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 July 25, 2011. Note: This week, we are delighted to present a Round Up dedicated to Canadian news.
With the recent news that the SJF Institute was merging with the Investors' Circle, and the launch of the Global Catalyst Initiative, what better time to share a video featuring the work of the Investors' Circle? This San Francisco-based network of nearly 150 angel investors has been investing into early-stage enterprises addressing social and environmental issues since 1992. Take a look at their Investment Statistics here.
As Shawn Smith described yesterday, seed stage funding is a critical bottleneck in impact investing at the moment. The Global Catalyst Initiative addresses that challenge to an extent; the Investors' Circle has been doing it for nearly two decades. This video gives an overview of their work and impact.
Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting Noel Kullavanijaya and Brooke Randall from Equilibrium Capital Group (ECG). During their visit to the MaRS Discovery District, Noel and Brooke participated in a breakfast with emerging leaders in the finance and social enterprise sector. The event was co-sponsored by Young Social Entrepreneurs of Canada (YSEC), Toronto for Acumen, SocialFinance.ca and Social Innovation Generation.
ECG presented their business model on how sustainable investing can reach scale with positive social and environmental impact. For ECG, sustainable investing means long-term values that resides in what is important to people – better places to live, and healthier communities. The organization uses financial instruments that release the profits from the values of doing it right. Because “doing it right” drives “doing it profitably.”
Water is part of our every day lives. It is embedded in everything we do. And yet – more than 1.1 billion people in the world lack access to clean water – that’s one in every six people. Every 20 seconds, a child dies from water-borne illnesses. And, only a little more than half of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa has access to safe drinking water. Canada has the third-largest water supply and is one of the highest water users per capita in the world. But water pollution is a persisting problem here, and while it may seem like we have an endless supply, accessible and clean water is limited.
On June 20, 2011, the Canadian Responsible Investment Conference kicked off in Victoria, British Columbia, with the theme Creating Value, Making a Difference. The conference highlighted the opportunities for socially responsible investors to profit from investing while contributing to positive social change and environmental sustainability. Apart from keynotes, this conference also featured a series of roll-up-your-sleeves technical sessions on socially responsible investing for financial advisors, portfolio managers and analysts, and foundations, angel investors and venture capital companies. In one of these sessions, Dr. Olaf Weber gave a presentation on the relationship between sustainable development performance and financial performance.
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