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.
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