A few weeks back, I was fortunate to attend a fantastic event in Ottawa at the beautiful Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, the home of the Aga Khan Foundation Canada (AKFC). Attended by over 120 participants both online and offline, the evening represented the official launch of the AKFC seminar series on Innovative Financing for Development.
Last Wednesday, November 21st, several months after it officially launched, HUB Ottawa – a professional member community that gives individuals the space, resources and peer support to co-work, kick-start, collaborate and grow – celebrated with a packed event at its trendy location in downtown Ottawa.
Recently, Mario Morino, Chairman of Venture Philanthropy Partners, delivered a compelling speech that builds on the themes of his book Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity.
"The whole system sets nonprofits up for struggle and starvation, not for solving challenges...funders, board members, and civic leaders should be supporting nonprofit leaders to build strong, high performance organizations. Instead, we cause them to think incrementally."
While social impact bonds have certainly captured the attention of the impact investing community globally, there’s a greater movement at play behind the development of similar tools and financing vehicles. In countries around the world, an important shift is taking place whereby governments, private sector players, foundations and other financiers are looking to fund measurable outcomes – not simply inputs and activities.
SocialFinance.ca produces a weekly round up featuring social finance related news, insights, job openings, and events. We source the content for these round ups from Twitter, an RSS reader, and directly from our community of social finance practitioners. Below is our round up for the week of May 7, 2012.
Late last month, running in parallel to the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, OxfordJam’12 took place in the Old Fire Station, a charity and social enterprise in the heart of Oxford. The short film from the event features highlights from the many sessions, conversations, and good times that were had.
Yesterday, I posted Part II of my interview (read Part I) with Ben Thornley, Director of Insight – Pacific Community Ventures’ thought leadership practice in high-impact investing. Here’s Part III, wrapping up with Ben’s hopes on what readers will take away from Impact at Scale: Policy Innovation for Institutional Investment with Social and Environmental Benefit and what’s next for InSight’s important work on policies around impact investing.
Yesterday, I posted Part I of my interview with Ben Thornley, Director of Insight – Pacific Community Ventures’ (PCV) thought leadership practice in high-impact investing. In Part II of this series, Ben discusses his views on the relevance of Impact at Scale: Policy Innovation for Institutional Investment with Social and Environmental Benefit to countries outside the US and weighs in on the UK’s Social Value Bill.
Released by InSight at Pacific Community Ventures (PCV) and the Initiative for Responsible Investment (IRI) at Harvard, Impact at Scale: Policy Innovation for Institutional Investment with Social and Environmental Benefit clearly demonstrates that institutional investors, such as pension funds and endowments, that invest in social outcomes are earning a competitive rate of financial return. These institutional investors, with a total of over $20 trillion in assets, are critical to building the momentum of impact investing and bringing this growing sector to scale.
Recently, I interviewed Ben Thornley, co-author of the report, about the challenges and opportunities facing policymakers to catalyze institutional investments in organizations that produce social and environmental impact.
As fiscal pressures continue to intensify and many of our most pressing social and environmental problems persist, discussions around the need for funders to become more strategic and effective in their grant-making abound.
In this week’s video, Mark Kramer, co-founder and Managing Director of FSG and the author of influential publications on catalytic philanthropy, collective impact, and shared value, contributes his views on the topic.
SocialFinance.ca produces a weekly round up featuring social finance related news, insights, job openings, and events. We source the content for these round ups from Twitter, an RSS reader, and directly from our community of social finance practitioners. Below is our round up for the week of February 13, 2012.
See More
Your Guide helps social entrepreneurs learn how to attract financing for their social ventures.
Visit the SiG Knowledge Hub on social innovation.
See More
See More
See More
Your Guide to Social Finance
SocialFinance.ca hosts an online guide that helps social entrepreneurs learn how to attract financing for their social ventures.
GET INVOLVED
