Social Velocity » Social Investing

The Future of Financing Social Change: An Interview with Antony Bugg-Levine

Nell Edgington — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:25:35 +0000

In this month’s Social Velocity blog interview, we’re talking with Antony Bugg-Levine. Antony Bugg-Levine is the CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund, a national nonprofit and financial intermediary dedicated to mobilizing and deploying capital effectively to build a just and vibrant society. In this role, Mr. Bugg-Levine oversees more than $225 million of capital under management and a national consulting practice, and works with a range of philanthropic, private sector and government partners to develop and implement innovative approaches to financing social change. He is the co-author of the newly released Impact Investing: Transforming How We Make Money While Making a Difference.

You can read past interviews in our Social Innovation Interview Series here.

Nell: You’ve recently taken over the helm of the Nonprofit Finance Fund, a pioneer in cutting-edge ideas for better capitalizing the nonprofit sector, like growth capital. What’s next for NFF? Where do you go from here?

Antony: I am humbled and excited to be given the responsibility to lead an organization with such a strong legacy and talented staff. After 31 years of working with nonprofits and funders, Nonprofit Finance Fund understands as well as anyone how we can best raise and use financial resources to create sustainable organizations that together weave the fabric of just and vibrant communities.

Honing and sharing these insights is more important than ever. As the economic crisis has turned into an intractable employment crisis, the communities we work with and the organizations that serve them are facing unprecedented challenges. Business as usual is no longer going to work. But business-as-unusual is increasingly exciting. The crisis has created new opportunities by shaking loose long-held barriers that kept the worlds of social change and business firmly apart.

NFF is well-poised to help ensure that these new opportunities bear fruit, by doing what we have always done–bringing a data-driven approach to identifying what works, and working deeply and closely with social change organizations while communicating effectively with capital providers. We will have more details on our specific strategic direction in early 2012 but are very excited about the possible directions we can take. In many ways, this is our time and we hope to be worthy of these opportunities.

Nell: You recently wrote a book with Jed Emerson about impact investing that charts the field and where it might be going. But the field of impact investing, especially in places like the Social Capital Markets Conference, seems to separate itself from philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. How can and should impact investing and philanthropy collide and what will make that happen?

Antony: Advocates of impact investing have done a great job in the last few years explaining how for-profit investment can be both a morally legitimate and economically effective tool to address intractable social and environmental challenges.

But many of these challenges have been intractable precisely because neither markets nor governments have figured out how to address them. So impact investors will have to collaborate with philanthropists, nonprofits and governments to create comprehensive solutions when no one piece can work alone. At NFF we are increasingly seeing the power and necessity of a “total capital” approach where, for instance, we provide impact investing capital in the form of loans, human capital in the form of (grant-funded) consulting support, and government assistance in the form of subsidy or loan guarantee. This is particularly important as the unemployment crisis places increased demands on already strained organizations. For example, to support a set of leading arts organizations, we secured a PRI from the Mellon Foundation that enabled us to provide loans alongside technical assistance to leading arts organizations. We are now developing a similar integrated approach to support social service agencies such as homeless shelters and soup kitchens.

Nell: The vast majority of money is still bifurcated with for-profit investing on one side and charitable donations on the other. What will it take to change that and get more capital to social change organizations?

Antony: When I began this work at the Rockefeller Foundation almost five years ago I thought we were in the deal-making and infrastructure building business: that a few compelling examples of how impact investing can work and the development of networks and measurement standards to facilitate collaboration would be enough to allow impact investing to take off. But now I realize how impact investing threatens deeply-held mindsets of a bifurcated worldview that insists the only way to solve social challenges is through charity and the only purpose of investing is to make money.

To overcome this belief will require more than analysis and anecdote. Instead we need to build new systems to support the new aspirations. We need:

a regulatory and legal framework that recognizes and incentivizes the contributions impact investors can make;
educational systems that train young professionals to adapt investment tools to social purpose;
measurement systems that allow us to assess and compare the blended value investments generate;
nonprofit and for-profit social enterprises equipped to navigate the increasingly complicated strategic options that impact investors present; and,
a philanthropic system organized around the question “How can we deploy all our assets to address the social issues we care about?” rather than “How do we give well?”

Nell: What is your idealized financial future for the social change sector? What level and kind of change would you ultimately like to see?

Antony: I envision a day when we organize the social change sector around the problems we seek to solve rather than the tools we happen to hold. Instead of fetishizing the moral or practical supremacy of grant-making or investing, in this world we will recognize that each has a role to play, and they are often most powerful when taken together. Exciting examples are already taking hold. In California, the California Endowment organized a multi-sector coalition to put an end to the “food deserts” that left many poor communities without easy access to purchase healthy food. This collaboration resulted earlier this year in the launch of the FreshWorks Fund that has mobilized grant capital, bank capital, impact investing capital and intellectual capital to bring new grocers into underserved communities. At NFF, we are applying a similar approach in the ArtPlace initiative, which is using arts as an engine for economic development in the US. This initiative has mobilized substantial commitment from private foundations, the US government and commercial banks.

Nell: How much of a panacea for social problems is impact investing? Can double bottom-line investing truly revolutionize how money flows to solving problems? Will it overtake government and philanthropic investment in social problems? And should it?

Antony: Impact investing is not a panacea. We cannot create and sustain a just and vibrant society unless we recognize that many organizations generate social value that cannot be monetized, and instead must be supported through charity and government. But we also must not ignore the vast potential in the trillions of dollars of for-profit investment capital currently lying on the sidelines of the social change agenda.

The global capital markets hold tens of trillions of dollars. Unlocking just one percent for impact investment will bring multiples of the approximately $300 billion in total annual charitable giving in the US. So impact investing can create a huge difference in how quickly or comprehensively we can address those social challenges where lack of money is the main issue.

Impact investing can also be revolutionary by accelerating new discipline in how we identify, assess, and manage our social change agenda. At their best, investors bring a rigor and discipline in allocating scarce resources to their most productive use, where there is a market-based solution. Impact investing will help spur a movement to link social spending to outcomes that a set of organizations can achieve, rather than just the outputs any one organization can deliver. We need to be careful, however, to recognize exactly where these new approaches will work and where simplistic and reductionist thinking will divert resources away from worthy causes or leave behind worthy organizations.

About the Author: Nell Edgington is President of Social Velocity (www.socialvelocity.net), a management consulting firm leading nonprofits to greater social impact and financial sustainability. Social Velocity helps nonprofits grow their programs, bring more money in the door, and use resources more effectively. For more information, check out Social Velocity consulting services and clients.

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Related posts:

What Social Entrepreneurs Can Teach The Nonprofit Sector

The Future of Financing Impact: An Interview with Kevin Jones

Data and the Future of Philanthropy: An Interview with Lucy Bernholz

What Social Entrepreneurs Can Teach The Nonprofit Sector

Nell Edgington — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 16:47:45 +0000

I’ve written before that with the excitement around the social entrepreneurship movement there is a danger that we are abandoning the nonprofit sector. Indeed, there is sometimes a tendency to dismiss the sector that was working on social change long before it was “cool”. Often the older nonprofit sector is left behind, partly because the sector tends to be risk- and change-averse. Again and again, I’ve heard that innovation will never become part of the nonprofit system — that nonprofits are too set in their ways. Or that the sector is too broken to emerge anew.

That attitude, though, is unacceptable. The nonprofit sector is an enormous part of our economy and has a long history of working towards social change. If we were to cast it aside completely, we’d lose the tremendous resources (money, people, mind-share) that are being invested in that sector every day. The nonprofit sector has tremendous potential for innovation. Indeed, without innovation in the nonprofit sector, the broader movement to solve social problems is doomed.

So instead of tossing it aside, let’s remake it, re-envision, restructure and reinvent it.

To that end, Social Velocity is hosting a webinar on July 12th, titled “What Nonprofits Can Learn From Social Entrepreneurs,” which will help nonprofit leaders understand the new models, funding approaches, messaging, systems that social entrepreneurs are employing to create social change. If nonprofit leaders can understand this new movement and integrate some of the ideas into their work, they can achieve more social change.

This webinar will help nonprofit leaders understand the social entrepreneurship movement and the innovative people, organizations and funding vehicles that are solving social problems in new, exciting ways. It will help nonprofit leaders understand what they can do to keep up, and how to make their own organizations more innovative, attract new kinds of funding, and achieve their social change goals more effectively.

The webinar will include:

Case studies of nonprofit and for-profit social entrepreneurs
Examples of philanthropists and social investors who are funding social change in new ways
How social entrepreneurs are becoming more effective at making a case for support
What the social capital market is and how it’s evolving
What new foundation funding vehicles like “mission-related” and “program-related” invesments are
What “venture philanthropy,” “philanthropic equity,” and “growth capital” are and how to organizations are using them to grow their organizations
New models nonprofit growth
New legal structures for social change organizations
Inspiration for taking your organization to the next level

What Nonprofits Can Learn From Social Entrepreneurs
A Social Velocity Webinar
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
12 noon – 1:00 pm (EST)
Registration Fee: $40

I hope to see you there!

Photo Credit: katrinalopez

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My Favorite Blogs

Nell Edgington — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:58:55 +0000

I just updated the blogroll on the Social Velocity website. You can see the brand new list under “My Favorite Blogs” on the right hand side of the Blog page, and I’m also including it below for those of you on the RSS feed.

These blogs are my favorite in the social/entrepreneurship/financing worlds. By my “favorite” I mean that these blogs:

Consistently create pithy posts that make me think, as opposed to just regurgitate a press release or old argument
Include new ideas and arguments
Cover the social entrepreneurship, nonprofit, philanthropy, start up, social finance, and/or social business worlds
Seed or contribute to larger, interesting discussions in the blogosphere

So here is my list of favorite blogs:

But I always love to be introduced to new blogs, so please tell me your favorite blogs in the comments. If your favorite blogs become mine, I’ll add them to my list.

Photo Credit: Don Cheps

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The Social Capital Markets Conference 3.0

Nell Edgington — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:00:39 +0000

I just registered for this year’s Social Capital Markets Conference held in San Francisco in October. It is my favorite conference in the social innovation space for a number of reasons, and I think this year’s conference (the third) may just be even better.

The Social Capital Markets Conference brings together social entrepreneurs (both for-profit and nonprofit, although the latter have gotten less airtime in past years) and those who invest, or would like to, in them. Last year it really felt as if the conference and the incredibly talented and visionary people attending it were at the beginning of something pretty amazing, new ways of providing sufficient capital to social solutions.

This year promises to go much broader and deeper exploring the financial tools and vehicles that social entrepreneurs need and how we create them. For starters, Sean Stannard-Stockton of Tactical Philanthropy is addressing the conference’s tendency in past years to downplay nonprofits and philanthropy at the conference by leading a new “Tactical Philanthropy Track” that will, as Sean has said:

Bring more donors and nonprofits to the “social capital markets table.” To that end, we’re building a series of panel sessions that examine the way in which philanthropy is an integrated part of the social capital markets, not a separate activity. Our sessions will give donors, nonprofits, investors and for-profits the opportunity to examine together the role that philanthropy plays in social capital markets.

Secondly, representatives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will be at the conference to discuss their decision to put $400 million behind their new Program Related Investments program, which I’ve discussed before as a watershed for the social capital market. The SoCap conference website explains what the Gates session will do:

Gates foundation will discuss the foundation’s PRI initiative including the rationale for charitable investment, the value of investment partners to leverage expertise and capital, and the foundation’s hopes for philanthropy in the social capital market. Remarks will be followed by a deep dive into their experience putting this PRI approach to work with Root Capital.

The Gates Foundation decision to put 1% of their capital into a fund to provide risk capital to social entrepreneurs has the potential to encourage other foundations to similarly experiment with new tools for investing in social entrepreneurs, which ultimately means more dollars in the social capital market.

It’s exciting to see what started three years ago as a small conference of less than 600 (a number achieved only at the last minute by a deluge of laid off investment bankers from the financial collapse) becoming arguably the most important conference in the social innovation space. I hope to see you there!

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Climb on Board, Austin

Nell Edgington — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:09:40 +0000

Today wraps up the Social Entrepreneur track of RISE, Austin’s SXSW-style conference for entrepreneurs. It was a lot of fun putting together the track with Jessica Shortall, with lots of help from Annie Frierson, Suzi Sosa, Andy White and the many amazing, inspiring social entrepreneurs in our area. I’m so impressed with the speakers and panelists that made up the track. From design-thinking for social entrepreneurs, to domestic microfinance, to technology for social impact, to social investing, to balancing mission and profit, and much, much more. It was so great to see those working in the gray area between social impact and entrepreneurship together sharing insights, ideas, knowledge, discussion, debate.

I couldn’t get to all of the sessions in the track, and so I’d love recordings of those I missed. But because RISE is a free conference there is little budget for “extras” like recording equipment and staff. However, I heard a rumor that some of the sessions were unofficial taped. If you know of any taped sessions, let me know, and I’ll post them to this blog. And I will definitely make the case to the organizers of RISE that next year we find a way to tape sessions. Because this content is just too rich to be shared by only the 25-40 people in the room.

So I wanted to share my takeaways from the RISE Social Entrepreneurship track and thoughts about where we go from here.

First, the takeaways:

There is tremendous interest and energy around social entrepreneurship in Central Texas
However, there is little infrastructure or eco-system to effectively support those entrepreneurs
More social entrepreneurs in the track and attending sessions were women (that could entirely be based on the fact that the leaders of the track are women, but I think there’s more to it than that)
There is a debate about whether social entrepreneurs need to bootstrap as long or as hard as traditional entrepreneurs since the same end reward (financial profit) does not really exist for SEs
Funders of social entrepreneurs are not present in nearly as many numbers as social entrepreneurs
An “investment banker” or “broker” vetting and connecting social entrepreneurs to potential investors is a key part of the needed ecosystem

And that’s just a beginning list. There were far too many conversations, insights, war stories, and needs to catalog here.

Which brings me to where we go from here. There is a disconnect for Austin in the realm of social innovation. When I talk with people in the social innovation space outside of Texas they are always interested to hear that I am from Austin and are sure that Austin is well along the path of launching and growing social entrepreneurs. Because of Austin’s reputation for progressive ideas, its wealth, its technology background and its rank as the third largest venture capital city in the country, people assume that social entrepreneurship, which often follows from these things, is burgeoning here. When I tell them that isn’t the case, they are shocked. What is holding Austin back?

We heard some provocative conversations this week and saw some inspiring examples of social entrepreneurs who are making it and funders who are helping them along. But that’s not enough, not even close.

Social entrepreneurs need access to significant funding at every step of the game from seed to growth, whether their model is nonprofit, for-profit or a hybrid. We need to give social entrepreneurs the skills to create solid business strategy around a great idea, language for creating a compelling pitch, infrastructure to grow results. We need to create communities for social entrepreneurs and social investors to interact, network, learn from each other, forge partnerships. But most of all we need to collectively say, it’s not enough. One week a year is not enough. A handful of social entrepreneurs and social investors in a city of 1.7 million is not enough. Social innovation is a growing industry, one that Austin should and must climb on board. I’m not satisfied. I want to see more. A lot more.

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Organizing the Chaos

Nell Edgington — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:18:41 +0000

At the beginning of anything there is chaos, so it is with the creation of the social capital marketplace. Day 2 of SoCap was about understanding and starting to discuss the chaos that is emerging in this marketplace. As Antony Bugg-Levine from the Rockefeller Foundation said in the plenary about creating infrastructure for this new market, there are a lot of or’s right now, but we would like to make them and’s. He meant that there are opposing ways of thinking about and doing things in this emerging market, but we would like to be at a place where we don’t have to choose, where we can have both, instead of just one of the options. Some of the or’s he mentioned are:

Knowing vs. believing
Measuring vs. doing
Mission vs. scale
Story vs. substance
Metaphor vs. methodology

And I would add to that:

Nonprofit vs. for profit
Financial investing vs. philanthropy
Venture philanthropy vs. Social investing
Government vs. private money

And the list goes on. The social capital market is emerging from a binary system of financial investment on one side and philanthropic donations on the other. Mission and money never mixed. That either-or, however, is becoming an and. So too, are so many other distinctions. It used to be that a nonprofit organization was about social impact and a for profit was about profit. Now it’s both. And so on.

But what we are talking about is a radical shift in so many areas. It can be overwhelming and chaotic.

But in order for this market to survive we need to organize it. And that list is long:

We need to create metrics for determining social impact
We have to create various financial vehicles for the various projects and organizations out there trying to survive
We have to change the rules and laws to make them more accepting of these new entities
We need to figure out what business models make sense and can thrive
We have to determine how and when to scale great ideas
We need to drive down the high transaction and search costs in the field
We, as entrepreneurs who dislike the bureaucracy of government, have to engage on a policy level to make change
We have to effectively market and communicate the benefits of social investing in order to broaden the reach of the market beyond the few who have tried it

The list goes on and will take time.

There is such diversity at SoCap and that diversity is representative of the social capital markets themselves. As one participant put it “We are 1,000 outliers.” There are bankers, college students, nonprofit execs, philanthropists, VCs all brought together by a single desire to make money work better for the world. But that tremendous diversity can create dichotomies, distance, tension.

For example, the session I moderated yesterday on Growth Capital for Nonprofit Social Entrepreneurs. I feared that because the nonprofit side of the market had been under-represented at last year’s conference that there may not be much interest in the topic. To my surprise, the room was absolutely full, with probably close to 80 people in attendance. And there was a palpable sense of hunger for information among the group about where nonprofits, who have been doing mission work for years, fit into this new market.

But day 3 of SoCap is about to start, so I will leave all of that for a later post.

Related posts:

Nonprofits and the Emerging Social Capital Market

The Future of Financing Social Change: An Interview with Antony Bugg-Levine

The Social Capital Markets Conference 3.0

Too Many Nonprofits…Or A Weak Ecosystem?

Nell Edgington — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:53:30 +0000

Greenlights for Nonprofit Success, Austin’s nonprofit management assistance organization, today released the findings of a research study on the number of nonprofits in Central Texas. The results weren’t surprising: we have more nonprofits (over 6,300) per capita than any other large Texas city and any other city in the Southwest region. And our nonprofits tend to be small: 93% (compared to 89% nationally) have a budget under $1 million, and 89% have a budget under $500,000. In light of this study, Greenlights offers some good advice about looking towards cooperation, collaboration, and even mergers given the number of nonprofits that exist and the increasing competition for funding, especially given the current economy.

What is missing from the study, however, is an analysis of the overall social sector in Austin, including philanthropy and other funding mechanisms, other social impact organizations–like social enterprises (creating social impact through market-based activity)– and the role of the public sector in all of this. We need to take a bigger picture view and understand all of the elements and entities at play in the sector and how these elements could be better supported, analyzed, strengthened and winnowed, if necessary. We need to take a look, as I explained in an earlier post, at the overall ecosystem for social innovation (ideas that solve existing public challenges). And we need to look at similar cities (like Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, Pittsburgh) to understand how their social sector is innovating and thriving and what we could learn from them. The ecosystem for a thriving social innovation sector includes:

An Engaged Public Sector: A city and/or state-level office for social innovation, similar to the White House Office of Social Innovation that puts public sector focus and resources toward strengthening an innovative social sector. One-Star Foundation is moving in this direction.
Larger, Innovative Philanthropy: An increased number of area philanthropists, giving more grants for capacity-building, providing growth capital to scale great ideas, giving seed funding for ideas that have potential, using mission-related investing and program-related investments, working as a group to discuss innovations in philanthropy and share and leverage projects.
Social Investment: Adding a social element to the entrepreneurial investing that is already rich in our area, investors could create innovative funds that provide nonprofits and social enterprises financial tools such as loan guarantees, quasi-equity deals, and networks, advice, and entrepreneurial knowledge.
Colleges and Universities Encouraging Research: Our local colleges and universities could launch centers for research on social entrepreneurship and social innovation. The RGK Center is a good start, but I’d love to see more.
Discussions and Experiments: More events, gatherings, workshops, think tanks and other activities that help social entrepreneurship and innovation take hold in our region.

I think to truly understand where the Austin social sector is and how the number and capacity of nonprofits fit into that, we need to understand the entire ecosystem. If we want to boast a thriving, innovative social sector we need to take a step back, analyze what we have and what we can do to encourage even more innovation. The end result is a stronger, healthier city that ties its spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation to its desire to give back and strengthen the communities in which we live. That is the Austin I envision.

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Why Not Austin?

Nell Edgington — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:34:23 +0000

Social innovation is gaining a lot of momentum along the two coasts of the country. San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, D.C., New York are just a few places where these new ideas are taking hold. The Bay Area alone seems to be a hotbed of social investing, venture philanthropy, social enterprise, etc. The Social Capital Markets Conference earlier this month in San Francisco brought together leaders in the social investing, philanthropy, nonprofit, social enterprise space to talk about how to create a social capital market (a market for capital employed towards solving social problems). You can read a roundup of different blogs on the conference here and see video of various sessions here.

At the same time, foundations in the Bay Area, New York, Boston understand this growing movement and are providing growth capital and other incentives to help social entrepreneurs find and solve the root causes of problems.

These cities are witnessing an exciting blend of talent, money, great ideas, energy, initiative and enthusiasm that is resulting in some new ways to tackle the many problems facing our country today.

I’d like to see that similar energy and enthusiasm here in Austin and in the Southwest region of our country. Austin is the 3rd largest venture capital city in the country. I would argue that being a venture capital center makes Austin a ripe candidate for social innovation. San Francisco and Seattle (venture capital cities #1 and #2) have embraced social innovation and are home to several venture philanthropy funds, capacity and growth capital-focused foundations, social entrepreneurs, social investment funds, and social enterprises. Over the last ten to fifteen years these communities have fostered a new way of thinking about and blending the for-profit, non-profit and government sectors in order to find solutions to complex social problems.

I see the same opportunity for Austin. We have a wealthy, talented entrepreneurial sector, a diverse nonprofit sector, and complex social problems. If we can embrace social innovation here we can not only solve our own problems, but also, and more importantly, we can add to the national conversation. We need to come together with new ideas that tackle our problems at the root. The problems of the economy, education, healthcare, poverty are too large for any single entity or sector to solve. These times call for bigger solutions. Social innovation provides those solutions.

Related posts:

Climb on Board, Austin

What Social Entrepreneurs Can Teach The Nonprofit Sector

Understanding Social Innovation

The Convergence of Social and Finance

Nell Edgington — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:22:57 +0000

If you are interested in the dramatic shifts the economy is currently undergoing and what it means for the long term, take a look at the article “Notes from the Leading Edge of Social Finance,” in the Fall issue of Green Money Journal written by Don Shaffer. Don Shaffer is the CEO of RSF Social Finance, a 20+ year-old, leading-edge, San Francisco foundation that makes loans and grants to nonprofits. He is also the former interim head of Investors Circle, a 200+ member giving circle of venture capitalists who invest in businesses working towards a sustainable economy (social and environmental issues). Don gives a very interesting overview of where the economy is heading, and I think he is right on.

He argues that we are no longer content with an economy focused solely on individual gain, rather there is a new convergence of financial, social and environmental gain, where what is good for the investor is also good for society as a whole. Ultimately he sees the new economy “harnessing the striving energy and entrepreneurial drive of the American people to move more towards collaboration and partnership, instead of maximum individual gain, while honoring the power of free markets.” Here’s an excerpt:

International microfinance is drawing a lot of interest this year from U.S. investors. For good reason, it’s great to see direct investment going to small, growing entrepreneurial ventures in the developing world. But what about our neighbors? As the wealth divide continues to widen in this country, both in urban and rural areas, we are asking ourselves at RSF, “How can our clients best support small and medium-sized, privately held companies in the U.S. that have strong community development and ecological sustainability goals?”…We are creating a learning community that asks hard questions about money and how we use it, acknowledging that money is simply a form of energy that creates a relationship between human beings. What is true wealth…What is the right balance between investment and philanthropy…What does it look like to re-imagine money to serve our highest aspirations? What, specifically, will it take to develop a network of risk and liquidity appropriate financial vehicles that are completely different from the products of Wall Street?

These thoughts and questions are very similar to the conversations that were going on at the Social Capital Markets Conference earlier this month and that are going on around the country. We are witnessing a pretty dramatic shift, and it is fascinating.

Related posts:

A Revolution in Nonprofit Finance: An Interview with Clara Miller

The Future of Financing Social Change: An Interview with Antony Bugg-Levine

Social Impact Finance

Gatherings of Innovators

Nell Edgington — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:43:04 +0000

As I mentioned in my last post, in the past few years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of gatherings and conferences for those interested in social innovation. Here is just a sample of some of the most interesting conferences bringing together people working on and thinking about social entrepreneurship, social enterprise, social investing, and so on. Many of them are happening this month. Those that have already passed will likely hold them again around the same time next year, so check back.

Harvard Business School’s Social Enterprise Conference, March 2008
New Profit’s Gathering of Leaders, March 2008
The Feast in New York City, October 2008
Social Capital Markets 2008, October 2008
Social Venture Network’s Fall Conference, October 2008
Investor’s Circle Fall Conference and Venture Fair, November 2008
Net Impact Conference, November 2008
Social Enterprise Alliance’s 10th Annual Social Enterprise Summit, April 2009

Related posts:

The Social Side of Entrepreneurship

Signs of a Movement

Growing the Austin Social Innovation Ecosystem