03.31.08

Rockefeller Supports Another Exchange Effort: SSE London

Posted in exchanges, funds at 11:28 am by Andrea McGrath

It’s official. Announced this past Friday afternoon at the 2008 Skoll World Forum - the Rockefeller Foundation will be investing $500,000 USD in support of studying the feasibility of a social stock exchange. If the appropriate demand and support are identified - the hope is to launch an exchange next year. Pradeep Jethi, formerly of the London Stock Exchange, will head up the research efforts. If developed, the social stock exchange would resemble a small market, listing social businesses with as little as $1MM annual turnover and two years’ trading history. This latest investment builds on increasing dialogue with the UKK governement and Third Sector UK in support of financial innocvations (see below). It also specifically builds upon Rockefeller’s previous announcement to support the development of the BX public stock exchange by US based B Corporation. Both initiatives are a part of Rockefeller’s Impact Investing Collaborative - which is working to create infrastructure in the social capital markets. Antony Bugg-Levine, managing director at Rockefeller Foundation, joined the SSE team in the announcement at the Skoll World Forum, after sharing his thoughts and strategies on ”impact investing” as part of a panel discussion (which included Mark Campanale, one of the lead architects of the SSE) on performance and impact measurement (more coming on panel discussion).

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02.29.08

BLAB and the BX Public Stock Exchange for B Corporations

Posted in exchanges, rating agencies, funds at 6:45 pm by Andrea McGrath

Continuing good news in social capital markets developments. The Rockefeller Foundation - through its Impact Investing initiative (which is working to help facilitate the necessary infrastructure to develop more scalable, efficient social capital markets) - recently announced a grant in support of B Lab (B Lab in the nonprofit organization supporting B Corporations - see previous discussions of B Lab below). As Antony Bugg-Levine, Managing Director at the Rockefeller Foundation describes: “B Corporations are an excellent synthesis of the best innovative thinking of how enterprises can be better organized for both financial return on investment and greater transparency and accountability for social and environmental outcomes.”  Jay Coen Gilbert, one of the founders of B Lab notes that in addition to grant funding, Rockefeller has also introduced them to like-minded partners -such as the UK-based Social Stock Exchange (SSE) team headed by Mark Campanale and Pradeep Jethi - with whom they are working on the development of a public stock exchange of B Corporations (read the full article here).

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02.24.08

Xigi.net Launches First Social Capital Index

Posted in exchanges, funds, information hubs at 2:27 pm by Andrea McGrath

Realizing that the Social Capital Market has reached a point its own index is needed - the folks at xigi.net have just launched the Social Capital Index which will track investments in the social capital market - including social enterprise, (health, education and workforce development) fair trade, digital inclusion, and some of the clean tech and microfinance investments. The index will help investors and entrepreneurs keep up-to-date on what is happening in this market - and it will create a place where both buyers and sellers can access research on competition and comparable investments. As the xigi team states - these emerging markets need a research hub to help people get smarter faster. The SoCap Index has three parts, including an asset class fan that ranges from debt to equity to strategic grants - and a fund matrix which describes some of the funds in the Social Capital Market. Over time the goal is that the SoCap Index will create context so investors can discover potential co-investors - and entrepreneurs can find investors and partners. Another goals is that the SoCap Index will reach enough of a critical mass of investment information that it will become a reliable, objective, third party validator of the social capital market’s growth, trajectory, variety and market size. Kudos to the xigi folks (one of whom is Kevin Jones - our collaborator on the xchangexchange) for this important next step

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02.05.08

The Kiva Challenge: Great Questions for New Exchanges

Posted in exchanges, funds at 11:32 pm by Andrea McGrath

If you haven’t yet seen this yet, Sean Stannard-Stockton is hosting some thoughtful conversation on his own blog Tactical Philanthropy - sparked in part by the recent NY Times article on the challenges of Kiva.org in having (at least temporarily) more demand from donors than supply of enterprises.  Sean’s recent entry raises some great questions on supply and demand on these new ‘exchanges’ - particulaly the idea of referring excess capital to other ‘exchanges’. In response, Dennis Whittle of Global Giving makes note that they indeed do refer their donors when it “makes sense” to other exchanges with whom they have agreements. Conversation definitely worth following…

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01.26.08

Creative Capitalism.. the speach and some discussion

Posted in funds, economics at 5:26 pm by Andrea McGrath

This morning I watched the video of Bill Gates talk at Davos this past week (see here). His theme was ’creative capitalism’ - stretching the reach of market forces to help the poor - and the growing understanding among us all that ”when change is driven by proper incentives you have a sustainable plan for change…” Worth a watch…

And in one of the many responses to Bill Gates speach - Bill Schambra of the Bradley Center of the Hudson Institute sponsored a discussion on January 30th on the potential of “creative capitalism” with a panel which included William Easterly (Brookings Institution and New York University) Eugene Steuerle (The Urban Institute) and Allen Hammond (World Resources Institute). Attached here is the transcript.

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