Since I have the privilege of working daily in the SiG@MaRS advisory practice with clients who are social entrepreneurs, it’s exciting for me to join a team of pitch doctors to advise participants in the Good Deals: Pitch Clinic, which takes place at the Social Finance Forum on December 14th.

Being a social entrepreneur and trying to find the sweet spot between profit and social benefit is hard. On the one hand, you are consumed by the passion that drives the social mission, but you also need to have the business essentials: both the resources and a robust business model that outlines how to drive revenue growth from selling your product or service.

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One of the highlights of the Social Enterprise Conference at Harvard in early March was the keynote speech from William Foote, Founder and CEO of Root Capital, a nonprofit social investment fund focused on rural communities in the developing world. His organization has provided $256 million in credit to 320 small and growing businesses in 30 countries since it was founded in 1999.

At heart is Root Capital’s belief that leadership for alleviating poverty already resides in local communities, what Foote calls “leadership in the bush”.  The role of the impact investor is to bring critical resources and networks to bear on viable opportunities, and in so doing, to overcome systemic constraints to rural development and small business.

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Over 1,200 attendees from all sectors of social enterprise in the U.S. converged on the Social Enterprise Conference at Harvard University in early March. The conference focused at the nexus of social innovation and entrepreneurship. As Caleb Shreve, executive director of the Global Fairness Initiative, said, “Social mission brings heart; entrepreneurship brings growth and impact.”

Several insights from participants emerged at the conference:

Transformative Capital
Eleven grants were made in the first year of Obama’s Social Innovation Fund (SIF) to intermediary philanthropic investors like Venture Philanthropy Partners, who received $4 million for a two-year commitment to invest in the non-profit initiative, youthCONNECT. A total of $50 million a year is to be granted by SIF. Intermediaries and non-profit social enterprise recipients are each expected to match government funding dollar-for-dollar.   

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