Raising money for impact investing in a downturn economy
• The Obama Administration’s focus on social innovation
• Creating effective collaboration between the private sector and development agencies
• Moving beyond Microfinance
• Market based solutions for the base of the pyramid
• New corporate structures, including hybrid businesses and L3C organizations
• Creating metrics and value around social change
• Mobile technology platforms worthy of investment

Are you excited yet?

One of the things I’m particularly excited about at this year’s conference is a movement toward including nonprofits and philanthropy in more of the conference.  Last year’s conference tended to focus a bit more on blended value investing (investing in social impact organizations that provide a social AND a financial return). But we don’t want to neglect those social entrepreneurs that employ a nonprofit model to create their desired social impact.

To that end, SoCap this year has a host of sessions about nonprofit social entrepreneurs  and a social capital market for them.  I am moderating one of these sessions, Growth Capital for Nonprofit Social Entrepreneurs on Wednesday, September 2nd at 1:30pm.  Darell Hammond of KaBoom!, Greg Baldwin of VolunteerMatch and Kelly Ward from America Forward/New Profit will discuss the growth capital that was used to bring some impressive nonprofit organization’s to scale.

If you are going to attend only one conference in the social innovation space this year, I would highly recommend SoCap.  Hope to see you there!

Growth Capital for Nonprofit Social Entrepreneurs

Date: Wednesday, September 2nd
Time: 1:30pm

Moderator: Nell Edgington, Social Velocity
Greg Baldwin, VolunteerMatch
Darell Hammond, KaBOOM!
Kelly Ward, New Profit and America Forward

Nonprofit social entrepreneurs like Volunteer Match and KaBoom! have become, over the past decade, very successful, national, multi-million dollar nonprofit organizations working to solve critical social problems. They’ve achieved this impressive scale through growth capital from individuals, foundations and venture philanthropy funds. Greg Baldwin from Volunteer Match and Darell Hammond from Kaboom will be joined by Kelly Ward from America Forward and New Profit, a pioneer venture philanthropy fund in Boston, to discuss the various financial tools available and necessary to scale nonprofit social entrepreneurs.

Tags: America Forward, KaBoom!, microfinance, New Profit, nonprofit, scale, SoCap, social capital market, social entrepreneurs, Venture Philanthropy, Volunteer Match

A Gathering of Funders

I was invited to speak at the Central Texas Education Funders monthly meeting about social innovation yesterday morning.  It was an honor to talk to this engaged, savvy, thoughtful group of philanthropists who are passionate about making education better in Central Texas.  Some of the foundations present were: Webber Family Foundation, Aragona Foundation, RGK Foundation, KDK Harman Foundation, Applied Materials Corporate Giving, United Way, Impact Austin, Still Water Foundation, among others.

My presentation provided an overview on social innovation (social entrepreneurship, growth and capacity capital, social investing, etc.) occurring nationally and here in Austin.  After the presentation there was a great discussion among the group that covered exciting experiments in growth and sustainability in our region, why Austin seems to be behind other cities in social innovation activity, the impact of the recession on growth, and the need for collaboration and mergers, and much more.

Ellen Ray from the Still Water Foundation announced an experiment that she and a few other local foundations have launched to grow the scope and capacity of arts education organizations in town.  I hope to have more information on this exciting project in a later post.  In addition, Jessica D’Arcy from the Webber Family Foundation explained how the Central Texas Education Funders group is putting together a funding matrix so that the group can understand which of their membership is funding which projects in town.  Compiling this knowledge could be the first step in understanding how to leverage the resources of the group to make a greater impact.  And Chris Earthman from the Aragona Foundation shared some interesting data about how hypercompetitive Austin really is in terms of foundation funding for our nonprofits.  Austin has one of the highest nonprofit to foundation ratios in the country, which furthers the argument that we have to expand the social capital market here.

So much money exists in Austin, yet at the same time those organizations working towards solutions to our social problems are tripping over each other to get enough capital.  That is a huge disconnect.  If we can learn from other cities about the new financial vehicles that are emerging to help social entrepreneurs, we might begin to see more of Austin’s wealth transfer into the social impact space.

This was a great gathering of funders talking about how to move the needle forward and get Austin more prominently in the social innovation game.  I’d love to see more discussions about how we do just that.

Tags: Applied Materials, Aragona Foundation, Austin, Central Texas Education Funders, Impact Austin, KDK Harman Foundation, nonprofit, RGK Foundation, social capital market, Still Water Foundation, United Way, Webber Family Foundation

PRIs: Another Part of the Emerging Social Capital Market

Continuing the various discussions about the beginning signs and formations of a social capital market, I’d like to add PRIs (Program Related Investments) to the conversation.  In all of the concern about decreasing philanthropic giving because of the economy there has been little talk about these financial vehicles as a real opportunity for foundations, and a potential social capital tool.  A PRI is basically a loan made by a foundation to a nonprofit at a low/no interest rate. The loan is made out of a foundation’s normal 5% minimum payout requirement.  However, because it is a loan, the foundation eventually gets this money back to be regranted elsewhere.

I wrote a few months ago about how foundations could use PRIs in a new way to invest in increasing a nonprofit’s fundraising function (new development staff, new technology, training, collateral, infrastructure, etc).  The PRI investment would be paid off in a few years and the nonprofit would be left with an elevated revenue generating engine. So the foundation’s investment has a pretty impressive return: the principal plus interest is returned to the foundation and, in addition, the nonprofit that they were supporting is now able to generate annual operating revenue at a much elevated rate, bringing them that much closer to sustainability.

It seems to me that now is the perfect time to institute this new use of PRIs for several reasons:

• Foundations have decreased funds with which to invest, so the further they can stretch their money, the better
• Nonprofits need to be smarter and more strategic about raising money in an increasingly difficult economic climate, so investments to help them do that would be very helpful
• The nonprofit sector lacks access to capital for capacity or infrastructure projects like this, so these investments would expand that capital pool

I was encouraged to see that RSF Social Finance recently noted an increased interest among grantmakers in PRIs, especially given the financial market conditions.  In their eyes, PRIs are a real opportunity:

Now more than ever, PRI offers foundations a unique opportunity to respond to the challenge of using fewer resources to provide support to communities with greater needs. Organizations  that were already  promoting PRI as a means for foundations to support their missions are now upping the ante. “As we know, the turn of 2008 to 2009 caught many foundations by surprise,” says Dana Lanza, Executive Director of the Environmental Grantmakers Association. “Within the environmental grantmaking community, assets are down by an average of 30%-40% in many cases. We are noting that in this climate, PRI is garnering significant interest from our members as a means to continue to support innovative efforts while essentially ‘recycling’ funds. I expect this to become a critical form of grantmaking as we pull ourselves through this rough period over the next few years.” The PRI Makers Network, which provides a wealth of resources and data related to PRI, organized a call last month for funders to discuss the results of a recent member survey: PRI in Tough Economic Times.  The survey revealed what callers confirmed: while there are reasons to be cautious, there are even more reasons to seize the opportunities inherent in PRI. According to the survey summary, “last year, in many cases, PRIs constituted [foundations'] highest performing asset class – providing downside protection in the bear market.”

So RSF Social Finance is launching the RSF PRI Funds which allows family foundations to invest at least $250,000 into a pooled PRI fund.  RSF handles the terms and deal sourcing and invests the PRIs into organizations in three areas: food & agriculture, education & the arts, and ecological stewardship. As RSF Social Finance puts it: “Our pooled PRI model means that each foundation’s investment will work alongside other funds, re-invested into a portfolio of borrowers doing critical work on the ground. This approach maximizes the power of leveraged PRI impact while also mitigating risk.”

It’s an interesting idea.  I’d like to see more foundations using PRIs in innovative ways.  I think PRIs are an underused financial tool available to the social sector.  They could be used to help nonprofit organizations increase their capacity, their revenue generation function, their infrastructure and perhaps even help them scale.  It is just another piece of the social capital market that is yet to be developed.

Tags: Foundations, Nonprofits, PRIs, RSF Social Finance, social capital market

Making Change Happen

There’s an interesting article by Michael Grunwald in Time Magazine about how Obama is using behavioral science to create the tremendous change he has promised and that America needs. Perhaps this approach can be useful to social entrepreneurs as well.

Grunwald illustrates that throughout the presidential campaign Obama used behavioral science to change voter and donor behaviors. Now, the administration is using it to take on healthcare reform, the economy and energy. During the campaign Obama relied on a advisory group of behavioral scientists which included authors Dan Ariely of MIT (Predictably Irrational), Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago (Nudge), and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman of Princeton. These advisors provided his team research to back up their recommendations on everything from voter turnout, to rumor control, to fundraising. Behavioral science (among other things) got Obama elected and now its charge is to change the behavior of Americans who eat too much, use too much gas, don’t save money, run up their credit cards, etc:

The latest science suggests that yes, we can [change]. Studies of all kinds of human frailties are revealing how to help people change — not only through mandates or financial incentives but also via subtler nudges that preserve our freedom to make choices while encouraging us to make better ones, from automatic-enrollment 401(k) plans that require us to opt out if we don’t want to save for retirement to smart meters that warn us about how much energy we’re using. These nudges can trigger huge changes; in a 2001 study, only 36% of women joined a 401(k) plan when they had to sign up for it, but when they had to opt out, 86% participated.

What behavioral science offers, the Obama administration believes, is a way to capitalize on the inherent imperfections of the human race, which were formerly ignored or denied:

Neoclassical economics…has ruled our world for decades. It’s the doctrine that markets know best: when government keeps its hands off free enterprise, capital migrates to its most productive uses and society prospers. But its elegant models rely on a bold assumption: rational decisions by self-interested individuals create efficient markets. Behavioral economics challenged this assumption, and the financial meltdown has just about shattered it; even former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan confessed his Chicago School worldview has been shaken. Behavioral economics doesn’t ignore the market forces that were all-powerful in Econ 101, but it harnesses forces traditionally consigned to Psych 101. Behaviorists have always known we don’t really act like the superrational Homo economicus of the neoclassical-model world. Years of studies of patients who don’t take their meds, grownups who have unsafe sex, and other flawed decision makers have chronicled the irrationality of Homo sapiens.

In order to curb human being’s natural imperfections (their desire to pick the bad option) four aspects in the better option must be present:

1. Knowledge about what the better choices are, which is why the Obama administration is so interested in information transparency.
2. Affordability–Change can’t be expensive or it becomes unattainable.
3. Ease–Default options on healthcare and automatic retirement plans make it more difficult to not participate, making the better option the easier option.
4. Normalization–If people think that everyone else is doing it, they’ll be more likely to do it.

It occurs to me in reading this article that in essence Obama is the ultimate social entrepreneur.  As Grunwald points out:

Obama is no therapist changing individuals one at a time. He’s an organizer trying to build community and inspire collective action through house parties and Facebook as well as rhetoric about shared values. In other words, he’s trying to create social norms — behavioral change’s killer app.

He is trying to scale change throughout the country, perhaps throughout the world, in not just one area, but several.  So isn’t there something to be learned from his behavioral science approach to creating change that could be translated to the field of social innovation?

For social entrepreneurs whose challenge is to change crumbling systems and institutions, perhaps a behavioral approach can make scale achievable, more effectively and quickly.  For those looking to create a social capital market and bring “dinosaur” philanthropists and traditional investors toward new financial vehicles, perhaps behavioral incentives could help.  Whatever the area, whatever the need, the end goal is to change old ways of doing things.  Perhaps there is something to be learned from this new approach. Instead of denying or overriding human imperfection, we could actually harness that imperfection in order to create change on a large scale.  Perhaps the very problems we seek to solve require such an approach.

Tags: behavioral science, change, Obama, social capital market, social entrepreneurs

The Beginnings of a Social Capital Market

One of the key things necessary to fundamentally change our ability to solve social problems is the creation of a social capital market.  By social capital market I mean that financial tools and vehicles of a significant size, volume, variety and usefulness are made available to social entrepreneurs and ventures.  Nonprofits and social businesses are sorely undercapitalized.  In order to really change their ability to scale and attack problems at their root cause we need to create significant social capital through various means (philanthropy, equity, debt, etc).  This past week highlighted some exciting developments in the social capital market space.

First, late last week the Senate passed the Serve America Act, which the House and President are also expected to approve, which, among other things, creates a A Social Innovation Fund Pilot Program.  The Pilot Program will pool government and private investments into a venture philanthropy fund to scale successful nonprofit programs. It would make $50-million available in 2010, growing to $100-million in 2014, with matching funds required from other sources.

Second, Root Capital, a nonprofit social investment fund that provides capital, financial training and market connections to grassroots businesses that build sustainable livelihoods and transform rural communities in poor, environmentally vulnerable places announced last week their launch of a $63 million growth capital campaign, in partnership with the Nonprofit Finance Fund (another leader in the creation of social capital vehicles).  The growth capital will allow Root Capital to:

• establish a sustainable social enterprise and fully self-sufficient lending program by 2013
• accelerate its ability to impact global poverty by linking rural small and growing businesses with capital markets
• triple its loan portfolio, enabling it to lend $121 million each year to more than 350 grassroots businesses, representing one million households

The campaign will be a combination of philanthropic equity and debt capital.  They expect their investors to include foundations, corporations, socially responsible investment firms and individuals. Funders and investors already committed include The Kendeda Fund, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Skoll Foundation.

And finally, last week was the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, the annual gathering of leading social entrepreneurs.  Among many topics of conversation was the creation of a social capital marketplace to support these great social entrepreneurs.  Nathaniel Whittemore captured amazing video interviews with some leading attendees.  Two of these interviews focused on the creation of social capital markets and gave some very interesting insights on how this marketplace is being created and what remains to be done.  First is his interview with Shari Berenbach, the President and CEO of the Calvert Social Investment Foundation.  Shari describes how the Calvert Social Investment Foundation creates a marketplace for investors interested in social innovation:

SWF09 Interviews: Shari Berenbach from Nathaniel Whittemore on Vimeo.

Second is Nathaniel’s interview with Steve Hardgrave, head of Gray Ghost Ventures, which makes early stage equity investments in social ventures.  Steve has a really interesting perspective on the creation of the social capital marketplace and encourages those involved to think much bigger about what is required:

“We need to dream bigger. To think that $100 million is a lot of money, in real world terms it’s not, it’s a drop in the bucket.  So all of us making strides to take this, not to millions or 100 millions of dollars, but billions of dollars is a challenge that we can’t let up.  The urgency of that challenge needs to be very real for us.”

SWF09 Interviews: Steve Hardgrave from Nathaniel Whittemore on Vimeo.

Very true.

Tags: Calvert Social Investment Foundation, Gray Ghost Ventures, Nonprofit Finance Fund, Root Capital, Serve America Act, Skoll World Forum, social capital market, Social Entrepreneurship