Greed Has Gone Good: Social Capital Markets 2011
06.09.11
Says investors “are increasingly attracted to investment options that offer relatively stable, if relatively conservative financial return with proven social good.”
“Impact investing is gathering momentum as a confluence of forces are leading people across the world to reject the notion that we must separate how we invest from how we tackle social problems,” Bugg-Levine says. He believes, however, that in order for social capital markets to thrive they need to do “more than just creating great investment products that fund great companies.” New systems that can support the impact investor and social entrepreneur are required. “Our legal and policy system currently frustrates impact investors who have to work around both charity rules and investing rules that largely assume for-profit investing cannot legitimately contribute to social good,” says Bugg-Levine.
Social entrepreneurs like Sabah Gul, CEO of the Pakistan-based Bags for BLISS , Business & Life Skills School, are making the best out of it. Her company brings in Pakistani girls who are forced to pick work over school to a classroom where their work is turned into income. It is a venture that is fraught with all sorts of obstacles and challenges. She is not phased. “When people see what we’re doing, they understand the financial return involved,” says Gul. It may not be immediately from the bags her company sells. Its yields are longer term, in the educated girls and the communities that they’re a part of. An educated girl, Gul argues, is a financial return beyond measure. At this year’s SoCap she is hoping that others will see those dividends. “I’m hoping to work out some deals,” she says.
Source: Forbes