Category Archives: microfinance

David Roodman’s Reaction to Kiva Changes

October 16, 2009 – 7:05 am

David Roodman, who started the whole Kiva debate with his post Kiva is Not Quite What it Seems, has posted his reaction to Kiva’s updating of their How Kiva Works page. Roodman ends his post with this:

The bottom line here is that Kiva has made a quick and long stride toward keeping Matt Flannery’s promise of more transparency. I think Flannery’s response to my criticism blended grace, humility, and quiet confidence. The world would be a much better place if all charities, all organizations for that matter, were as open and responsive to criticism as Kiva has been. I trust the Kiva folks will keep refining.

I couldn’t agree more.

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Philanthropy, Transparency | Comments (1)

Kiva Updates “How Kiva Works”

October 15, 2009 – 4:10 pm

About an hour ago, Matt Flannery, CEO and co-founder of Kiva, tweeted the news that Kiva had officially updated the How Kiva Works section of their website. Impressive reaction time on Kiva’s part.

From the updated website:

1) It all starts with our Field Partners, which are microfinance institutions operating around the world. Our Field Partners approve and disburse a microloan to an entrepreneur in their community. They take a picture of the entrepreneur and write down the entrepreneur’s story.

2) The Field Partner uploads the entrepreneur’s profile to Kiva’s website. The profile, if it’s not in English, is translated by one of our hundreds of volunteer translators. After translation, the profile appears live on Kiva.org

3) Lenders like you browse the entrepreneurs’ profiles and choose someone to lend to, using PayPal or their credit cards.

4) Kiva provides the funds to our Field Partners by aggregating the loan funds from all contributing lenders. Most Field Partners then use the Kiva lender funds to backfill the loan they’ve already disbursed to the entrepreneur. Disbursals can happen up to 30 days before, or 30 days after a loan request is uploaded to the Kiva website.

5) Over time, the entrepreneur repays her loan. The Field Partner collects those repayments and lets Kiva know if a repayment was not made as scheduled. We give Field Partners the option to cover both currency losses and entrepreneur defaults.

To speed things up and to minimize the number and expense of wire transfers, Kiva works on a net billing system. This means that, for any given month, we subtract the amount of repayments that a Field Partner owes to Kiva lenders from the amount that a Field Partner fundraises for entrepreneurs on Kiva.

If the balance is positive, that means that the Field Partner has raised more than they need to repay, and we use those funds to credit your lender account with the repayments due to you. Tell me more

If the balance is negative, then the Field Partner has 30 days to send us a payment for the balance. As soon as we receive that payment, we use those funds to credit your lender account with the repayments due to you.

Repayment and other updates are posted on Kiva and emailed to lenders who wish to receive them.

6) When lenders get their money back, they can re-lend to another entrepreneur, donate their funds to Kiva (to cover operational expenses), or withdraw their funds to their PayPal accounts.

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Philanthropy, Transparency | Comments (4)

DonorsChoose vs Kiva

October 14, 2009 – 11:12 am

Most people in the Kiva debate have stated that the fact Kiva loans have already been funded prior to them appearing on the Kiva website is misleading, but that this pre-funding approach is better for the entrepreneurs that Kiva’s users are trying to help. However, it has also been pointed out by many that DonorsChoose, a website that let’s donors support projects in public schools, really does offer the opportunity for donors to directly fund a project.

Here’s a comment I just received from Mike Everett-Lane, former executive director of DonorsChoose Northeast:

The central issue, to me, isn’t that the pool of money is fungible (i.e., my donation goes into a large pool, out of which the partners are funded, out of which individual loans are made). Nor is the question of microphilanthropy vs. the need to fund overhead. The issue is that Kiva implies that the lender’s choice helps determine who gets a loan.

Kiva gives the impression that if lenders do not fund a project, that project will not happen. Right now there’s a project with $250 left to go, and it “expires” in 8 hours, 15 minutes. That gives me a sense of urgency. I might even give the whole amount. But if the loan has already been made, then the “expiration” isn’t true. There is no real choice.

I worked for a number of years at DonorsChoose.org, and I can tell you that giving donors an actual choice is hard. Good projects will go unfunded. You have to return credits to donors who have partially funded a project that never happened, and convince them to reapply those funds to a new project, which itself might not be fully funded, etc. Tracking it all is no piece of cake, either. But if you don’t do all of this, you’re not being transparent, and you’re not giving your donors real choice.

I don’t believe that microphilanthropy (or microfinance, peer-to-peer giving, etc.) is a good solution for most problems. DonorsChoose.org has an advantage, in that they are funding discrete classroom projects within public schools, but do not have to fund the infrastructure of the schools themselves. Most problems just couldn’t be solved in this way. (”I’d like to fund only the violas in the orchestra, please.”) But if you’re going to advertise yourself as giving choice to the donor, you’d better do it.

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Philanthropy, Social Media | Comments (3)

Philanthropy Debate in a Twitter World

October 14, 2009 – 9:05 am

The recent debate about Kiva is the first major philanthropy blog debate since Twitter added a number of philanthropy focused users to their Suggested User list. What makes the debate doubly interesting is that Kiva and their CEO Matt Flannery are two of the Twitter users on the Suggested User list. So let’s look at some of the data points and their implications.

  • Kiva and Matt Flannery’s follower counts on Twitter went from a couple thousand a piece before being added to the Suggested User list to 61,000 and 47,000 respectively today (just 12 days since they were added).
  • To put that in perspective, the Chronicle of Philanthropy has a circulation of 34,000 (that’s paid subscription to the newspaper, not their Twitter followers. In may ways it is an apples to oranges comparison, but it does give a sense of reach).
  • Acumen Fund, another new Suggested User, has seen their follower count go from a couple thousand to 52,000.
  • After I published the post yesterday summarizing the Kiva controversy, Acumen Fund tweeted a link to the post. That link has been retweeted 37 times and generated 276 visitors to this blog (over the last 23 hours). A second Acumen Fund tweet to another post I wrote on the issue has generated another 75 visitors.
  • Reading through the profiles of the people who retweeted the Acumen Fund tweet, it appears that many of them have some familiarity with Kiva, but are not regular readers of the philanthropy blogs.
  • These new readers didn’t just click on the link and then move on. The number one outbound link on my blog yesterday was the link to the GiveWell blog’s graphical representation of how Kiva explains their process to donors compared to how they explain it to microfinance institutions. This link was halfway down the post, suggesting that many visitors read through the post and took action to learn more.
  • Including all Twitter users (not just Acumen Fund), Twitter was responsible for 44% of all Tactical Philanthropy readers yesterday.
  • Yet the official Kiva Twitter account has made no mention of the debate and Matt Flannery’s Twitter feed links only to the guest post he wrote giving Kiva’s side of the story on David Roodman’s blog.

A number of the new Tactical Philanthropy readers who came in via the Acumen Fund tweet left comments on my posts. A quick scan of other posts on the debate suggests that readers new to the philanthropy blogs found the debate engaging and are asking questions about important issues.

The Kiva debate is complicated. There is good cause to criticize them and good cause to defend them. What is exciting is that we now have a vibrant online debate about important issues in philanthropy and new platforms like Twitter are exposing non-traditional audiences to these debates.

At the time the Twitter Suggested User list was published, I suggested that the new members needed to realize they were talking to a new audience then they were before and they needed to adjust accordingly.

One small suggestion I would make is to point out that the members of the list are now speaking to a mainstream audience rather than social entrepreneur insiders. I know from my experience writing for the Financial Times, that writing for a mainstream audience is more difficult but also offers more opportunity than speaking to people who already “get” where you are coming from.

Imagine you are giving a talk to a small group of people who are passionate about social change. All of a sudden the walls around the room you are speaking in come crashing down and you realize that their are thousand and thousands of new people outside the room who are now crowding around to hear you.

What would you say?

The Twitter Suggested Users suddenly find themselves holding a powerful new tool. They have the ability to point people’s attention to the subjects they pick. This isn’t a small deal. The current debate is about the validity of Kiva, one of the most highly touted of the “new philanthropy” brands. I’m not sure where this all goes, but I think it is healthy to have so many new people being exposed to the discourse. And I think new winners and losers are going to emerge.

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, Social Media, Storytelling, Transparency, nptech | Comments (0)

Is Kiva Misleading the Public?

October 13, 2009 – 9:13 am

Over the past two weeks, a debate has been simmering about the way in which Kiva (a microfinance organization) describes how they operate. It all started when David Roodman wrote a post on his Microfinance Open Book Blog titled “Kiva Is Not Quite What It Seems”. David is writing a book about microfinance and by live blogging his progress he is soliciting feedback. In the post, David wrote:

Kiva is the path-breaking, fast-growing person-to-person microlending site. It works this way: Kiva posts pictures and stories of people needing loans. You give your money to Kiva. Kiva sends it to a microlender. The lender makes the loan to a person you choose. He or she ordinarily repays. You get your money back with no interest. It’s like eBay for microcredit.

You knew that, right? Well guess what: you’re wrong, and so is Kiva’s diagram. Less that 5% of Kiva loans are disbursed after they are listed and funded on Kiva’s site. Just today, for example, Kiva listed a loan for Phong Mut in Cambodia and at this writing only $25 of the needed $800 has been raised. But you needn’t worry about whether Phong Mut will get the loan because it was disbursed last month. And if she defaults, you might not hear about it: the intermediating microlender MAXIMA might cover for her in order to keep its Kiva-listed repayment rate high.

In short, the person-to-person donor-to-borrower connections created by Kiva are partly fictional. I suspect that most Kiva users do not realize this. Yet Kiva prides itself on transparency.

In other words, Kiva tells lenders (users of the site) that the money flows like this:

  1. Lender picks entrepreneur to fund and gives the money to Kiva.
  2. Kiva transfers the money to a local microfinance institution (MFI).
  3. The MFI gives the money to the entrepreneur.
  4. The entrepreneur pays the loan back to the MFI.
  5. The MFI gives the money back to Kiva who returns it to the lenders account.

But in fact, the money flows like this:

  1. An MFI lends money to an entrepreneur.
  2. The MFI puts information about the loan on Kiva.org.
  3. Kiva lenders (users) select a loan to have their money credited towards.
  4. If an MFI reports that a borrower is delinquent, Kiva calculates the amount to deduct from the lender’s accounts.

You can see the two versions displayed in graphics in a post on the GiveWell blog. Note that Kiva shows version one to lenders and version two to MFIs. However, due to the debate, Kiva has updated the version they show donors to more accurately reflect the process [update: GiveWell's chart compares Kiva's updated version, but still implies that it is misleading]. In fact, in a guest post on Roodman’s blog, Kiva CEO Matt Flannery offers an excellent response in which he acknowledges that much of what Roodman argues is true, promises to be more transparent and then gives the back story of how Kiva’s model has morphed from the direct lending process to the more efficient process of having MFIs make the loans before asking Kiva lenders for the money.

So here’s where it gets interesting for me. Roodman argues that while Kiva is misleading donors, the process they are using is good:

I hasten to temper this criticism. What Kiva does behind the scenes is what it should do. Imagine if Kiva actually worked the way people think it does. Phong Mut approaches a MAXIMA loan officer and clears all the approval hurdles, making the case that she has a good plan for the loan, has good references, etc. The MAXIMA officer says, “I think you deserve a loan, and MAXIMA has the capital to make it. But instead of giving you one, I’m going to take your picture, write down your story, get it translated and posted on an American web site, and then we’ll see over the next month whether the Americans think you should get a loan. Check back with me from time to time.” That would be inefficient, which is to say, immorally wasteful of charitable dollars. And it would be demeaning for Phong Mut. So instead MAXIMA took her picture and story, gave her the loan, and then uploaded the information to Kiva. MAXIMA will lend the money it gets from Kiva to someone else, who may never appear on kiva.org.

Tim Ogden, writing on Philanthropy Action, offers additional criticism of Kiva’s communications, but agrees with Roodman on the idea that Kiva’s practice makes sense:

In Kiva’s defense, this subtle misleading is not unique to Kiva; most NGO’s operate this way especially in disaster relief, child sponsorship, and alternative gifts (like giving a cow or a goat). The reason it’s so prevalent is that the donors demand it—and they vote with their dollars if the NGO is unwilling to provide the illusion of a person-to-person connection. Kudos to Roodman for exposing the illusion in a comprehensive and thoughtful way. While I think trafficking in such illusions is wrong, I understand why they are perpetrated in the name of the “greater good.“ I wish Kiva and others would abandon this practice, but I also acknowledge that they can’t until donors stop requiring NGOs to mislead them.

So here’s the take away. Donors like to believe that they are helping other individuals. They want their money to go directly to benefitting the people they seek to help. We see this in the Kiva model, in the child sponsorship concept and even in the way that donors want nonprofits to spend nothing on overhead.

Taken together, it seems that donors simply see nonprofits as bureaucratic intermediaries who play a necessary role of linking the donor to the recipient, but who otherwise should get out of the way. Nonprofits, recognizing the way donors think, play into the illusion by reallocating overhead expenses to program costs and then trumpeting their low expense ratio or subtly reframing how money flows as Kiva has been doing to make their process better align with the donor’s illusion.

I’m really not sure what to make of all this. On the one hand, you can’t fault nonprofits for spinning what they do to best satisfy donors. This is exactly what for-profit companies do. Satisfying your customer or donor is the job of an organization. But at the same time, this illusion that donors want to believe in, that they can support individuals rather than nonprofits, is poisonous because it creates an atmosphere where the best nonprofits are the ones who can best stay out of the way rather than the ones who can create the most robust organizations.

According to Roodman, Kiva’s actual process is better at helping poverty stricken entrepreneurs than the illusion of direct lending that Kiva spins for its donors. But would you as a donor rather make direct loans? What should we think about the fact that what we want as donors is not what is best for the recipient? Especially when we tell ourselves that we want to take direct action because we think doing so is the best way to help the recipient?

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Philanthropy | Comments (27)

UnitedProsperity.org

June 18, 2009 – 10:24 am

It sure does seem like new philanthropic/social ventures are popping up all the time. As BusinessWeek declared recently, there’s A Bull Market in Social Entrepreneurs.

One of the recent entrants is UnitedProsperity.org. At first glance, it looks like a Kiva.org knock off. But there is a hugely important difference. Whereas Kiva.org helps people make loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries, UnitedProsperity.org helps people guarantee these types of loans.

A loan guarantee means that the donor is essentially providing collateral so that a local bank will make a loan to the entrepreneur. The amount of the guarantee is less than the amount of the loan. If I make a loan of $100 to you, I might have a certain degree of worry about getting paid back. But if a third party puts up $20 in collateral so that even if I don’t get paid back I still recoup $20, than I will worry less and be more likely to make the loan. In theory, this means that UnitedProsperity.org can offer a leveraged opportunity to donors where every $100 in loan guarantee money they put up results in $500 in loans being made by local banks.

That’s nice in theory, but the setup assumes that there is local capital available in the developing world but that it is not being lent out due to risk aversion. So I asked UnitedProsperity.org CEO Bhalchander Vishwanath about this issue:

Bhalchander: There is enough capital on the ground to be freed up. In fact banks in most developing countries lend much less as compared to banks in the developed world. Some banks may be even over-liquid – i.e. They have more savings deposits than lending. Guarantees definitely free up that capital.

Having said that I would state the direct delivery of new capital to emerging Microfinance Institutions is also important as banks in some countries may not engage effectively with microfinance institutions and Kiva plays a very valuable role there.

Overall I see our approach and Kiva’s approach complementary in making capital available to poor entrepreneurs.

All of this is a great example of a concept I wrote about last October: The Securitization of of Philanthropy. I wrote the post as the world financial markets teetered on the edge of collapse, due in large part to misappropriate securitization of loans in the for-profit market place. In the post I discussed how grantmakers can inject “first loss capital” into nonprofit debt financing deals to help grantees. Noting the irony of advocating for securitization given the state of financial markets I wrote:

Like all tools, structured finance can be used in inappropriate ways. As El-Erian points out in his book, the “securitization” of home loans (pooling them and reselling the loans to investors) was a positive development. However, misaligned incentives encouraged excessive risk taking that is now coming back to haunt the mortgage markets. Structured finance is a powerful tool and powerful tools can be dangerous, but I think the development of social capital markets towards more sophisticated forms of structured finance is inevitable. Let’s work on getting it right.

I think UnitedProsperity.org has a fantastic concept. Let’s hope they get it right!

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Grantmaking, New Philanthropy, Philanthropic Capital Markets, Philanthropy | Comments (3)

Mission Related Investing for Individuals

January 14, 2009 – 10:35 am

In my column on the future of wealth management and philanthropy that appeared in Wealth Manager magazine last November I wrote:

Mission related investing (MRI) is the term used to describe investments made by philanthropic entities in the pursuit of both financial and social returns. Unlike traditional socially responsible investing that relies on “negative screening”—the avoidance of public companies that do not pass certain social criteria—MRI implies proactively seeking investment opportunities that produce a blend of financial returns and social impact that are in line with the philanthropy’s mission. Still an emergent issue, MRI is characterized by limited deal flow, especially in deals that have minimums low enough to allow widespread participation. But MRI brings philanthropic advising directly into the domain of the wealth manager.

Today, it appears that the Calvert Giving Fund has taken a significant step towards increased deal flow and lower minimums that should make it much easier for wealth individuals and smaller foundations to participate in a strategy that has largely been the domain of institutional foundations.

The Calvert Giving Fund is a national donor advised fund. Like Schwab Charitable, Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund and the Vanguard Charitable Endowment, Calvert provides low cost donor advised fund administration without providing advice on where to give. While structured as a nonprofit, the group is affiliated with Calvert Investments, a leader in socially responsible investing.

For some time the Calvert Giving Fund has offered social responsible investment options to their donor advised funds, as well as “community investment notes” that pay a below market rate of return and finance community development projects. Now they’ve added a Global Impact Ventures Platform. The platform currently offers access to five mission related investment options:

  • Acumen Fund: 10 year Senior Note (debt), 3% interest either paid or compounded into the principal
  • LeapFrog Investments: Equity Investment into Limited Partnership with 10 year life
  • MicroVest: 7 year equity limited partnership
  • Public Radio Fund: Promissory Note, 3 years at 0% or 5 years at 4%
  • Root Capital: Promissory Note, 3 years at 3% or 3 years at 0%, senior tranche

The investments all offer social impact in addition to a financial return. You can read summaries of the social impact potential here.

The really big news is that there is a minimum of only $25,000 to invest in each fund. Community foundations and national donor advised funds have a huge opportunity in the MRI space, because they can aggregate their donor/client’s investments into an investment in a fund like those above and count as a single investor. In other words, while a certain investment might have a $250,000 minimum, a community foundation or national donor advised fund can bring 10 of their donor advised funds in at $25,000 each and reach the minimum.

If an investment advisor or individual wants to invest in traditional profit driven investments, they can open an account at Schwab or Fidelity and have access to thousands of mutual funds, every publicly traded stock and bonds. If you buy stock, you don’t have to call the company, you buy it directly on the broker’s platform. Same thing if you buy a mutual fund. Now the Calvert Giving Fund has created a platform for mission related investing that integrates with existing financial markets.

Very cool. I hope that they are successful in marketing the program to advisors and individual philanthropists. I also hope that institutional foundations that care about mission related investing make some investment on the Calvert platform to help them grow.

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Community Foundations, Foundations, Mission Related Investing, New Philanthropy, Philanthropic Capital Markets, Philanthropic Investment Strategy, Philanthropy | Comments (0)

Online Giving: Call for Assistance

January 5, 2009 – 9:50 am

On February 28 I’m guest lecturing in a Stanford University workshop taught by Bill Somerville. My one hour slot is going to focus on “Online Giving”. The class is called Philanthropy is For Everyone and is part of Stanford’s extension program. Most of the students are Stanford alumni who are currently involved in philanthropy or wanting to become involved.

During my presentation I’d like to engage the audience by actually giving some money away through a live demonstration of one of the online giving platforms. So I’m putting out a request for help from one of the platforms. I’m looking for someone who will run through a demonstration of their site during the class. I’ll put up a small amount of cash to give and ideally I’d hope that the group might have a budget so that we can make multiple gifts.

If you are interested in helping out, shoot me an email. I assume I’ll get multiple offers of help, so I’ll just have to go with the group that has the most interesting offer or makes the case that from a learning perspective, their group best suits the needs of the class.

If you like, you can register for the one-day workshop here.

Thanks!

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in New Philanthropy, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Social Media, nptech | Comments (2)

SoCap 2008: Securitizing Philanthropy

October 15, 2008 – 10:12 am

There is an irony in the fact that so much of the conversation at the SoCap conference is about moving philanthropy towards a financial markets approach that seems to be in the process of breaking down in the for-profit financial markets. However, we should not confuse financial innovation with excessive risk taking.

I just read the great book When Markets Collide. Published this year, the book comments on events that were occurring in the financial market as recently as the spring of this year. Author Mohamed El-Erian is the former head of  the Harvard endowment and current co-CEO of PIMCO, one of the largest investment managment companies in the world (he also spent 15 years at the International Monetary Fund). In the book, El-Erian says that when asked what career he would suggest a young women go into he replies “structured finance” without hesitation. His point is that while we are in a cyclical move away from structured finance due to excessive risk taking, the stuctured finance movement will continue to dominate financial markets over the long term.

All of this brings me to a great session I attended yesterday in which my friend George Overholser of NFF Capital Partners described how grantmakers can injected capital into a nonprofit debt financing deal to make it more attractive to for-profit lenders. The idea is that if a profit seeking lender will only lend to a nonprofit at a 10% interest rate, they may be willing to lend at a lower rate if a philanthropist puts up capital that will act as a “first loss” cushion. Let’s say that for example the loan is for $5 million. The philanthropist might put up $500,000 that the lender could lay claim to if the nonprofit was unable to fully repay the loan. This reduces the risk to the lender and therefore lowers the interest they are willing to accept to complete the loan. The philanthropist is willing to put up the money because the injection of a relatively small cash cushion can unleash much larger new cash flows into the nonprofit system. While the provider of the “first loss” cushion can acheive a maximum financial return of 0% (just getting all their money back if the nonprofit doesn’t default on the loan) and a maximum loss of 100%, this actually compares favorably to the guarenteed 100% “loss” that occurs when you make a grant. While a first loss capital cushion is not superior to making a grant, it is another tool to be considered by high-impact grantmakers.

This brings me to a recent announcement by Schwab Charitable (the national donor advised fund) of its pioneering program to allow their donor advised funds to put up capital to guarantee microfinance loans. The program is being run in collaboration with the Grameen Foundation. According to the press release:

“We are excited to be partnering with Schwab Charitable to expand the reach of microfinance loan programs around the world,” said Alex Counts, President of Grameen Foundation. “Historically, guarantee programs have only been open to large foundations or to the very wealthy. This program opens up participation to a much broader range of donors, democratizing access and building a solid base of ongoing support.”

…Donors who agree to participate will recommend that up to 10 percent of their Charitable Gift Accounts be set aside for a period of 24-36 months to help guarantee microfinance loans. Any funds used to guarantee microloans will stay in their accounts, will continue to be invested for the entire period and will be applied to the guarantee only if the microfinance program has losses in excess of reserves. In addition, Schwab Charitable will report back to participating donors on the social and economic impact that these microfinance loans provide to their various recipients.

Like all tools, structured finance can be used in inappropriate ways. As El-Erian points out in his book, the “securitization” of home loans (pooling them and reselling the loans to investors) was a positive development. However, misaligned incentives encouraged excessive risk taking that is now coming back to haunt the mortgage markets. Structured finance is a powerful tool and powerful tools can be dangerous, but I think the development of social capital markets towards more sophisticated forms of structured finance is inevitable. Let’s work on getting it right.

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Effective Giving, New Philanthropy, Philanthrocapitalism, Philanthropic Capital Markets, Philanthropy, SoCap2008 | Comments (0)

Social Capital Markets Conference

August 25, 2008 – 7:40 am

From October 13-15, in San Francisco, the Social Capital Markets Conference (SoCap08), will bring together a rock star line up of the social capital movement. Speakers include:

  • Matthew Bishop | THE ECONOMIST
  • Jed Emerson | BLENDED VALUE
  • Doug Bauer | ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS
  • Carla Javits | REDF
  • Jim Fruchterman | BENETECH

In addition, there will be representatives from:

  • ROOT CAPITAL
  • GOOD CAPITAL
  • SKOLL FOUNDATION
  • IDEO
  • B-LAB
  • CALVERT
  • MILKEN INSTITUTE
  • KIVA.ORG
  • ACUMEN
  • GRAMEEN FOUNDATION
  • GOOGLE.ORG

Here’s the official overview:

Social capital. Doing well by doing good. Making money make change. Philanthrocapitalism. Whatever you call it, its the emerging approach of harnessing the power of capital to support a new breed of smart, innovative entrepreneurs committed to changing the world in big, meaningful ways.

The Social Capital Markets Conference 2008 (SoCap08) will bring together the entrepreneurs who want to change the world and the capital that wants to make it happen. SoCap08 is a new event designed to bring together all of the people and organizations with a similar deep passion to change the world through sustainable businesses. Investors and entrepreneurs will find themselves helping to build a new community, gaining encouragement as they realize that they are not alone, but are a part of something big, important – and rapidly growing. Participating organizations include Good Capital, The Economist, REDF, HIP Investors, Citibank, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Living Cities, The United Nations Development Programme and Google.org, among many others.

When: October 13-15, 2008
Where: Fort Mason, San Francisco, California
Who: Hundreds of leading social entrepreneurs and investors from around the world
What: Bringing together the people who are accelerating the flow of capital to good
For more information go to: www.socialcapitalmarkets.net or contact info@xigimedia.net.

I’ll be speaking as well as moderator of the New Wealth Management panel:

Social investing is a wave that’s growing. Wealth managers are finding their clients want to explore and get involved in all these new alternative investment opportunities that mix social mission and impact with financial return. How do you manage your fiduciary responsibility while responding to client demand? From the client perspective, how do you explain these new things you want to get involved in to your financial advisor? Learn from some wealth managers how they and their clients who are navigating this new territory in a session designed for both the investor and the financial professional.

It should be a really interesting conference. I’d love to see a contingent of Tactical Philanthropy readers in attendance!

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Mission Related Investing, New Philanthropy, Philanthrocapitalism, Philanthropic Capital Markets, Philanthropic Investment Strategy | Comments (0)